Lack of experience hurts Gunners

Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger bemoaned his side’s lack of experience at the back after their 3-1 loss to Olympiakos on Tuesday.

Wenger’s men had already qualified on top of Group F ahead of their trip to Piraeus and the French manager took the opportunity to try several of his second-string players in Greece.

But the experiment backfired as Olympiakos capitalised on some, at times, calamitous defending from the Gunners to win 3-1 in a performance that disappointed Wenger.

“Those players haven’t played a lot together,” Wenger told Sky Sports. “(There was a lack of communication)…particularly in the defence many times, they looked at each other.”

“Many of them have no experience in the Champions League as well so (they were) a bit surprised by the pace of the game.”

The Arsenal boss felt his side made a poor start to the match, insisting their tactical approach in the first half was wrong.

“In the first half it was very difficult for us and I don’t think we had the right tactical approach, we played too many short balls,” Wenger said.

“Unfortunately in Europe if you are not at 100 percent at the start of the game it is very difficult to win and tonight Olympiakos had a good chance to qualify and were 100 percent up for it.”

“We had the early chances in the game and we didn’t score. Physically I think they gave absolutely everything.”

Wenger admitted that left-back Andre Santos had suffered a serious ankle injury and that he would be sidelined for some time, which will test the depth in Arsenal’s squad.

“Santos suffered a bad ankle injury,” he said. “It looks like he will be out for a while. We have (Kieran) Gibbs coming back in two to three weeks.”

“Hopefully Santos will not be too long but, for Saturday against Everton, he looks to be struggling.”