Arsenal vs Fenerbahce - Emirates Stadium, London - Wednesday 5th November 2008

Since the disaster (which had been waiting to happen, one suspects) at Stoke, there has obviously been lots of fallout. In the 4 days since, lots of writing and lots of opinion has emerged, including this incisive piece from the Gooner editor. For many Arsenal fans, the rest of this season will now involve detaching from any idea that we might win the League, hoping that we can finish in 4th place to qualify for the Champions League; and praying that Arsene Wenger can come around to recognising where things have gone wrong - then start to get back onto the right track.

This game wasn't the best start, to be honest. Probably best described as 2 hours of my life that I'll never get back, it was one of the more dull, frustrating and generally forgettable games of recent memory. Fenerbahce were clearly in no mood to concede five goals again, so they turned up looking very defensive indeed. They went forward about twice - maybe three times - in the whole game, but otherwise just concentrated on wasting time and not conceding. All of the "European" tactics were on display - shirt pulling, falling over, rolling around, getting the physio on, making substitutions last 5 minutes - and for the away side, it all worked a treat.

Having said all this, of course there is some responsibility attached to Arsenal for the 0-0 draw. Teams will occasionally come to Emirates to defend and waste time, and if you are a team with aspirations to win things, you should be able to deal with this. More often that not, Arsenal would have been able to (especially at home in Europe) - but not tonight. Confidence is generally low at the moment, and things were definitely not right in the passing and shooting departments. Fabregas looked like a completely different player to the maestro who won the European Championships; Van Persie did almost everything right until he got into the penalty area, whereupon he became completely unable to shoot on target; and Bendtner had a real game to forget, with little impact at all. There were others that didn't exactly have a game to get excited about, and generally the wayward passing was a worry for the second game in a row.

So, there wasn't much to get excited about in this game - lots of the buildup play was fine, but let down by one pass too many, or a dodgy final ball, or a crap shot. But on the bright side, we kept a clean sheet, we didn't lose, and a couple of players that had been drafted in for the day (Djourou and Ramsey in particular) looked decent. Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea also all struggled in the Champions League this week, and in a way, it isn't a bad thing that we play United on Saturday - I'd almost rather play them than a team that's had a week off. It would be just like Arsenal to win that game after a few games of crap - at least, that's what we have to hope!