Ox - Timing of goals was critical

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain says the timing of Borussia Dortmund's goals on Tuesday night made it tougher for Arsenal to turn the match around.

Arsene Wenger's side rode their luck during a testing first half but they were seconds from going into the break on level terms when Ciro Immobile ran from deep to beat Wojciech Szczesny.

The visitors were caught cold at the start of the second half by Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and that left the Gunners with a mountain they could not climb.

"If you’re not playing very well, the one thing you don’t want to do is concede a goal [when we did], especially if you’ve managed to go 45 minutes of not playing too well but not conceding," reflected Oxlade-Chamberlain.

"[Half-time] would have been a chance for us to regroup because we would have been in the game at 0-0, still right in the game. We needed to see it out but we didn’t and that obviously gave them a big lift going into the second half.

"We knew we had to come out and play better than we did in the first half and in parts we did, but at the same time we left ourselves exposed to their counter-attack and that’s how they scored their second goal.

"It wasn’t how we wanted to perform here by any stretch of the imagination and it’s a bit disappointing because we felt we had a good chance on a nice pitch.

"We had so much great travelling support as well. We feel that we’ve let them down a bit but we’re going to bounce back from this and we need to put it right in the next game against Dortmund at home, and definitely in the coming [Champions League] games."