The scenes which preceded Arsenal’s Champions League clash with Ajax left Gunners’ boss Jonas Eidevall ‘bewildered’ after the goals at the Dutch club’s ground were discovered to be 10 centimetres too small.
Arsenal news, exclusives and analysisArsenal ultimately booked their spot in the group stages with a 1-0 win, but only after Eidevall’s players had noticed something untoward during the warm-up.Ground staff were forced to make last-minute alterations and were called again to make further adjustments at the interval, much to the astonishment of Arsenal’s manager. ‘It’s been a very weird experience coming here, a big club like Ajax but we had to measure the goals before the game and it turned out the goals were too small by 10 centimetres,’ Eidevall said.‘I’ve never experienced anything like that to be honest.’The tie was finely poised after last week’s 2-2 draw in London, but Vivianne Miedema gave the Gunners victory in Amsterdam, sealing a 3-2 aggregate victory and will discover their group stage opponents on Monday.Controversy over the side of the goals was not the only issue Eidevall faced on Wednesday after he was denied the opportunity to introduce Lina Hurtig as a substitute for Beth Mead who had suffered a concussion.‘I think Uefa removed the concussion sub, they still have the concussion protocol which means the doctor takes the decision.
There’s no doubt that Beth needs to be taken off,’ Eidevall added.‘The problem that I have, and if that’s lost in translation, is that I asked the fourth official if we can do a concussion sub and she said yes, and that’s why we are preparing Lina, and then when we are going to do it she says no.’‘We had that break for two-three minutes and we could have spent a lot of that