Published: 16 February, 2012

ARSENE Wenger admitted he was shocked by the “disastrous” performance that Arsenal produced against AC Milan last night (Wednesday) in Italy.

The dejected Gunners boss said after the 4-0 first-leg defeat against the Serie A champions: “It’s difficult to take the performance we produced.

“A defeat can happen sometimes when you play well, but I felt that defensively and offensively, as a unit, we were poor.

“We were well beaten and we were never in the game, it’s a big shock.”

Dejected goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny insisted Arsenal “will keep on fighting” to save the last-16 tie. He said afterwards: “We didn’t have the best of games, but you have to give credit to Milan. They punished us on every occasion and scored some quality goals.”

The opening goal came after only 15 minutes and was very much of Arsenal’s own making. Szczesny’s poor clearance fell to Antonio Nocerino, who chipped the ball to Kevin-Prince Boateng. The former Spurs winger collected the pass on his chest before smashing a stunning half-volley.

Milan’s growing confidence was clear to see, and on 38 minutes they doubled their advantage when Zlatan Ibrahimovic broke into the penalty area, rolled his foot over the ball and picked out a cross for Robinho to nod home.

Although the Arsenal rearguard can blame their initial statuesque defending on the fact Ibrahimovic looked offside when he collected the ball, there can be no excuses for letting a 5ft 7ins striker score from close range with a header.

Things went from bad to worse within minutes of the restart when Robinho drilled in his second of the game from the edge of the area.

A miserable evening was completed in the 79th minute when the clumsy Johan Djourou, who came on for the injured Laurent Koscielny, brought down Ibrahimovic.

The Swedish striker picked himself up to score a well-deserved penalty, leaving Arsenal with a massive task ahead of them to stay in the competition.