Europa League - Round of 48

We had the Europa League today, a marathon of football with 24 games, 48 teams vying for a qualification to the next round. The difficulty of this Europa League is that eventually the third place teams in the Champions league are started for the next round and there as far as I see we will see some top European teams who are in trouble right now.

At 11:00 am my time we had 12 games 6 of which were televised here, I decided on watching the Rapid Vienna-Arsenal match. The first half was not much but still, in my opinion, Rapid played better. At the beginning of the second half an Arsenal defensive mistake, a ball given to the goalkeeper (Leno) and he kicked it so badly that an Austrian player got the ball and goal. All the pundits agree a Leno mistake, I don't see it this way to me it is a coaching mistake and a dumb move by the defender, why give the goal back to the goalkeeper when you can send it forward? To me football is an attacking game and the best defense is attack. I have seen dozens of goals because of this back pedaling just in the last month and a half, cannot coaches see this?

At the 70th minute David Luis who was the guy who sent the ball back in the Rapid goal connected with a header and tied the match. Rapid tried with a few long passes but it was Arsenal who scored the next goal, via Aubameyang. This was enough for an Arsenal win, they played a bad game but in the end it is the win that counts.

Then at 1:00 pm my time the second batch of games started, another twelve games of which 6 were televised here. I did not watch any specific game but I think the most interesting was Glasgow Celtic-AC Milan. The two Premier League teams also had interesting matches against weaker sides.

Most of the games ended as expected, no big surprises the teams from the big leagues won their matches, the only thing I didn't like is I made a mistake I think I should have watched the Villareal-Sivasspor match, they had eight goals and is supposed to have been a great game.