What Arsenal MUST learn from harsh Monaco lesson

As was talked about the TV pundits, this Champions League exit for Arsenal came at the same stage of the competition than the last four seasons. But they were also right in saying that this one was the most painful for fans and players alike because we were all so confident of getting past Monaco.

Arsene Wenger and the players need to use the painful memory of this disappointing defeat to spur them on. There are a few lessons to be learned and if we learn them, perhaps we can avoid this next season.

We cannot take any team in the Champions League lightly as we did in the home leg. It was a terrible performance all over the pitch and it was clear that complacency was to blame.

Another thing we must make sure of next season is to win our group and give ourselves another good chance to put this right because we are not likely to get so lucky with the draw again.

Our game management has to be batter. How many times have we chased a game recklessly and been punished. That third goal at the Emirates was the prime example and with a whole game left to play, it was needless. Fair enough in the second half in Monaxco but we have to stop being so naive.

We should not be patting ourselves on the back for winning in Monaco, but regretting that we put ourselves in such a bad position. We have done this before though, so will Arsenal ever learn?

Tags Wenger

33 Comments

  1. admittedly its the same as every year, first leg flop – second leg comeback

    but we have been on a pretty great run recently an tonight was a great performance an result, some of that one touch football was scintillating, really gives us hope for the future.

    no one had a particularly poor game, notice how no one mentioned per 🙂
    well done lads, we came close- theres always next year

    1. the fans have learnt a painful lesson..so have the player 🙁 but the coach hasnt..wenger never learns..or takes tooo long to learn! 🙁 how long have we cried for a super striker? a dm? change of tacticts?…a trophy 🙁 ??! how long did it take for him to learn and change??
      it unforgivable 🙁
      #Wenger out
      #Pythagoras knows best
      # 🙁 🙁 🙁

      1. I concur. I have read all the comments here and I am surprised that not a single person asked why Wellbeck was sub when he was obviously having a good game. He was given the left back a torrid time and created two good chances for Giroud which he took one.
        So why did the manager take him off? How can you leave Santech on for the whole match when it was so clear he was having a really bad evening? How do you explain that? Very bad decision which can only be borne out of favouritism. Players should earn their place in the team and if they are not playing well then replace them. Nobody should have a permanent place in the team. A good manager treat all his players equally but not Wenger. He is paid a lot of money to make decision in the best interest of the team and not to boost some players ego but his decision making is purely based on favouritism. That is why we will never win any major title again with this man in charge.
        Time for a change at the end of the season.

        1. wouldve preferred rosizcky on for 30mins. he’s a pocket rocket and always deliver in CL. players were def tired after min70. good to see ramsey score again. lets hope AW gets good at rotating for the 2 comps we have left. we lost this when we let in 3rd goal at home. ox was missed too. he’s first team.

  2. How about some fans learn to stop apologizing and accepting repetitive results/performances.

    Attribute blame all over the pitch on any given game, but the crux of Arsenal is we are a top 4 team who gets knocked out in the CL last 16. That’s FACTUAL the last 5 years.

    When do we hold the manager responsible for changing our outcome? You can’t blame squad deficiencies because we have a better squad of players than Atletic, Dortmund who keep out performing us in Europe. We also have a better squad than Liverpool, but lost out to them last year and could very easily get trumped again in both the cup and league.

    Would love to hear genuine ideas for making us a better Arsenal.

    1. I agree about everything you stated mate. But I believe now is not the time to talk about managerial changes etc.

      We are in a good run, in the semis of FA and a point behind 2nd place. I agree our CL performances are unacceptable but we should have the emphasis at Newcastle on Saturday.

      1. Talking about it is just that, talking. It’s still a fair assessment whatever the time of the year. I’m not saying sack the boss, that’s lunacy – you rightly say there’s a season to finish here and we need Arsene to do what he does better than anyone, and nail us the top 4 spot.

        But no point ignoring the obvious just because it’s mid-season. The title asks what we learned, well we learned there’s a glass ceiling for this Arsenal team and there’s only one way of breaking that.

        1. True true, maybe I’m just too superstitious that the negative atmosphere of JustArsenal forum will affect our teams performance! Hahah

          1. Good game from the lads and good away win, Monaco qualified in the first leg, a come back was always going to be miracle…now lets focus on the next game and keep the results coming. That said, I expected the boys to have gone gungho in the game as Monaco scoring the first goal wouldn’t have meant much for the tie, we’d still have needed three goals to stand a chance anyways, hell, I’d have Ospina play midfield from the whistle until we score scored the third lol. On a more serious note though, imagine we went in with a mentality that said ‘we’ll throw everything at you for 90 minutes, we’ll put your box under siege for the entire game, in fact we’ll play the entire 90 minutes in your box if we have to, if you try to catch us on the counter, Le Coq will slow you down, Per and Kosc will be waiting behind him while Bellerin, Welbz, Sanchez will chase you down let’s see if you [Monaco] can come up with more than two goals before score four’.

    2. Why are you asking us – you have all the answers don’t you CC, come on spill the beans. So are you actually crediting Wenger with assembling a better squad of players than Atletico, Dortmund and Liverpool? Surely not. Maybe we really are the 3rd or 4th best team in the PL and top 16 in Europe – now there’s a thought. But we deserve more don’t we – highest ticket prices in Europe blah, blah…….zzzzzzzz.

      I think we deserve to win the PL and UCL every other year (every year would just be greedy), we just need to get bought out by big oil money, sack the board, build another 2 tiers on the Emirates to get us up to 85,000 capacity, sack Wenger and appoint Klopp/Simone/Koeman (whoever is doing best at the time), sell the entire squad and start again but 25 world class players and nothing less. Oh, and get some better supporters.

      1. Oh idk jonestown….thought I’d try and spark debate about what’s best for Arsenal on an Arsenal forum, am I in the wrong place for that kind of stuff??

        I’ve got no answers. Just some theories and opinions that we could/should be doing better the last half dozen years given the infrastructure/resources available to us. Highest ticket prices in Europe, best paid manager in Europe and top 4 has been the limit for a decade. Idk, seems like something could do with changing, or are you satisfied?

        Arsenal is a business, and same rules apply as theydo withany other company – you stagnate, you look to see why. If the product sucks, you change it. If the CEO is done, you change him. We have a fantastic squad that Wenger has pieced together, but he earns his money by turning that group into title challengers. If you want to rest on your laurels and pat him on the back for assembling a top squad tthat’s fine….just change his title to head scout.

  3. whats there to learn? This happens every damn year. Same old same old. Again, Wengers team are mentally weak and cannot handle any type of pressure. Why are we playing so well right now, its because we are not in the title race anymore and have less to lose. Why did we play well tonight, because nobody gave us a chance of progressing after that horrible first leg. This will happen again next season unless the culture and mentality of the club changes. If that means a change in manager then I’m all for it, but I’ll bet my life on it that won’t happen. I’ll just have to tell myself to wait. I’m so greateful for what Wenger has done for this club, but if AFC wants to take the next step forward then its time to freshen things up.

  4. I seriously think we had bad luck in the first leg. Monaco had 3 shots on target and all of them went in. We had butt load of shots, still failed to convert. Its one of those matches where, Just if giroud had not missed that open goal, If alex oxlade chamberlain had tracked back the defender, If Giroud & Sanchez had not come in each others way, If Welbeck’s shot on target was actually not saved by walcott,… Pfft.. After looking at all those incidents again, It was down to sheer and sheer bad luck that we lost the first game. It was actually the only bad game played by arsenal with coquelin and cazorla in the team. We can forgive them for just one bad game. Lets look at the season, Where we can still get 2nd spot along with FA cup. It is still the best season Arsenal has had in a long time.

    1. its not bad luck. again for the billionth time we couldnt handle a match when the pressure was on. When was the last time we won a high pressure game, probably just the FA Cup Final honestly. I dont consider any EPL game we’ve won recently high pressure because we were well out the title race essentially since the beginning of the season. These things dont just happen. They are patterns that are getting repeated every single year. Wengers teams just always seem to be ridiculously weak mentally. I would like to think we’ll do better next year, but I’ve been saying that to myself for years.

    2. To echoe RSH’s sentiments….you cannot seriously put down a performance like that to ‘bad luck’. That’s a terrible assessment of things and is an absolute cop-out as far as looking for progress is concerned.

      The tactics take the blame that night, yes we missed chances, but no way should our team shape/approach let THAT team score 3 against us. Madness. It’s not the first time we’ve been brutalized by a team with a game plan, Liverpool have one for us, Spurs this year too….we are inflexible and naive in our approach too often to blame star alignment for poor results.

      Next step is to put your blame to somewhere for us being this way. I think a share among the custodians of the club is fair, but what changes will have the greatest impact? Will a new striker turn us into title winners? will a new DM make us impenetrable? Or will a new Manager change the tactics and mentality of the club and take us on to a new era of success?

      I think it’s becoming almost ignorant to sit here and suggest the evidence isn’t stacked against this current Arsenal regime. We’re good at being a top 4 team, almost clinical at that. But beyond that we don’t show many signs of being an elite team.

      1. Why are you faffing around with so many words, everything you write comes back to one thing and one thing only – you want Wenger out, problem sorted.
        I agree, sack Wenger and get someone with “game plans” like Rodgers or Pochettino. Or someone who can bring a new mentality like Van Gaal.

    3. It was a bit of bad luck, but it is up to us over 180 minutes to ensure we go through. After 5 minutes of first leg, we were largely poor in all departments for that match. Our players thought it was going to be quite easy. Today the energy level until 85 minutes was very high. Even Ozil right at the end went back to defend in our penalty box when Carrasco was breaking out with a counter attack. That guys seems to dribble past our entire defence at times.

      That last 5 minutes plus 5 minute stoppage time, we could’n’t create anything else mainly because everyone who started was tired. We needed more runners in the end just how Monreal sneaked through for the Ramsey goal. Unfortunately that had to come from either one of the subs mainly Walcott and Gibbs and they didn’t do that.

      Also we couldn’t make much out of the set pieces.

  5. Whats to learn is not to always mess up in the first leg in the tie. To keep discipline instead of going gungho after only being down 1-0 at home. Even a 2-1 home defeat would have been better instead of going for an equalizer which resulted in conceding the third, I was thinking right there after Chamberlain goal, just keep the score, forget about equalizer after how poor we were. We did the same vs Anderlecht at home, and this time, it cost us this tie. Going gungho was the main reason for us losing by those big margins last season in the league as well. As soon as we were 1 or 2 two early the entire team evacuated defence in favour of attack, even though there was a full second half left in those matches.

    I’m not happy that we lost against Monaco, but like we would wish other small/medium teams if we weren’t in the competition anymore, good luck to them in the next round. Even after losing 2-0 at home, you saw how much it means to their players.

  6. That Ozil pass to Monreal before the second goal. If we can get more of those passes going we would be a much better team. Barcelona did it with ease especially against Man City in the first leg. They do it in a more clever way, a player comes of from a offside position to get the defenders into thinking it will be offside, but at the same time another player who is onside goes beyond the defender for that same pass. We needed Walcott to sneak behind the defence more in a diagonal run like the one he did but he just stayed in one position after that. Gibbs turned out to be poorer player even when he was fresh than the Monreal that departed the field. I think Monreal should’ve stayed until the end. In the end we waited for something to happen whilst on the ball, but it didn’t happen.

    The run we are on now on winning games, there is no doubt why we can’t win all of the remaining games this season. Ramsey and Coquelin will hold the midfield together, whilst the fullt time AMF can roam the last third. We haven’t seen that since the return of Ramsey and the improving Coquelin who only made two mistakes today.

    I still see a good season this year and next season, by adding 1 or maybe 2 more without losing anyone, we could compete for Champions League.

    1. I agree. i think if we add another cdm (schneiderlin or kondogbia) and a ST (since it seems arsene likes playing danny on the wings) we can have a very good team and squad.

  7. Telling me players are not to blame is absolutely rubbish,they are to blame,yes Monaco mission was to relax and repell Arsenal and if possible shut them down completely, this gam was ours to take,First the pressure was on Monaco,they didn’t know how to go about it,whether to defend their 3-1 advantage or press us,we had more than enough clear cut chances but as usual we were clueless in front of goal,we tried to open them apart which is impossible,Carzolla and Alexis played as if we lead 15-0,holding balls,try to dribble every time they have the ball and and reduce the pace and any chance of other to get through,losing balls carelessly,poor crosses is now our style,it doesn’t threatened even Charlton athletic coz everyone now knows our crosses is poorly delivered and our attackers also don’t have a clue how to do it even if one get through it will be wasted,this game should have been won by range attempts which was only tried once by ÖZIL and was blocked. When opponents parked the bass try long range shots sometimes help coz many times it got deflected and unlock Pandora box. We have clueless manager and clueless team work who can’t change things using their brain only Ox and Rosy could do that but nowhere to be seen.

  8. If u want to revenge on ur enemy make him and an arsenal fan. he will eventually die of heart attack and blood pressure. in matches like yesterday

  9. we need a deep lying playmaker like arteta, we don’t always have to string 50 passes to get to the penalty box.

  10. It’s getting too boring now… We must learn from this????… The same rubbish has been happening for the past 5 seasons. We should have won all our groups in that period and got a better chance of progressing.

    We get lucky for once this season from our under performance in the CL group stage but still bottle it and fck it up.

    I just don’t know what wrong with us, are we just an unlucky club in Europe or what?? We never seem to do anything in there while other clubs do.

    So frustrating..

    But lets not feel sorry for ourselves, win the FA cup and finish in automatic CL places for next season (2nd or 3rd).

  11. Thz is y i hate the English..personally,i tink ozil is always a target..just bcus welbeck was running lyk a headless chicken dosent mean he offered mre dan ozil(hw abt dat pass to monreal).sanchez ws poor but no,ozil gets all the blame.scholes nd danny mills are two most foolish pundits in England.

  12. am i blind guys , or , are the chaps who were crowing about how we were going to dismantle monaco after the draw was made gone missing or what ?. cannot seem to see any of them on here these days , i remember the fantastic figures they bandied about , they suggested that maybe even a record scoreline over the 2 legs might be achieved by the arsenal . come out come out whereever you are and take your humble pie and eat it chaps .there are a lot of big mouths on here recently , it reminds me of manchester united fans when they were at their peak , they feel it is their right to win . arsenal do not have any right to win any game , we must earn that right . but thankfully something good has come out of last nights result . the crowere who were boasting previously about arsenal winning the champions league have been shut up for another season , at least . boys will be boys , but it is about time some of you boys learn not to crow until the gunners actually win the championss league . then , and only then , will i join in the crowing .

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