Suicidal third goal in first game kills us off, but there’s all to play for in England by KM
Well, we’ve seen this movie before. Arsenal chasing the impossible on the return leg after suicidal first leg defeat. There will be lots of reviews of the game so I’ll just go through what I thought was important in the two games we played vs Monaco.
Overall, a poor performing Arsenal was still the better side in both games. We weren’t clinical enough. We missed quite a few chances in the first game, but more worrying is that we scored, got back to to 2:1 and then we destroyed ourselves with that third goal. It’s more painful knowing that against Bayern we did the same thing. We were 2:1 and we conceded an easy third goal.
More painfully it happened right at the end. Scoring 2 away is very hard but 3 is a bit too much. I thought we put too much pressure on ourselves to achieve the glorious, rather than play it simple and take note of the away goal rules. My problem with this defeat is, that’s 5 years in a row we go out at the last 16. We might drop to pot 2 and worse of all I wonder if the players are starting to get a psychological problem like the one we have with playing Man United. Wenger has had 18 attempts at the CL crown now and that’s just at Arsenal and he’s not won it with a team like the Invincibles. It’s not too much of a surprise he failed again.
I thought that yesterday, Ozil was fantastic. He created chances and that ball to Monreal was sublime. That’s exactly why we paid 42 million, to see performances like the one yesterday and the one at Man United, and overall his form since his injury comeback has been good. I also thought Ramsey was very good. He gave us more of an attacking threat and his finish was very good. I just think the subs were a bit too late. I also think that Welbeck had to play the whole game. We started throwing long balls in the box and Welbeck would’ve been a lot more useful than Theo there.
The Champions League is now gone, but in the league it’s very tight at the top and we still have a lot to play for. Chelsea, Liverpool, United and Arsenal are about to play each other and those games will decide the spots. Everyone is targeting City for second place but if Chelsea draw another game, you start to think if those 6-7-8 points at the top are that much to catch after seeing their fixture list.
Not winning the game at Newcastle will be a much bigger disaster than not winning 3:0 yesterday. Man United go to Liverpool and whichever way it ends if we win, we’d get some breathing space which we desperately need. It’ll be a very tough end of the season and I’m not sure that even winning the FA cup (which is far from certain) would be enough for the players to believe that under Wenger we will achieve more.
That’s me done, hope you have a great week to ease our Champions League pain!
Konstantin