Despite the heroics of the Arsenal team produced in beating the hot favourites Bayern Munich at the Emirates stadium on Tuesday night, our position in the Champions League is still a very precarious one. So when the Gunners arrive at Munich´s Allianz Arena in a couple of weeks, it will be in the knowledge that we need to get something from the game.
This week´s win has given us a chance but UCL history shows it be a small one, with a fraction over 20 percent of the other teams in this position making it to the next round, a report in The Mirror reveals.
As bad as it would be for Arsenal to get knocked out of the Champions League, it could actually help us in our quest for the Premier League title. The last thing we need is to drop into the Thursday night limbo of the Europa League, as it has been prove to adversely affect a club´s results on the following weekend.
To be honest, we could have done with a draw between Dinamo Zagreb and Olympiacos in the other game from our group this week, but the Greek team grabbed a late winner and will now have home advantage over the Croatians in their next clash.
So let´s say that Arsenal play well and get an unlikely draw. Assuming that Olympiacos beat Zagreb in Athens, as their home record suggests to be pretty likely, then the Greeks would go top on nine points, Bayern would be second with six, Arsenal would be third with four and Zagreb would be bottom on three.
The question then for Arsene Wenger would be whether to go for it at home to Zagreb because to have any chance of getting out of the group we would need to beat Olympiacos away in the final game assuming that they also lost in Munich. We would then be on 10 points and they would be on nine.
If we lose in Munich it would be even worse because we could tie on points but they scored three away goals in London so realistically the Gunners would need to win by a two goal margin and our record in Greece is poor. In my opinion Arsenal simply have to go for it against Bayern and get something from the game.
If not then I would reluctantly play the reserves against Zagreb and Olympiacos and drop out of Europe altogether. What do you think Gooners?