Arsenal fans may well be thinking `if only´ today. If only Arsene Wenger and the Arsenal players had prepared properly for the first two Champions League group games against Dinamo Zagreb and Olympiacos then we could now be sitting on top of the group. With ifs and buts and all that however, you never know how the Gunners would have performed last night if we had won those two earlier games.
There is still a lot of work for Arsenal to do to get out of the group and even if we pull off another shock in Munich and beat Bayern again in a couple of weeks, the chances are that we would still finish behind them as their goal difference is much better and their final two games are slightly easier as they have already been to Athens.
What last night´s win did show us, however, is that Arsenal can beat the biggest and best in Europe. Did you know that we are the only club to have won against both of Pep Guardiola´s world beating sides, Barcelona and Bayern? And there is clear evidence that our manager has adapted his tactics and found a better way to play against the top teams.
Check out this report in the Daily Mail that shows our possession stats of less than 27 percent against the German giants were the lowest of any match Arsenal have won under Wenger.
Now while you could say that Bayern´s passing style and quality may not have given us a lot of choice but the report goes on to prove that this reduced insistence on possession is a plan, or plan B if you will, because it contains a table of the ten games we have won under the prof with the lowest percentage of the ball. Amazingly, they were all in 2015 and include such big games as the Community Shield win over Chelsea, Wenger´s first over Mourinho as well as the wins over Man United this season and in the FA cup last season.
My point is that Arsenal now know how to win these big games and that means that qualifying second from the UCL group might not be such a problem. What do you think?