Arsenal were superhot favourites to beat Olympiacos last night, after having an excellent run of form that saw us beat Leicester, Tottenham and Benfica, and then topped it off with a 3-1 win in Athens in the first leg.
But as usual, we nearly shot ourselves in the foot by letting Olympiacos take the lead just after half-time meaning us long-suffering fans had 40 minutes of nail-biting before going through by the skin of our teeth.
One person who was obviously not impressed was our German keeper Bernd Leno, who told Arsenal.com after the game: “I think we suffered today and it was not necessary,”
“I think because in the first 15 or 20 minutes we controlled the game but then we’ve made too many easy mistakes and in the second half we conceded the goal and then everybody was nervous.
“We made it hard for ourselves and, like I said, it was not necessary.
“In the dressing room it was quiet because everybody knows that it was not a good performance from us. We cannot change it anymore but the positive thing is that it was a warning.
“We need to be 100 per cent every game. If we play like today then we won’t reach anything this season.
“I think there are only very good teams in the quarter-finals and we need two perfect games to go to the semi-finals and two more games to go to the final.
“The Europa League is very important for us,” added Leno. “This is probably the closest way to go to the Champions League and also to win a big European trophy so we need to step up.
“We need to have the motivation to win every game, cut out the easy mistakes and go through to the final and hopefully have a big final at the end of the season.”
I am beginning to like Leno’s style of being honest, and he is certainly very honest in this interview. We won’t have a chance of winning anything if we play like this again, but this total inconsistency has been the Arsenal theme this season.
Let’s hope this is not the start of another bad run as we could really do with another three points against West Ham on Sunday….