Will Barcelona add further insult to Arsenal’s humiliation? By Twig
As I’m not a “masochist”, I refused to watch the second leg tie between Arsenal and Bayern Munich. It wasn’t an easy decision to take, believe me, but at the end of the day, it seemed to have been justified.
The signs of yet another embarrassing European night were clear for all to see. We had just folded to a 3-1 loss to Liverpool the previous weekend. There was a lot of unwanted bad press regarding the Alexis Sanchez situation. There were yet further rumours Petr Cech wasn’t happy not getting champions league games (not that it’ll have changed the result, but I have always been of the view Cech should get some champions league games too, and Ospina, some premier league games). In what was to be a sign of things to come, we were forced to make a last minute change to our lineup – and our tactics – when Welbeck suddenly took ill during the warm ups. Iwobi too had been struck by illness prior to the game, and was replaced by Ozil who was just recovering from illness himself. In short, the signs were not good at all.
That was the last update about the game I got, before going on a complete Arsenal blackout. That meant no checking Twitter to check up on Piers Morgan’s angry commentaries. Or getting updates to check the latest scores. When I finally came back “online” – after the game must have finished – even I was surprised at the score line: 5-1! I blinked. If we must lose by a 4 goal margin, why not 4-0, 6-2 or even 7-3? Why do we keep losing 5-1 to these guys?! It’s like a silent message telling us our club has been stuck on “repeat” for the past 5 years. It’s like a silent message that we’re just running in circles and not making any progress whatsoever.
Tonight, Barcelona will be facing PSG in their own attempt to overturn a 4 goal deficit. Their situation is worse than ours was, as they failed to even score an away goal, as we managed to. However, I now feel within me that Barcelona might just do the unthinkable and score 4 goals themselves and maybe go on to triumph after penalties! A very long shot, but should that happen, it’ll only make our wretched result look even more shameful than it is presently. It’ll show how far off the elite level that Arsenal football club currently is. That while Arsenal succumbed to yet another humiliation – as expected – Barcelona were able to surmount an even greater hurdle to achieve the unexpected. A Barcelona victory tonight will be just the outcome that’ll make the Arsenal board and everyone associated with this club sit up and say enough is enough. It should no longer be Wenger’s choice to decide whether to stay or not to stay. The board should help him out of this cycle of misery and sack him as other clubs around Europe would do after such a humiliating result.
Twig