Match report – Player ratings – Video
Arsenal’s exit from this season’s Champions League is hardly unexpected. A creditable draw with Bayern Munich last night meant the first leg deficit was what made the difference, and despite the home side dominating we had some chances, particularly in the second half.
You can’t say the manager didn’t go for it with his team selection. Podolski, Giroud, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Ozil and Cazorla all started and perhaps it took us a while to to deal with that ourselves. Bayern started strongly, aided by some carelessness on our part, but we dealt with it all quite well.
There’s so much that’s impressive about the way they play: the passing, control, movement, precision and the way they work so hard to put the opposition under pressure to win the ball back, but I surely can’t be alone in finding what they do utterly tedious? Guardiola’s Barcelona had Messi to add some verve to the same thing, a player who could excite and had a platform to pull off the magical because of what his teammates did (and because he was capable of doing it).
Bayern have a below-par Messie-lite in Arjen Robben who, for all his skill and talent – and let’s be clear he’s got plenty of that – seems more interested in how he can cheat throughout a game than make something happen through fair means. He’s got the ability to hurt teams with the ball, but he’s first and foremost an inveterate diver and conman. His simulation is too often forgiven. Plenty excuse him because there’s a measure of ‘contact’, but until we address the issue that not all contact is enough to make a 12 stone man fly through the air like he’s been kicked by a giant, then it’s something that will continue to leave a stain on football.
The bright spot of our first half was Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain who took to running directly at the Bayern defence, and their only option was to hack him down. At least three times he was blatantly and cynically fouled, only once was a yellow card issued. Arsenal got yellows for Arteta and Podolski who, rather foolishly, booted the ball away.
A half-time change saw Tomas Rosicky replace Mesut Ozil who had tweaked his hamstring as early as the 20th minute and was, unsurprisingly, ineffective because of that. And the fact he was asked to play on the right hand side. And the fact that Bayern had by far the best of the first half. He wasn’t alone in being below par in that first period but if you were to read the press this morning you’d think he’d been far worse than anyone else.
The half-time change I wanted did not involve removing Ozil, but Podolski, who I thought had struggled and with a yellow card to his name, not to mention looking slightly wound-up being back at his old club, might have been the more obvious choice if we were to make a substitution.
As it was Podolski had a storming second half. Not only did he stay disciplined, he put in a huge shift down the left hand side, tracking runners back into our box time and time again and, of course, he got the equalising goal just after they’d scored. Perhaps there was a touch of generosity from the referee when he bumped Lahm out of the way, but from a young age you’re taught play to the whistle. He did, and smashed the ball into the net from a ridiculous angle.
Their goal, a few moments before, came when Schweinsteiger’s run into the Arsenal box wasn’t tracked and he finished well from 10 yards out. It also came after Robben had produced one of the most blatant dives you’ll ever see. He rode a challenge, had the ball at his feet, but his cheating nature kicked in and he threw himself to the ground to look for a penalty. The referee saw it was a blatant dive and played on, but should have booked the Dutchman.
For all the talk of retrospective punishment for bad tackles, quite why we don’t address this issue with post-game video evidence is beyond me. If you start banning players for obvious ‘simulation’, or cheating as it should be known, then you can be sure it’ll be something they think twice about doing in the future. As it is the officials don’t seem to want to issue the cards – even when it’s obvious – and this media narrative about ‘contact’ fudges the issue completely.
With a yellow card, perhaps Robben wouldn’t have been so keen to throw himself to the ground under the slightest touch from Koscielny late in the game which won Bayern a penalty. Again, people will say there was contact, but that just excuses the cheating. Could Robben have stayed on his feet and kept control of the ball? Of course. If Koscielny hacked at his legs or pushed him hard in the back, fine, that’s a penalty, but the coming together of two players jostling for the ball, never, never, never, and it’s infuriating to see this time and time again.
As it was justice was served when Fabianski brilliantly saved the penalty, nor it didn’t have a big bearing on the result (unlike the first leg histrionics where there was sufficient contact to award a penalty but that was compounded by a red card which is harsh punishment for the offence committed – this time that’s a fault of the rules rather than Robben).
With Rosicky, then Gnabry on, I thought we had some nice moments in the second half, but when it came to making the right decisions in the final third we let ourselves down a bit. It might have been a bit one-sided, but in our last two visits to the Allianz Arena we’ve won one and drawn one. And you have to credit the lads for having a go.
The tie, of course, was lost in the first leg with that sending off and, more crucially, Bayern’s second goal which was one we really shouldn’t have conceded. It made the job last night just a bit too difficult and against a team as good as Bayern we were always going to struggle to progress.
Afterwards, Arsene said:
I have to congratulate the players for the heart and the effort they put in tonight. They have been absolutely outstanding on that front. We wanted to come out of that tie tonight qualified and with pride. We did the second part, not the first part.
There were some predicting we’d take a pounding in Munich, so to go there and get a draw could be an important factor in what’s still to come this season. Last season we took heart and confidence from the win, this time around we go out of the competition but not in a way that will damage our belief.
The damage may come from the injury to Mesut Ozil with the manager saying it looks like a bad hamstring strain and he could miss a few weeks. The way the press have rounded on him this morning is frankly pathetic and if you were suspicious you might say it appears orchestrated, as if a pre-game narrative has been put in place. And as @BeardedGenius rightly points out, they contradict themselves by lambasting him as a weak link yet report his absence as a huge blow.
If you want to judge his contribution this season on the two Bayern games, be my guest, but that’s a bit like trying to review a book by reading a couple of paragraphs from the middle section with half the words Tippexed out. Let’s hope his injury isn’t as bad as the manager seems to think it is, because we’ve got a lot of important games left to play this season and having him fit increases our chances of getting something from them.
Now though, we have to put Europe behind us, focus on the fixtures to come, and ensure that we make life miserable for that lot down the road on Sunday.
Till tomorrow.
