daredevil It really reminded me of the ties against At. Madrid in Wenger's final season, and I would hate to face them or Inter who can do what Porto do but better. I also don't think we are clinical enough to go head to head against a Bayern, Barca or Real and outshoot them. Would be interesting to see how we fare in the next round for sure, but this tie was definitely sobering.
To be fair to Wenger, he is extremely good when facing shithousery sides like these in the past. It was the big teams he really struggled against. Even against Atleti, we would have won 9 out of 10 times. We created so many chances at home and absolutely tore them apart, but Lacazette couldn't hit a barn door and then Koscielny brainfart happened. Wenger sides always create chances after chances, that was never the issue.
Our issue from the past till now, no matter what players we had at our disposal, is that Arteta still can't really grasp the CL football. It took Pep years and years of trying to be able to grasp it and I am not surprised Arteta need more time. It's always the same tactic that stifled us, man to man marking, crowd the middle and high press us. It's almost exactly the same as what Ruben Amorim deployed against us previously and we struggled massively, especially when it comes to creating chances. We need to work on how we can effectively have a plan B or C instead of constantly being shut down. Pedro Martins deployed this to a lesser extent too 4 years ago. Coincidentally all of them are Portuguese managers...
