Arsenal vs Bayern (A), Wednesday 20h00 GMT, Champs League QF: Page 21 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Arsenal vs Bayern (A), Wednesday 20h00 GMT, Champs League QF

flobaba

awooga83 plus, they were missing three of their biggest offensive threats in Coman, Gnabry and Davies. Plus Sane was pretty much only half fit, yet we failed to bother them at all for basically the entire 90 minutes.

This was a poor way to exit the competition in my view. Big picture analysis can come later. In the here and now, we have performed woefully at a critical stage of the competition, and were easily dismissed by the worst Bayern team to grace the competition in two decades. A learning experience for a young team and a young coach, but still a bitter pill to swallow.

Gazza M

Claudius yeah it's fugazi, no denying that. but it does pay 50m

Asterix

Please never wear that awful green kit ever again. I guess since it's our European kit we won't, but still, it's awful. Yuck.

Clrnc

Say what you want about club world cup but it will be made prestigious and clubs are dying to win it.

Claudius

Clrnc I appreciate all that. But you more than most talk about player fatigue. What the players actually need (and used to get in Wright’s day) is a summer break. Switch off mentally and physically. All these cups and pre-seasons means that this never happens

Gurgen

I thought we were not bad. We're back in the CL for the first time in ages, our players have little experience in this competition and generally as a club we have no European pedigree. Bayern are European giants with a world class striker and world class goalkeeper, which we lack. The tie was close and if we got that very obvious penalty in the first leg we might even have scraped past. For me we didn't fall below expectations considering where we are. People also underestimated Bayern, as if they are some two bob team. They are in fact one of the all time great clubs with a squad full of quality.

We desperately need a good striker and perhaps a Jorginho replacement. The player who disappointed me most in these games was Rice. He couldn't cope with the pace of the transitions and was found wanting technically. In the PL he looks like a 100m player but in the CL it's obvious he has improvements to make.

FEBravo

Clrnc And we just squeaked through on penalties too let's not forget

goon

Anyone else not that distraught? I felt a lot worse after losing to Villa.

Claudius

goon sequencing of losses is important, which amplifies distress . These are two different losses. But one could propose one or two tweaks to the team that might have helped in both games.

Qwiss

goon all the CL quarter finals were very close. That's the level and we didn't look out of place. Bad decision against us in the first leg too. I'm fine with it but I think our big weaknesses were on display and need to be fixed if we want to improve and actually win things.

Gazza M

goon nope. disappointed we didn't make better fist of it, but not gutted. the more pressing concern is how the team looks in the second half of games.

Clrnc

daredevil Go look at the draw thread. Most of us didn't want Atleti because we predict they will Porto us. PSG and Barcelona this season is slightly stronger than Bayern IMO, but I won't disagree if you said they are similar. All 3 teams have weaknesses that might have suited us. I disagree about Dortmund in particular. I watched Bundesliga quite a bit and even though Dortmund struggled and lost a lot of games at the start of the season because of their squad upheaval, they hit top form past coupled of months after Terzic found a settled first XI. It's not a surprise they went to Allianz and outplayed Bayern winning 2-0 just 2 weeks ago. Also not a surprise they walloped Atleti yesterday, who hasn't conceded 4 goals for god knows how long in CL. I think we had the luck of the draw, we didn't draw the toughest or biggest teams in these 2 rounds unlike the past. The fact that we made a meal out of a Porto team that most of the other big boys would have put away easily does not change this fact.

Anyway regardless of that, over the 2 legs what we have seen of Bayern is a team that is extremely beatable, but we did not take our chances when presented. We also made critical errors in the first leg and we setup wrongly in the 2nd leg. All of these are within our control. I did not see a team that is better than us over 2 legs.

We have played Bayern many times by now, and tbh yesterday felt like a big chance missed. It felt similar in 04-05 when we lost our marginally to them due to Toure's error despite being the better team over both legs. It's not like those times when we got thumped by them a felt worlds apart. Like what many said above, the way we went out left a lot to be desired.

goon Feels worse than Villa tbh, Villa was much better and we were outplayed. I didn't feel we could win the title anyway looking at the remaining fixtures, but in CL we are 2 more games away from Wembley.

flobaba Basically this. Spot on. We beat ourselves, nothing to do with Bayern's supposed quality.

This is the recent Bayern pedigree for their current group of players before we gifted them 2 goals at home.

invisibleman18

goon I always expected the outcome. But am more gutted at the manner of the performance coupled with the Villa game. We look out of steam and ideas and I fear it confirms another April collapse. Based on the last 3 games and what keeps happening at this stage of the season, I don't see us being able to get anything out of this weekend's game either.

awooga83

I'm probably not too far away from that sense but personally I thought we would go out so I think I had made peace with that. Unfortunately the muscle memory of Arsenal in our recent history and having seen this sequence play out before probably has immunised me from the individual match affecting me too much.

daredevil

Clrnc

Bayern are comfortably better than Dortmund, Atletico and us, and are atleast as good as PSG and Barcelona. Your assessment is wrong, and you sound like that ESPN journalist Steve Nicol.

This argument that we should be beating Bayern because they are at their worst in 20 years whilst we are at our best is ignorant of the levels that exist between us. Bayern at their best is a double winning CL champion, Bayern at their worst is a team in the semi finals of the CL and will finish second in the Bundesliga. Hardly a fall.

Arsenal at our worst is a team finishing 8th and missing out on Europe altogether, whilst Arsenal at our best in recent years is a team finishing second and ending the season empty handed. As much as the gap has closed, there's still a gap between us and you have to be blind to not see it.

flobaba

This is so dumb. It's a cup competition, over two legs. At worst, we are two evenly matched sides. The bookies had us favorites going into the quarters, and now all of a sudden, Bayern is the second coming of peak Barcelona. We played the occasion, and fell short. We were tactically 2nd best over both games, and were punished ruthlessly for mistakes in the first leg, but this was by no means an unwinnable tie. And this Bayern team is really nothing special.

The problem here was us, not them.

QuincyAbeyie

flobaba the funny thing is that even in our banter era we were disappointed to go out to peak Barcelona. We're now vastly superior to back then, facing a team vastly inferior to peak Barcelona, and still even people who thought we would win before the match are acting like us going out was set in stone.

daredevil

flobaba

This is home bias. You are looking at narratives and bookies that are English and therefore PL centric/biased who have Man City as CL favourites every bloody season. And you've oblivious to the fact that in Germany, Bayern were expected to qualify and their draw at the Emirates was not a surprise result to Germans which Jurgen Klinsmann was at pains to point out.

The odds for Bayern to qualify were so favourable, I couldn't resist taking the bet, even though I'm not a betting man.

goon

Bayern are better than suggested, especially tactically. We're not as good as we thought, especially technically.

flobaba

We are better than what we showed over the two legs. We have beaten City in the league, bested Liverpool as well. We know this was not us at our best. Unless you’re saying it is. In that case, I’m not going to waste another moment discussing this nonsense.

goon

flobaba

Definitely not, especially in the first leg. If we don't make those defensive errors we probably go through.

But going forward I think we've been lacking in big games. We got 4 points out of City this season but it was on the back of defensive masterclasses and a deflected goal from outside the box. It looks like to me we're only good going forward when we can camp in the oppositions final third and get in there over and over again. At this level, you need to be clinical and efficient. because you're not going to get that.

USArsenal

As much as the loss hurts, and believe me, it does, we went out in the QF's of the Champions League, a place that we have not been in well over a decade. None of the players (Jesus and Havertz aside) have been here before. We had almost no experience on this stage, no matter how good of a team we have been.

We lost to a Bayern team that, albeit not their best this season, had bags of experience and won the Bundesliga for i can't remember how many years in a row. On paper, were we the better team? Perhaps. On the pitch were we the better team? Nope, it was pretty even. we lost the tie 3-2. It's a learning experience. City had year after year of disappointment until finally winning last year, and they had vastly superior teams than ours. We are getting there, and we need a couple key additions this summer. (We all know the positions we need).

It all matters how we respond against Wolves now. We need to get back into 'fight for our life' mode in the EPL.

Clrnc

daredevil The odds for Bayern to qualify were so favourable, I couldn't resist taking the bet, even though I'm not a betting man.

The odds maker are not English bias either.

goon absolutely which is why I had issue with people who said we are at city and Madrid level by claiming we got 4 points off them . It was a facade if you just look at the surface

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