UEFA Champions League/Europa League 7/8/9 March *** Spoilers ***

As much as Wenger is a complete idiot, on second looks at that penalty, Lewandowski might well have been offside when the initial pass went in.

I'll be honest, I can't quite remember how the offside rule works these days. The pass wasn't to Lewandowski but he looks onside when the pass is made, it's then deflected off an Arsenal player and to Lewan who then runs it in. When the deflection happened he's probably onside, he's onside by the time he picks up the ball, but I think that counts as taken advantage of an offside position.

I'm not surprised it seemed overlooked, but the rest of the performance really has no question.

The guys in the studio were saying how were Arsenal so 'good' for the first 60 mins in both games. Why, why were Bayern under so much pressure on the ball deep in their own half? Energy, everyone can choose to expend their 90mins of decent energy for 60 mins of extreme closing and 30 mins of absolutely laughable zonked out awful football. Arsenal did it in the first game, everything was put on Kos being injured but lets be realistic, Arsenal looked tired after 15 mins of the second half and fell to pieces towards the end and somehow Wenger chose the exact same tactic. It was surely easier down to 10 men and without Kos(again) for the final 30, but the abjectly awful performances all around after 60 mins of the game is very easily explainable. It's a crap tactic chosen by a now inept manager. He hoped to do a Liverpool 5-1 against Liverpool, up 4 goals in 20 mins then back off and hope to defend. It backfired spectacularly in the first leg... so he tried it again? Bayern just cruised through the first 60 mins of both games then stayed cruising against a now shattered side.

Once was bad enough, that worked for Liverpool against Arsenal because... it's Arsenal. There was little to no chance of it working against Bayern, he 10 mins ultra effort and see if the surprise works, but when it fails and then ends up in a 5-1 in the first leg, choosing to do it again in the second leg is basically unforgivable.
 
drunkenmaster said:
What in the hell, I mean, yeah down a man, game beyond them... but it was 6-2 aggregate with no chance to win. Why the hell did at no point from the penalty Arsenal defend as a team at all? Still trying to score while failing in any way at all to defend. Sit back, hold the ball, don't continue to overcommit forward.

That they continued to stream forward which is precisely the crap tactic that led to the 6-2 situation in the first place... they stuck with it. How is someone on the team saying, this isn't working, lets try something else.

Utterly, utterly pathetic.
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Uh well, i think its better to try and score rather than just park the bus.. not that it really mattered after the red card though.
 
I didn't watch the game, I went on my bike and watched The Walking Dead as I knew we wouldn't win.

Woke up to the score this morning as I'd avoided all social media/news. Shocking, this is not just the managers fault, there are 11 highly paid people on that pitch who are as much to blame as him.

I have never been as disenchanted as an Arsenal fan before, with the protests and the **** football it's just not enjoyable anymore.
 
What annoys me is how Wenger is after a loss, always something/someone else to blame. In games vs Bayern over the years, a ridiculous amount of ref decisions have gone his way but it's never mentioned.

Yes the red sucked for the game overall, it always does, but if he thought it would change the outcome then he's delusional. Arsenal had a good first half, running around like desperate madmen - Bayern played terrible/slow/low intensity. Arsenal had a single goal to show for it and looked exhausted.

The plan didn't work, playing for pride over 90 minutes and trying to nick a couple of goals to put pressure on would have been a better approach than to go all out.
 
JOSH said:
I didn't watch the game, I went on my bike and watched The Walking Dead as I knew we wouldn't win.

Woke up to the score this morning as I'd avoided all social media/news. Shocking, this is not just the managers fault, there are 11 highly paid people on that pitch who are as much to blame as him.

I have never been as disenchanted as an Arsenal fan before, with the protests and the **** football it's just not enjoyable anymore.
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First up, Wenger put together literally every single aspect of this team. Most of the players aren't new, they've had years and years of training under Wenger and most of those players haven't gotten at all better in that time. In fact I'd say most became complacent and worse, both in attitude and overall quality. The tactics were abysmal, the team selection poor, the midfield shocking awful when it comes to defending.

Something Arsenal's midfielders have had in common since pretty much Gilberto left is an utter inability to track runs into the box. We have players who stand still while people make late runs into the box completely unmarked and a constant inability to get back first. We've had Denilson, then Song, then Arteta, Ramsey, Coquelin, Ox, just about everyone who is constantly chasing the player with the ball from midfield towards our box rather than always being between the ball and the goal. Kante, Matic and Fabregas work very hard, constantly move and are ready for every attack, they work as a unit and are always working hard to be between the ball and the goal and to make sure the opposition is running at them rather than chasing after them.

We haven't had a genuinely great central midfielder let alone a defensive midfielder who knows how to defend since Gilberto. Wenger's comments on Xhaka are diabolical, with players like Kante available we somehow spent more(marginally) on Xhaka... and Wenger's opinion of even what kind of player he is has changed 3 times. AT first he was a hard tackling midfielder, after he joined and scored a couple of goals Wenger was calling him box to box(but we needed someone behind the ball who wasn't chasing back to make rash challenges) and then after yet another red card Wenger said he's not very good at tackling and needs to stay on his feet... he spent more than Chelsea did on Kante, when Chelsea already had a defensive mid monumentally better than anything Arsenal have.... for a guy he now believes shouldn't make tackles?

I still think several major things contributed to his early success with Arsenal, he inherited an entire brilliant defence. Even going to 05/06 you had several defenders who while not inherited, players who played and trained with Adams and Keown as their leaders, who throughout training and games taught them what to do. Since then we've never had any cohesion in defence on defending from midfield. Wenger came in, improved the attack but had a fantastic defensive base to build from, but once every last trace of that defence was gone there is nothing there at the back. There is no cohesive system, people are always out of position and no one knows what they are doing.

Everything stems directly back to Wenger about the current team, poor buying overall, poor foresight...insisted we had 4 world class strikers beginning of last year and had a pop at fans who wanted a top striker bought. Those fans who actually pay insane prices and are the only reason he's sitting on 150mil that he's having a pop at btw, then in Jan he was bemoaning not having a good enough striker.

The number of youth players who come through to the first team is embarrassing. No other manager in europe and probably the world has the chance to gain any benefit from changes they make to their youth setups. If a manager comes in, changes the staff, improves recruiting and brings in the next generation of youngsters, that manager won't be around by the time those kids come through. Once again Wenger is the manager who doesn't have this excuse as the only longer term manager.

The lack of defensive cohesion is Wenger's fault, the lack of our midfielders ability to defend is Wenger's fault, he trains them to play as they do. The lack of quality in offence when it comes to the toughest games is Wenger's fault. Giroud and Welbeck were our options while the rest of genuinely competitive CL teams put up with players like Aguero, Costa, Falcao, Suarez, Ronaldo/Benzema, Lewandowski/Muller, Auba, Ibra, Higuain....... Giroud, really?

We missed out on Higuain, a guy who went for 90million, because Wenger got pissy over the price being 40mil instead of 30mil because another club made a higher offer, 10mil more of that money he refuses to spend and we'd have one of the best finishers in Europe but noooooooo.
 
drunkenmaster said:
First up, Wenger put together literally every single aspect of this team
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He did yes but is he solely to blame for them not performing on the pitch? I don't believe he is, yes he bought wrong, setup wrong, told them the wrong tactics but at the end of the day these players are professional footballers, playing in one of the best leagues in the world on a huge world stage for a well known English team. They capitulated in the first leg and seemingly again in the second leg, no amount of Wenger shouting for the sidelines could change that.

Regardless of who we bought, didn't buy - the players we have are on the pitch, if not one of them can stand there and think "this isn't working, let's change it" and then actively effect change then why do we have Capts, Vice Capts etc. AW runs the game from the sidelines, the leaders on the pitch control the team - if a call needs to be made then a Capt should have the sufficient authority to change it on the pitch, we don't seem to have any real leaders. I don't think that is AWs fault, more a lack or moral fibre from the players.

I don't know how to fix the club but for the 10-2 pasting we took I don't put the blame solely on AW.
 
JOSH said:
He did yes but is he solely to blame for them not performing on the pitch? I don't believe he is, yes he bought wrong, setup wrong, told them the wrong tactics but at the end of the day these players are professional footballers, playing in one of the best leagues in the world on a huge world stage for a well known English team. They capitulated in the first leg and seemingly again in the second leg, no amount of Wenger shouting for the sidelines could change that.

Regardless of who we bought, didn't buy - the players we have are on the pitch, if not one of them can stand there and think "this isn't working, let's change it" and then actively effect change then why do we have Capts, Vice Capts etc. AW runs the game from the sidelines, the leaders on the pitch control the team - if a call needs to be made then a Capt should have the sufficient authority to change it on the pitch, we don't seem to have any real leaders. I don't think that is AWs fault, more a lack or moral fibre from the players.

I don't know how to fix the club but for the 10-2 pasting we took I don't put the blame solely on AW.
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But again, Wenger bought those players, he got Walcott, he's a spineless little ****, rather than move him on because he's not good enough, he's rewarded him time and time again. He pushed Gilberto out(who played for another 4-5 years) to give room for Denilson and Song to play, to players who clearly were no where near as good and didn't show the slightest potential to be anywhere near as good.

There are no leaders on the pitch because Wenger gets rid of them. When Gallas or someone else stands up and says the performance isn't acceptable he's benched rather than applauded and moved on shortly after. Wenger has filled the team with players who aren't anywhere near good enough but they are all happy to be making the money they do.

One of our only true leaders on the pitch got a red card. The blame IS solely Wenger's, because this team and the massive majority of these players have performed like this in the biggest games time and time again for years. If this was a single one off performance that went bad then it wouldn't be Wenger's fault, but he's seen dozens and dozens of these performances over the past decade, he hasn't changed his tactics, he hasn't changed his training, he hasn't changed the type of players he buys and he hasn't gotten rid of those who fail to perform over and over again in such games.

If today Conte went out and bought a bunch of players who would look more at place in the championship, gave them 10 times their salary and played them in a CL knock out game and they performed the same would it be the players fault for not being good enough of the manager for playing people he can be reasonably sure will fail in such a game?

If Wenger is buying players who have no spine, aren't that good but giving them lots of money, you think it's the players fault for being spineless and not that good or Wenger for overestimating them and continuing to play them?
 
I don't agree that AW is solely to blame, I'm sorry but I don't. The players should hang their heads in shame after those 2 performances. I'm not talking about the performances this year, that is AW fault wrong tactics and wrong team selection, wrong purchased and sales. I'm not disagreeing with that.

We do have some very average players, players who need to look at themselves in the mirror this morning and reflect on the fact that they are not performing for the team. We pay to much is wages for mediocre players.

I just think there are 11 other players out on that pitch who didn't perform and deserve as much scrutiny as AW is getting for the CL exit, if something is so wrong for so long leaders need to take charge on the pitch, AW is not in danger of losing the dressing room because we have no leaders with the bottle on the pitch, let along away from it.

I don't think AW is buying spineless players, I think he grinds them down until they are little more than under-performing robots, that's why Sanchez gets so irate because he thinks for himself and tries to go against the grain of the team, because the team is under the tightly closed fist of AW and his reign over Arsenal.

I don't think we are going to agree on this DM.
 
I have a sneaky feeling that if Barca score in the 1st 15 mins that PSG could capitulate and we could see history be made, it will be interesting how the ref copes with all the 'play-acting' that is sure to go on tonight.
 
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