CL: Arsenal v Barcelona - 23/02/16, 19:45

[TheLoneFalcon]

Yeah but he's not FINISHED is he? If you're finished you don't play flawlessly for 70 minutes against the best team on earth do you? Arteta is FINISHED. Per had a couple of bad moments and he's at an age where you'd expect a bit of decline. He's never been truly world class, just a good solid defender. The whole team is to blame for that first goal. You can't play into Barca's hands like that. If you commit the numbers we did then you'd better damn well score. Someone should have been covering for Mertesacker there. That's not to absolve him of blame but it wasn't just him at fault.

Their first goal was a mixture of luck (clearance and first pass) and skill. Of course, there's almost always more than one at fault for the goal. In both cases, however, he has to take most of the blame. No, he's not 'FINISHED', in terms of the level he can still achieve as a defender, but at Arsenal he should be. There's a great many players who could also be mentioned in that same breath, to be fair.

 

[redwhiteAustrian]

I didn't care at all about the game, but thought we had a decent 70 minutes. Solid enough and nothing spectacular, made life hard for Barca.

These ****ing dirty cheating bastards.

Anyway, with that result we can pretty much send the kids to the Nou Camp, and prepare for the game at Goodison Park properly. **** the CL, we've more important ties left this season.

Last but not least, I hope Ox is fine, that ankle twist looked nasty (as they all do).

 

[SomGooner]

By the way Dani Alves and Jordi Alba should be handed over to ISIS. God I hate these two scumbags.

 

[Big Poppa]

Bar Busquets and the front three, they are nowhere near as good as their other sides by the way, **** defence.

Puyol, Milito, Abidal and Xavi were different level. Says it all about how good those teams were that they can still win everything in sight.

 

[Big Poppa]

I know but we were missing some athleticism and goal scoring in midfield. Like I said Coq is very limited and all our midfielders have different combinations of the qualities we need.

We have no players who form a perfect midfield two. Coq-Caz is the best we have though, I'll give you that.

Go through all our potential midfield pairings, they're all missing something.

I feel like all your assessments are based on midfielders when they have the ball and are facing forwards. Where Coquelin is limited in possession (still more reliable than Ramsey imo), he is much more effective at winning 50/50 duels, pressing opponents, and making effective tackles.

I think people easily forget how often we were countered against with that Ramsey/Arteta base. Ramsey doesn't sit and dictate from deep, he looks to feed off forward players. With full backs bombing forward you have a recipe for disaster.

Look at our defensive record with and without Coquelin. Football isn't just about possession.

 

[General]

What on earth were you watching?!!!

Tell me about it.

 

[bingobob]

Such a shame. We were going toe to toe with them and all of a sudden one transition and we're out of position.

Should have shut up shop at that point to give us a fighting chance

 

[RUS arsenal]

Coquelin's positioning defensively is also usually pretty good. He reads the game pretty well making him even more effective as a DM.

 

[Kroket]

As Wenger correctly pointed out, can't really consider yourself a big club if you're going to just sit back & defend at home when you're typically an attacking side

It's harsh on the coach & Arsenal players, Barcelona happen to be enjoying a special era in their history - no shame in defeat when you give the effort they did

You can't really consider yourself a big club if you're content to go into the season relying on our current strike force to score enough goals and Flamini to play a major role in midfield.

Think it was @bingobob who said we're basically the Champions League Everton and that's spot on in my view. We're not a big club in Europe, we're merely a decent team, a tricky opponent that most other clubs probably want to avoid in the early rounds, but ultimately only there to make up the numbers.

 

[WhatAFC]

As brilliant as Barcelona are, we beat us last night wasn't a piece of world class play. It was a poor decision from Kos and then Wenger. I don't care how tired coq was, we wasn't losing the CM battle at the time and looked relatively solid. Bringing on flamini was an absolute joke decision given his eve of performance these last 2 months.

 

[Bashii]

I don't watch Barca much higher nowadays so I couldn't tell if they always play so slowly or if they basically sat in first gear for the vast majority of the game?

Was it our defending that kept them so quiet for 70 mins or them just knowing they'd get a goal or 2 eventually?

If only we could finish with an open goal in front of us hey!

 

[General]

Ox should've been off at half time. Clearly he convinced the bench he could carry on only to break down shortly after the start of the second half and nearly cost us a goal. I think he was overawed by the occasion and embarrassed by the miss.

 

[redwhiteAustrian]

As if anyone cared about the return leg.
Wenger will rotate heavily for this, our PL campaign is of much bigger importance than this dead rubber.

 

[Kroket]

This is, IMHO, because your club has been set up to be an 'Everton' in CL, similar could be said about just being a top 4 side in the Premiership.

Arsenal are a profitable company, they are just not a successful club on the pitch...thus far

No disagreement from me there. I just don't think we should be bothered about not acting like a big club when we play defensive at home because we're clearly not that big a club at this stage.

 

[Hinderz]

I hate watching Barca play. Despite the fact every little advantage goes their way, they still play act and cheat.

Not to mention their best player was loaded up with performance enhancing drugs for years but nobody mentions it, they just marvel at his speed, power and how rarely he gets injured, like he's a gift of nature rather than a juiced up science experiment.

 

[Wilshere's Right]

On reflection, I think there are more positive things to say about this game. Two very interesting stats were that:

1. Barca didn't register a single shot on goal in the first half. It's the first time in CL under Enrique and the first time since November 2013.
2. It's the first time in 8 meetings that Arsenal failed to score against Barcelona.

The first shows how much we've improved in defence this year. Second best defence in the league only further illustrates that point. I'd even say our back five is better than Barca's. That's important because we've been banging on about a defensive midfielder but that really isn't our problem because we're just not conceding as much as we used to.

Nor is it in the creative department as we did create chances yesterday, we created loads v Leicester and even more against Hull.

Which brings me to point two. Herein lies our problem. We've seriously regressed in this department. We simply cannot afford to have misfiring forwards anymore. This has to be Wenger's number one priority in the summer. He could be forgiven for not dealing with it last summer given Sanchez's first season and with Walcott doing well at the end of the season (Ok, he really couldn't). But if he fails to do anything this summer, it's simply unforgivable and should be a sackable offence.

 

[Nicenho]

Please explain? How did we deserve and what? This is CL elimination round. You don't deserve anything with great effort. We will never deserve anything from games of this magnitude if we field players like Ox, Giroud, Ramsey and Mertesacker. Those are guys who blow off chances, lose possession and screw up in defense. If theybdo it against the likes of Southampton and Stoke they sure as hell do it against Barca. Our track record in these games is abysmal and there is a reason for it. In sports you get what you deserve. Like we did tonight.

Now let's focus on the PL and try to fight for the title with Leicester and Sp**s. That's our current level, sadly.

So u are saying we lost the moment we went to the field with merte,giroud,ox and ramsey? weird thoughts i say even tho i get the idea u probably have behind that. I mean barca have lost to a whole worse lot down the years.
We must do better thats one thing i agree with and we must look at the positives and get the title run going.

We looked a better team for a while there and thats why i said i feel bad for the lads. Drained a lot of energy for nothing really. I knew from the beginning that we had limited chances and now there are none.

 

[HomeSteak]

As if anyone cared about the return leg.
Wenger will rotate heavily for this, our PL campaign is of much bigger importance than this dead rubber.

Only that he won't. He will play the best 11.

 

[ChampagneFootball]

Only that he won't. He will play the best 11.

Undoubtedly. At the expense of the FA Cup. He's been doing this for years.. and then we go out of all cup competitions within a matter of weeks.

 

[Wilshere's Right]

Undoubtedly. At the expense of the FA Cup. He's been doing this for years.. and then we go out of all cup competitions within a matter of weeks.

That's obvious though. It's a player's dream to play in the CL, it's what Wenger measures as a successful season every year. He cannot suddenly say ok play the reserves against Barca, even if it's a long shot. Everyone will want to play in that game.