All i'd say is that unless Tomi's not fit enough it was a big mistake not to use him in that game - I'd have played him from the start - but I suspect his absence does mean he can't be fit, so that's not really on Arteta
We really do need to buy an LB in the summer though, we literally don't have one atm unless you count Timber and it's not totaly cleear what his number one position will be
After we equalised Bayern got hold of the ball and dominated. We were a post away from losing the game and it wouldn’t have been undeserved defeat. I don’t think the tactics were great throughout and the fact we salvaged the game is more about our resilience rather than any grand moves from Arteta.Originally Posted by WMUG
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7HlV0GRQ0M
Interesting tactical analysis this. I can't really disagree with most of it because he clearly knows a hell of a lot more about football tactics than I do
The only thing I would disagree with is the bit where he says we never looked in danger of losing it after getting the equaliser, they did hit the post after that.
I’m not angry about it though, disappointed yes but also very aware that despite their struggles in the league Bayern Munich are CL royalty with a better attack than ours, I didn’t really buy into being favourites for this tie because of our lack of proven ability to deal with these occasions. We made hard work of Porto so there was nothing suggesting this was going to be any different.
I never felt we were favourites or underdogs. Bayern are certainly beatable this season, but they have a lot of quality and a load of CL experience.
I still feel the same really, maybe we're slight underdogs now but we certainly aren't out of it.
Lol. Tommy is NEVER fit
This will sound really negative (thats what supporting Arsenal does to you after 45 years). But my emotions were changing througfhout the game.
A small part of me would sacrifice progressing in this competition so that we have a clear calender for the Premier League run in. (Which I still feel is our best chance of a trophy).
On the other hand, my head nearly hit the celing when Trossard scored our equaliser
Maybe we can with both of the bloody cups!!
Last season showed that being out of the cups doesn't necessarily help, I think it's more important to keep succeeding in both competitions to have a winning mentality - anyway I really don't want to lose to Bayern
Arteta's ability to rotate sucessfuly is under the microscope now - Jesus isn't 100% neither is Saka
even though Villa are good we will need to think about who we field on Sunday, for example do we start for ESR again and possibly Nelson?
Last season I was saying "oh well, at least being out of the competitions gives us a nice clear run at the title run in". But it didn't work like that. Winning is a habit, it keeps momentum going. I don't regard Tuesday's result as a huge setback but if we do go out in the away leg it will be interesting to see how we cope with that.
I remember the week in The Invincibles season when we went out of both cups and I was sitting there at Highbury on Good Friday, 2-1 down at HT against Liverpool thinking we were going to blow the lot. Thankfully we had Henry who almost single-handedly got us out of that mess and up and running again, but bouncing back from setbacks is an important skill in a title winning side.
Played at Newcastle two days after that. Insane really. I went to four games that season. The last one was away at Blackburn (I was living in Staffordshire for Uni so easier to go to away games).
The previous season United fans had been singing We want our Trophy back after winning at Spurs (to the tune of La donna e mobile)
We started singing that in the away stand at Ewood Park
OK fair enough re calling for Arteta's head, but I still think the criticism of Arteta is over the top.
It's easy to use hindsight to draw conclusions about our approach to the game, based on how it evolved. However this could equally apply the other way. The manager clearly set out at home to try to take the game to an 'inferior' Bayern team, and wanted his players to be positve and brave. Had White scored from his gilt-edged chance, this approach would have been vindicated. Also, recent games had shown that our defence was good enough to reduce Citeh - a better team than Bayern, to scant chances, and the manager backed it to be imperious again. It was not down to Arteta that key mistakes were made by the players involved in their 2 goals.
What this game showed is that mistakes will be punished by top players. Bayern may not be what they were in the Bundesliga but a front 3 of Kane; Sane and Gnabry is one of the best in the world, and what might have been salvageable misplaced balls were ruthlessly exploited by players at the top of their games. .
This is how it goes sometimes. You say that CL pedigree is bollocks, but experience isn't. Between 2011/12 season and now Bayern have been have been in the CL Quarters 4 times; the semis 4 times and the final 3 times, only falling below this level once in 12 years. They have huge reserves of experience to draw upon at this level - we don't. I don't think this reasult was because of the manager (beyond the fact that in hindsight any tactics can be argued to have been wrong), I think it was because the players were affected by the occasion for some parts of the game - and could have shown cooler heads at key moments.
Who knows what more defensive tactics would have resulted in? maybe we don;t score our first. If we are going to criticise Arteta then we have to commend him for his game changing subs too.
Putting the laughter back into manslaughter
Depends how it happens - if it's a close run thing and happens with the odd goal or on pels it's ok, if we get trashed it's not a good look
But as i said, I really don't want to lose to Bayern, but if we get through I'm praying it's not Citeh - there's no shame in losing to Real but losing to Citeh could have title race implications
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