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Arsenal flaws exposed again in Champs League
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ARSENAL supporters accustomed to seeing their team qualify for the Champions League year after year are beginning to adjust to a new routine: wretched elimination in the competition’s last 16.
Wednesday’s crushing 1-3 home defeat by Monaco left Arsenal on the brink of a fifth successive last-16 exit after previous humbling at the hands of Barcelona, AC Milan and, in the previous two seasons, Bayern Munich.
Against Monaco, things were supposed to be different.
The Ligue 1 club was appearing in the knockout phase for the first time in 10 years, had scored only four goals in the group stage and was missing key players.
But Leonardo Jardim’s team allied intelligent defending with clinical counter-attacking at the Emirates Stadium to leave beaten manager Arsene Wenger lamenting a “suicidal” defensive display from his side.
Taking on the club where he had made his name as a manager in the late 1980s, it should have been a great occasion for Wenger.
Instead it echoed the outcome of his 1,000th match at the Arsenal helm last season when his team had been torn apart 0-6 at Chelsea.
Arsenal’s defensive naivety and gung-ho attacking have long been used as sticks with which to beat Wenger, but his side seemed to have turned over a new leaf in last month’s 2-0 victory at Manchester City.
After years of one-sided losses to rivals, Wenger appeared, belatedly, to have grasped the importance of defensive shape and to have accepted that a team can cede control of possession and still prevail.
But against Monaco, and despite the fact Arsenal fielded some 90 million pounds (US$139.6 million) of attacking talent in Alexis Sanchez, Danny Welbeck and Mesut Ozil, all the old failings returned.
Slow and stodgy
Arsenal’s play was slow and stodgy and saw it fail to exploit Monaco’s inexperience in defence, where 18-year-old right-back Almamy Toure was making only his third professional appearance.
Analyzing the game for Sky Sports, former Arsenal great Thierry Henry observed: “There was no real pace on the pass, no sense of urgency to win the game.”
Twice Monaco punished the home team for pushing too high up the pitch in the second half, which former England striker Gary Lineker described on Twitter as “beyond amateurish.”
Underpinning the defeat was an overall lack of application that the Daily Telegraph summarized in the stark headline, “CLUELESS, PATHETIC, SHAMBOLIC”, adding that Wenger’s job was now “under threat.”
Elsewhere, German side Bayer Leverkusen gave itself a glimmer of hope of reaching the quarterfinals for the first time after beating last season’s finalist Atletico Madrid 1-0.
Hakan Calhanoglu scored the only goal and become the first player to score against Atletico in the Champions League since Kostas Mitroglou did for Olympiakos on September 16.
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