The words of Arsene Wenger, not me. But I’m sure most
Gooners would echo that sentiment this morning.
And it’s because of the outstanding performance of Barcelona, and one Lionel
Messi, that I am utterly disappointed – but not heartbroken.
Although I was quietly confident we could do something last
night, there was no real raising of expectations. Add to that the fact that
there were no real controversies, no infuriating injustices, no last minute goals to dash
our dreams, just one team (and man) playing better than the other, and you have a defeat that’s easier to swallow.
It’s a feeling of resignation this morning, not one of being
absolutely gutted.
It was a little strange last night, as a team Barcelona didn’t look unbeatable. They didn’t
play as well as the first half of the first leg, which would have been pretty
damn impossible anyway, and we were noticeably pressing them a lot more. And it
made a difference. But then Barcelona
went and upped their own pressing game when we won the ball, restricting us
from getting any rhythm going.
Yet in the early stages it did look like we may be able to
breach their back line with ease – but then the opportunities to do this never really
materialised.
Generally Barcelona
didn’t look that dangerous until you know who got on to the ball.
Now, Messi was truly outstanding, his finishing quite deadly.
Four goals in any single Champions League game has to applauded. And you know,
if it had been a one off, I might have been writing here how the Argentinean
dwarf-freak was one hell of a lucky Argentinean dwarf-freak. The way the ball
broke for him, the fortuitous rebounds, you could say it was the jammiest of hatricks(plus
one) if it had been completed by say, Rooney, or anyone else just as detestable
in lilywhite. But the fact this guy is doing that sort of thing on a regular
basis tells you it wasn’t lucky, it was lethal. Yes, we could have defended
better, but he didn’t half punish us for every tiny mistake.
But that’s all I’ll say on the guy. You’ll have to go
elsewhere if you want to completely cream over his performance. Not because I
don’t think he’s worthy of if, but because I’ll only be repeating what is being
said in every news outlet throughout, well, the world. And also because this is
an Arsenal blog, not a sexual fetish blog doing a feature on introducing
Argentinean dwarf-freaks into your masturbation routine.
And so what about the Arsenal? Well, I’ve already touched on how
we pressed better in this game, but to no avail, and also on how we made
defensive errors. But I have four main disappointments about the game itself…
A half strength team
The result may well have been the same, but it is so
frustrating that we couldn’t face this Barcelona
team with our strongest line-up. Who knows what magic might have been conjured
up by Arshavin or Van Persie? Who knows what damage Cesc might have caused if
he started to take control of the game? Who knows what sort of nullifying job
Gallas and Song could have done on Messi had they been on the pitch?
It may not have made a jot of difference, but I’d sure as
hell liked to have found out. You can accept being beaten by the best, but when
you’re not playing your own best team there is certainly an element of ‘what
if’ surrounding the game, and it’s truly disappointing we couldn’t give the tie
our best shot.
Barca’s weak defence
You had the sense they were there for the taking, but it’s
disappointing that, the goal and a couple of breaks aside, we never really put
their weak backline under any real pressure. When we did, we had a fair bit of
joy - but it didn’t happen nearly often enough.
You can point to the fact that Barca adjusted their style
to compensate for Theo’s pace, but I still don’t think we used him as much as
we should, and Nasri and Diaby seemed to be unsure of who was supposed to be
the one pushing on and supporting the forwards. I just don’t feel we got at
them enough when they were decidedly weakened, and that is a little annoying.
Big players under-performing
Now admittedly, the biggest of the big players were
unavailable. But I still expected a little more from certain members of our
starting line-up. Rosicky was pretty woeful. Mis-placed passes all over the
show – most unlike him. Only half fit? Probably, but if he was out there I was
hoping for a little more from him. Diaby and Nasri were disappointing too,
especially given their recent form. The midfield didn’t seem to have much
shape, probably because Barca ran it ragged, but again I thought at least one
of them might step up to the plate. They both seemed unsure of their exact
roles, and were often wasteful in possession.
This isn’t finger pointing and all out criticism, I’m just
stating the areas in which I was disappointed. Barcelona obviously forced the poor
performances out of them, but when we know what they CAN do, it’s frustrating
that last night they didn’t pull it off.
Small differences
Okay, I might be clutching at straws here, but there are a
couple of instances where the wrong decision stopped us getting a tighter grip
on the game. One from Diaby, one
from the ref/linesman. Small differences, but differences nonetheless.
Soon after our goal, Diaby was breaking with Theo steaming
on to his right, and Bendtner, not quite steaming on as much, to his left. The
opportunity opened up for Diaby to slip Theo through, his pace would have taken
him in on goal. But instead he opted for playing in Bendtner, and playing the
ball behind Bendtner at that. With that decision, the attack broke down, the
opportunity gone. Maybe Diaby thought Theo had strayed off-side, maybe he
thought the pass to Theo was too obvious and wanted to be cleverer. Whatever
his reason, had the ball found Theo it was a great chance to go 2 nil up. That
could have completely changed the game.
A little later, Bendtner was played in on the left wing, and
he embarked on a run on goal – he was one and one with the keeper. But the ref
blew for offside. Replays show Bendtner was clearly onside.
Don’t get me wrong, these decisions aren’t the reason we
lost – not at all. But it would have been interesting to see how the game went
had the right decision had been made in both instances. Football is a game
where the smallest of differences can have the biggest of impacts, and the wrong
call for offside was particularly frustrating.
And so there we go, a few things to be disappointed with,
but ultimately there can’t be any complaints about the result.
A special mention to two players who I thought were
outstanding last night – Bendtner and Clichy.
Super Nick scored a very good goal, making the most of a poor pass from Theo
and doing extremely well to react to the rebound. He worked his socks off for
the rest of the game too. At times he even suffered from Rooney syndrome,
steaming back into midfield to win the ball, only to find that there was no one
ahead of him to play the ball to and launch an attack with.
Clichy,
barring a ridiculous shot when he should have passed, was also back to his
brilliant best. He really took the game to Barcelona
with his bursting runs, and he was nipping in ahead of the Barcelona players in his typically
instinctive way. Keep it up.
Overall though, the main lesson to be learnt from the games against
Barcelona is
how far increased work rate can get you. The harder you work and the more you
press, the more success you will have.
Hopefully this game will make some players realise, if they
didn’t know already, that they have far from made it as footballers. They need
to earn their success, they need to really work for it. It won’t come on a
plate. Barcelona
don’t take anything for granted, in fact they’ve shipped out the players who
did rest on their laurels (Ronaldinho, Eto’o), and their current success is
through work ethic as much as sublime skill.
Take note lads.
Finally, I think this was the best way to go out of the
competition, and therefore easy to recover from. It’s simple, we were beaten by
a better team. With no heart-wrenching last-gasp winners or any deep sense of
injustice, there will be no feeling sorry for ourselves. So it should be
relatively easy to pick ourselves up again over the next 7 days and prepare
properly for the league and a massive derby against Sp*rs. We are still in with
a huge shout for the league, and we need to give it our all, and forget about
what has happened.
Just the fact we don’t have to face a certain midget again
for a long time, and that no team we play over the next five games will even
come close to Barca, should give us the lift we need to go and spank the Spuds,
and all those who follow in the remaining league fixtures.
Onwards and upwards go the Arsenal.
Innabit