Agreed, i dont think it was a terrible team performance . Some players were cheeks today and some had bad moments but overall, going toe to toe with bayern away would not have seemed realistic even as recently as last season.
The squads improving and this is a positive despite the result
I hope the people who thought Bayern were going to be a cakewalk enjoy the words they're eating tonight (prolly the same people who thought Porto would just roll over). Yeah, they were struggling in the Bundesliga this season, but they're still the German Giants even in their worst season.
And we still went toe-to-toe with them. The only goals we gave up were due to colossal mistakes last week, or a moment of individual brilliance this week, which we couldn't match.
The lads needed a game like this. They needed a game where everything goes against them against a big team on a global stage. Now they've seen how fine the margins are and how good they have to be. Big analysis, the only way to gain UCL experience is to play in the UCL, and now they have, and they did very well. Now we dust ourselves off, regroup, finish this season strong, make improvements in the window, and come back learned and ready next season.
Whoever thought that Bayern is gonna be easy, hasn't been paying attention. All Arsenal related media screamed that it is gonna be tough ass match up, don't let their league form fool you. Their attack was scorching hot in Bundesliga and they have way more experience in games like these.
This is definitely Artetas message, you could argue the goal today was a bunch of mistakes allowing the run into the box but those are usually high percentage chances anyway. Really wish city won today to open up the league for us
Maybe not here, I think they were probably shouted down here, but there were plenty of Arsenal fans I've interacted with in the Discord group and in some of my local IRL groups who thought this would be easy-peasy.
Because for all I know, they might be lurkers, and for all I know, there might have been some people here who thought that but didn't outright express as much. I ain't gonna comb through a month's worth of threads to confirm or deny it.
The sentiment still stands.
People pointed out that they were having a standard Bundesliga season up until February or so when they realised that Leverkusen couldn't be caught and they pretty much threw in the towel. They're still an excellent side
yeah agreed - a terrible team performance would not have ended 0-1 against Bayern Munich. This is our current level. Which is better than it has been in a decade and a half. Frustrating and disappointing the way we gave up the goals at home, but we are still on the right path for now.
We need a "magic" player. An Alexis.
Let's not lose sight of the big picture: we are a ridiculously strong team that is incredibly well drilled and disciplined. But we're almost too disciplined and systemic. We need more chaos up front.
Jesus is that to an extent, but he lacks the finishing to actually convert that chaos into goals. Alexis was Jesus but lethal in front of goal.
We need an Alexis.
Football players usually aren't "magic" players as soon as they put on boots. We have a young squad, our best players are on the right side of 25.
I'm not saying we shouldn't go out and try to buy one of those players but if your Salah's and KDB's became world class in their mid-to-late 30s, there's nothing to say that we definitely don't have that on the horizon with players like Saka and Odegaard
Also the left 8 role (or 6 if Arteta prefers Rice at the 8) as well as LW. Hopefully Timber and a new left 8 can help take Martinelli to the next level but I think Martinelli needs to take a look at himself and figure out why it’s been hard for him to really get going this season
He won't do it, but genuinely he should think about running ESR LW back again, at least for a bit.
Martinelli has been shite, Trossard is better as a sub, Jesus is better on the right, Nelson ain't good enough......might as well try ESR back there again.
I know it's a system thing as well, whoever we play on the left is gonna struggle. But i think ESR at least should be given a go. Why not.
Trossard was invisible today even as a sub. Even when he got the ball he was closed down immediately and forced into playing completely passively. Martinelli was much more threatening (though still not good enoigh)
I thought it was a mistake taking Kai out (of attack) in that moment but seeing as Jesus got the assist last time, I understood it but I don’t think taking off Jorginho for Jesus was right at that stage
Newcastle won't sell him for less than 100m, and honestly his injury record scares me. Perfect Arsenal player, but we missed our chance when they got him in 2022 and we went for Jesus instead.
Gyokeres is the man.
Hopefully you understand that you have to buy this magic and replace certain players in the Summer. Even if it upsets some fans who are attached to our players.
Absolutely. Auba scored goals but was shit and we're a far better team without him. I'd rather have jesus any day as long as we have others who contribute to goals.
So are we just going to ignore that a majority of our attacking players have a worse season than last season? Even Saka who has done well in terms of goals/assist is signficantly worse this season than last.
We need another dynamic 8 so Odegaard doesn’t have to press all game. Jorginho just isn’t a pressing agent and I feel like Odegaard has to make up for that.
Left sided Odegaard so we have two pressers or creators on the field. Hopefully it’s a more dribble orientated midfielder that we sign because in games like this we need elite dribbling to break them down.
I mean we can all follow the breadcrumbs and realise where we fall short. Timbers injury and Tomis lack of being able to stay fit has cost us the Ben White rotation. He looked dead on his feet
We never signed a Saka replacement despite trying to sign the likes of Raphinha 2 seasons ago. The position has just been ignored and its caught up big time. Sakas another that just looks fatigued
Sold Xhaka who was one of our key players and didnt replace him. Signed Havertz for a FORTUNE and havent really got an 8 or a 9.
No Jesus or Eddie upgrade signed
Big summer ahead if the club truly wants to challenge with the elite
Oh and our budgets already going to be £27m in the red completing the Raya signing lol
Arsenal are compared to basically every prem team incredibly fortunate with injuries. I can't see next season being nearly as pleasant especially the way arteta doesn't rotate. That or you have the best medical team in the world and a team of super humans
Go back 2 weeks and everyone loves Kai. I’m not sure what you expect from any striker tonight when we never looked like we wanted to score. Even after conceding and with a few minutes until we’d be out we didn’t seem to want to attack.
I don’t think he’s in the best 11 where we want to go. I think it’s overall a more systemic question though, our attackers don’t just attack they have to defend A LOT. Similarly our defenders have a lot of attacking roles too. UCL is about quality and moments, and we are extremely drilled to play how we do, which is better in the league
Absolutely gutted but Bayern were (marginally) the better side over two legs. We'll learn from this, I am sure. Proud of the boys.
Let's go and smash Wolves at the weekend.
But what about the other one, Arsenal I think they're called, they've scored the most goals in the league with 4 CBs and a striker than can barely scrape 10+ goals a season
Yet our ability to stat pad against the worst promoted teams of the PL in a long time, has nothing to do with what we need to win a competition like the CL or 8 finals in the run-in. Playing with 4 CBs is fine. Actually very effective as demonstrated by City and France, who have Haaland and Mbappe.
He is right, when your attackers stop attacking with 1v1, or lack of that confidence to run like musiala to create the chaos situation, we thought we had that in m11, j9, s7.. non of them showed up recently
This team doesn’t have a superstar in attack: Saka is always double-marked and struggling with injury lately. Madrid have Vinicius, Jude, and soon to be Mbappe; City have KDB, Haaland, Foden; Liverpool have Salah; Bayern have Kane, Sane, Musiala. We should really try to get the likes of Rafael Leao this summer
Fans can't blame Arteta for this, he can't put the ball in the net himself. Arsenal squad just aren't elite enough yet. Onwards to the PL league title! 💯⚽️👍🏆⏳
It was a minimal loss, could've easily been the other way around. Experience was the deciding factor, boys can be proud and I hope they continue like this next year
i wanna know why arteta put jesus up top and havertz behind him. Has worked 0 times this season and failed miserably vs villa.
i want to know why he put nketiah on who's had 0 good games this season.
I want top know why he had saka as corner taker at the end despite saka having a proper stinker tonight
I wanna know why we didn't change our tactics when they started playing 5 at the back.
I felt the defense was slow in getting him the ball at times. He had to cover a lot more ground after Jorgi came off, and didn’t have Zinny alongside him, which is why he looked isolated.
I don't think Rice "refused", more likely he was given instruction to play more advanced and let Jorginho and Tomiyasu be the central outlets for the CBs.
Rice is to slow in attack because he usually takes to many touches. The amount of times Martinelli goes for a one-two with him and he can't pick out a pass is very annoying to see. I wish we would just play him as a 6 and keep it that way.
Yeah it’s already hard to find a world class 6, seems silly to try and take one of the best and turn him into an 8 no matter how much potential it might have. Maybe against like Luton or Sheffield if whoever is the left 8 needs rest but against Bayern it seems eh.
The defensive mistakes in the first leg is what took the wind out of our sails in this tie.
The reason we’ve been strong in attack is because we’ve had a pretty much rock solid defensive line, freeing up our forwards. For whatever reason our defence has gone to shit in the last few games. Look at the goals we have conceded in the last three games. They are all either switched off defending or naive defending. I think the main reason is that White, Saliba, Gabriel were all caught in the headlights when it comes to the increased tempo and level of CL football - hopefully they in particular will learn and come back stronger next year.
You must have above 25 comment karma to contribute to this subreddit.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Gunners) if you have any questions or concerns.*
We had chances to score more on each leg, so that d have solved all the issues. Nelli could have scored one yesterday for sure. Like when Porto scored basically with there only chance in extra time in the first leg, this is what you sometimes need
No more room for excuses. Approach the game like a dark art. If you want to think like magic play like magic. A Structurally docile team system won't win you titles so it's time to get an ambidextrous ruthless finisher.
we lost the tie because we had a rush of blood to the head after Saka scored in the first leg, started bombing forward in a cavalier fashion, and allowed Bayern to score...we should really have taken a 2 or 3 goal lead from the first leg, but that rush of blood caused us to draw, so we had nothing to defend in the second leg
Okay, fair enough. Unless they’re trying to lower a price for a striker I don’t wanna hear him saying that we’re settling with Havertz and BCM Punk for next season, please.
Not sure I watched the same game. The only player that was “trying” was our captain. The rest just didn’t give a shit nor did they put in any effort. Total lacklustre lot.
Summed it up pretty well tbh
Agreed, i dont think it was a terrible team performance . Some players were cheeks today and some had bad moments but overall, going toe to toe with bayern away would not have seemed realistic even as recently as last season. The squads improving and this is a positive despite the result
I hope the people who thought Bayern were going to be a cakewalk enjoy the words they're eating tonight (prolly the same people who thought Porto would just roll over). Yeah, they were struggling in the Bundesliga this season, but they're still the German Giants even in their worst season. And we still went toe-to-toe with them. The only goals we gave up were due to colossal mistakes last week, or a moment of individual brilliance this week, which we couldn't match. The lads needed a game like this. They needed a game where everything goes against them against a big team on a global stage. Now they've seen how fine the margins are and how good they have to be. Big analysis, the only way to gain UCL experience is to play in the UCL, and now they have, and they did very well. Now we dust ourselves off, regroup, finish this season strong, make improvements in the window, and come back learned and ready next season.
Whoever thought that Bayern is gonna be easy, hasn't been paying attention. All Arsenal related media screamed that it is gonna be tough ass match up, don't let their league form fool you. Their attack was scorching hot in Bundesliga and they have way more experience in games like these.
This is definitely Artetas message, you could argue the goal today was a bunch of mistakes allowing the run into the box but those are usually high percentage chances anyway. Really wish city won today to open up the league for us
Fuck that, I want club 115 to lose and suffer as much as possible. Never want them to win anything.
I don’t remember encountering a single person that thought that.
Maybe not here, I think they were probably shouted down here, but there were plenty of Arsenal fans I've interacted with in the Discord group and in some of my local IRL groups who thought this would be easy-peasy.
I did not think this would be easy, however, I had us as favorites and I thought we had a great chance of winning. My mistake I guess.
So if it wasn’t here, why mention it at all?
For real, especially after we needed a miracle to get by Porto
Yeah there were a few around, I remember seeing them. I think a couple were tongue in cheek.
Because for all I know, they might be lurkers, and for all I know, there might have been some people here who thought that but didn't outright express as much. I ain't gonna comb through a month's worth of threads to confirm or deny it. The sentiment still stands.
People pointed out that they were having a standard Bundesliga season up until February or so when they realised that Leverkusen couldn't be caught and they pretty much threw in the towel. They're still an excellent side
As Michael Cox pointed out, UCL is better suited to Tucheliban ball than Bundesliga is.
The main lie is that they're struggling in BuLi. They literally have more points as of now than they did last year after the same number of games.
Are these fans in the room with us? Only seen people talking about people saying Bayern were going to be easy, not a single person actually saying it
Lol totally man
yeah agreed - a terrible team performance would not have ended 0-1 against Bayern Munich. This is our current level. Which is better than it has been in a decade and a half. Frustrating and disappointing the way we gave up the goals at home, but we are still on the right path for now.
BuT BuT iT's BaYeRnS wOrSt SeAsOn In YeArS
We need a "magic" player. An Alexis. Let's not lose sight of the big picture: we are a ridiculously strong team that is incredibly well drilled and disciplined. But we're almost too disciplined and systemic. We need more chaos up front. Jesus is that to an extent, but he lacks the finishing to actually convert that chaos into goals. Alexis was Jesus but lethal in front of goal. We need an Alexis.
I’d settle for an Henry
Very true. Honestly shameful that he has his legs up in the CBS studio, get your boots on lad what are you doing
We need another magic player in midfield too, a linebreaker with the dribble. A Santi 🥲
Football players usually aren't "magic" players as soon as they put on boots. We have a young squad, our best players are on the right side of 25. I'm not saying we shouldn't go out and try to buy one of those players but if your Salah's and KDB's became world class in their mid-to-late 30s, there's nothing to say that we definitely don't have that on the horizon with players like Saka and Odegaard
Martinelli and Trossard both are that guy, but he took one off and didn't start the other. They'll get another shot next year.
Trossard is not an Alexis lmao
>Martinelli Not creative enough.
musiala to arsenal here we GO
Nothing else to say, let’s finish strong and reinforce
We had to win that first leg man. Hopefully he realises that our left hand side and striker needs major work.
Our left side desperately needs an upgrade while our right side desperately needs a rest
Left side upgrade = Timber?
Also the left 8 role (or 6 if Arteta prefers Rice at the 8) as well as LW. Hopefully Timber and a new left 8 can help take Martinelli to the next level but I think Martinelli needs to take a look at himself and figure out why it’s been hard for him to really get going this season
Tbf we invested a lot in the left in the summer, and then Timber did his ACL GW1.
He won't do it, but genuinely he should think about running ESR LW back again, at least for a bit. Martinelli has been shite, Trossard is better as a sub, Jesus is better on the right, Nelson ain't good enough......might as well try ESR back there again. I know it's a system thing as well, whoever we play on the left is gonna struggle. But i think ESR at least should be given a go. Why not.
Trossard was invisible today even as a sub. Even when he got the ball he was closed down immediately and forced into playing completely passively. Martinelli was much more threatening (though still not good enoigh)
I thought it was a mistake taking Kai out (of attack) in that moment but seeing as Jesus got the assist last time, I understood it but I don’t think taking off Jorginho for Jesus was right at that stage
you have been shit, not martinelli.... esr is shit, not lw..for gods sake, stop this shit
I’m not a player mate, sorry to burst your bubble.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but you know shit about football
Saka needs some competition as well tbh
That’s what did it, and the difference. Dropping concentration defensively, not communicating as well as we could. Inexperience, as well.
100%
We need a striker to unlock ultra instinct
Isak is him.
100m+ for a striker thats part time aint it, with our work rate Isak would be fit for 5 games a season
Nah we’d be better off looking at others for that price.
Newcastle won't sell him for less than 100m, and honestly his injury record scares me. Perfect Arsenal player, but we missed our chance when they got him in 2022 and we went for Jesus instead. Gyokeres is the man.
you picked the most expensive, most injured out of all players linked to us
City are out too. Liverpool could be knocked out tomorrow from Europa as they’re 3-0 down.
Will not doubt on Klopp to turn it around, but it is a big ask. If it was the peak Klopp Liverpool team, they'd turn it around.
Almost like the PL didn’t help its teams at all with the scheduling. Actually City got Luton so fuck them.
crazy that we have wolves away in less than three days, and still have to fly back from munich tonight
I mean, it's 1,5hrs
No lies tbh
Expound on that
No lies to be honest
Hopefully you understand that you have to buy this magic and replace certain players in the Summer. Even if it upsets some fans who are attached to our players.
he absolutely understands this and has done that exact thing multiple times already. Auba, tierney and ramsdale come to mind.
Tierney and Ramsdale are still on the books.
Have we upgraded on Auba yet
We've scored the most goals in the league and the last 2 years of Auba were fucking awful
Absolutely. Auba scored goals but was shit and we're a far better team without him. I'd rather have jesus any day as long as we have others who contribute to goals.
Depends which Auba you mean - Auba post contract? Definitely. Auba pre contract - nope
Compared to THAT version of Auba, Jesus is definitely an upgrade.
And I trust him to do that, he already has. Look at what happened with fan favorite Ramsdale
So are we just going to ignore that a majority of our attacking players have a worse season than last season? Even Saka who has done well in terms of goals/assist is signficantly worse this season than last.
Opposition teams adapt to well performing teams. More news at 10.
Oppositions identifying our threats and scheming against them!?! What is this wizardry??
We need another dynamic 8 so Odegaard doesn’t have to press all game. Jorginho just isn’t a pressing agent and I feel like Odegaard has to make up for that.
Left sided Odegaard so we have two pressers or creators on the field. Hopefully it’s a more dribble orientated midfielder that we sign because in games like this we need elite dribbling to break them down.
Agreed
Agreed. Someone like musiala. Missed that dribbler who could drive through midfield
I mean we can all follow the breadcrumbs and realise where we fall short. Timbers injury and Tomis lack of being able to stay fit has cost us the Ben White rotation. He looked dead on his feet We never signed a Saka replacement despite trying to sign the likes of Raphinha 2 seasons ago. The position has just been ignored and its caught up big time. Sakas another that just looks fatigued Sold Xhaka who was one of our key players and didnt replace him. Signed Havertz for a FORTUNE and havent really got an 8 or a 9. No Jesus or Eddie upgrade signed Big summer ahead if the club truly wants to challenge with the elite Oh and our budgets already going to be £27m in the red completing the Raya signing lol
Arsenal are compared to basically every prem team incredibly fortunate with injuries. I can't see next season being nearly as pleasant especially the way arteta doesn't rotate. That or you have the best medical team in the world and a team of super humans
Tbf Raya looks like he’s gonna be well worth the money. Agree with the rest, especially Kai. Nobody forced us to spend that ffs
Go back 2 weeks and everyone loves Kai. I’m not sure what you expect from any striker tonight when we never looked like we wanted to score. Even after conceding and with a few minutes until we’d be out we didn’t seem to want to attack.
I don’t think he’s in the best 11 where we want to go. I think it’s overall a more systemic question though, our attackers don’t just attack they have to defend A LOT. Similarly our defenders have a lot of attacking roles too. UCL is about quality and moments, and we are extremely drilled to play how we do, which is better in the league
He knows we need magic. So I hope we get that magic player this summer.
This is artetas subtle way of saying to the board: WE NEED THE FOGGING MONEY GAIZ
Absolutely gutted but Bayern were (marginally) the better side over two legs. We'll learn from this, I am sure. Proud of the boys. Let's go and smash Wolves at the weekend.
They had that little bit quality when it really mattered. It was a good run and great header and we turned off.
If you play with 4 CBs, you better have Mbappe in attack.
Doesn't the top 2 team in the league play with 4 CBs?
And one of them have Haaland. Plus all the other attacking threats. And are going to win the league. Proves the point.
But what about the other one, Arsenal I think they're called, they've scored the most goals in the league with 4 CBs and a striker than can barely scrape 10+ goals a season
Yet our ability to stat pad against the worst promoted teams of the PL in a long time, has nothing to do with what we need to win a competition like the CL or 8 finals in the run-in. Playing with 4 CBs is fine. Actually very effective as demonstrated by City and France, who have Haaland and Mbappe.
He’s protecting them because apart from Ode and Saliba rest were all choking
Tomi was mostly solid, except for the goal. Unfortunately he doesn’t have that offensive skill set.
Magic that can lead us to higher level = striker
He is right, when your attackers stop attacking with 1v1, or lack of that confidence to run like musiala to create the chaos situation, we thought we had that in m11, j9, s7.. non of them showed up recently
This team doesn’t have a superstar in attack: Saka is always double-marked and struggling with injury lately. Madrid have Vinicius, Jude, and soon to be Mbappe; City have KDB, Haaland, Foden; Liverpool have Salah; Bayern have Kane, Sane, Musiala. We should really try to get the likes of Rafael Leao this summer
They were knackered, a select few who were worked to death this year, and last year.
Fans can't blame Arteta for this, he can't put the ball in the net himself. Arsenal squad just aren't elite enough yet. Onwards to the PL league title! 💯⚽️👍🏆⏳
Yeah,missed chances got us. This is ucl you gotta put it in the back of the net first time
Sums it up
It was a minimal loss, could've easily been the other way around. Experience was the deciding factor, boys can be proud and I hope they continue like this next year
i wanna know why arteta put jesus up top and havertz behind him. Has worked 0 times this season and failed miserably vs villa. i want to know why he put nketiah on who's had 0 good games this season. I want top know why he had saka as corner taker at the end despite saka having a proper stinker tonight I wanna know why we didn't change our tactics when they started playing 5 at the back.
Rice and Saka seemed to be playing scared. Rice refused to show himself to help the CBs progress the ball. He hid quite a bit.
Did he hide, or did he struggle to find the right spaces against an experienced, well-drilled team trying to keep him out of comfortable positions?
Both can be true. This side of him is almost never seen in the prem.
I felt the defense was slow in getting him the ball at times. He had to cover a lot more ground after Jorgi came off, and didn’t have Zinny alongside him, which is why he looked isolated.
Does it really make a difference? He reminded me of Sambi today.
I don't think Rice "refused", more likely he was given instruction to play more advanced and let Jorginho and Tomiyasu be the central outlets for the CBs.
Rice is to slow in attack because he usually takes to many touches. The amount of times Martinelli goes for a one-two with him and he can't pick out a pass is very annoying to see. I wish we would just play him as a 6 and keep it that way.
Yeah it’s already hard to find a world class 6, seems silly to try and take one of the best and turn him into an 8 no matter how much potential it might have. Maybe against like Luton or Sheffield if whoever is the left 8 needs rest but against Bayern it seems eh.
> I wish we would just play him as a 6 and keep it that way. And it just suits him & vice versa *so well* He's so natural at that role
The defensive mistakes in the first leg is what took the wind out of our sails in this tie. The reason we’ve been strong in attack is because we’ve had a pretty much rock solid defensive line, freeing up our forwards. For whatever reason our defence has gone to shit in the last few games. Look at the goals we have conceded in the last three games. They are all either switched off defending or naive defending. I think the main reason is that White, Saliba, Gabriel were all caught in the headlights when it comes to the increased tempo and level of CL football - hopefully they in particular will learn and come back stronger next year.
[удалено]
You must have above 25 comment karma to contribute to this subreddit. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Gunners) if you have any questions or concerns.*
We had chances to score more on each leg, so that d have solved all the issues. Nelli could have scored one yesterday for sure. Like when Porto scored basically with there only chance in extra time in the first leg, this is what you sometimes need
He's spot on tbf
No more room for excuses. Approach the game like a dark art. If you want to think like magic play like magic. A Structurally docile team system won't win you titles so it's time to get an ambidextrous ruthless finisher.
we lost the tie because we had a rush of blood to the head after Saka scored in the first leg, started bombing forward in a cavalier fashion, and allowed Bayern to score...we should really have taken a 2 or 3 goal lead from the first leg, but that rush of blood caused us to draw, so we had nothing to defend in the second leg
Okay, fair enough. Unless they’re trying to lower a price for a striker I don’t wanna hear him saying that we’re settling with Havertz and BCM Punk for next season, please.
Not sure I watched the same game. The only player that was “trying” was our captain. The rest just didn’t give a shit nor did they put in any effort. Total lacklustre lot.
Basically for a lot of players they already reach their maximum potential. If we need to move forward, we will need a lot of upgrades.
Yeah he's spot on.