Tactics? Inexperience? No Plan B? What went wrong for Arsenal in Munich? | OneFootball

What went wrong against Bayern Munich?

Last night’s game is a hard one to take and for someone like me, who was feeling maybe a bit too confident before the game, was disappointed with how things turned out and how we played. I expected a lot more from this Arsenal side and think we again just switched off when we needed to be focused. I’m not sure if that’s just due to experience of the manager and the players but when we needed to be focused, we weren’t. The fact is that Bayern are Champions League royalty with 6 winners trophies already and their fans have probably already been checking on how to buy UCL Final tickets before we even played the second leg.

Here’s a rundown of what I think went wrong last night.

Firstly, I think the first half was decent, I think we came out and looked confident, Bayern are a massive team with extensive experience and for a team like Arsenal who have a lot of young players, playing up against a side like theirs could be daunting, but I think we came out with confidence and the belief that we could win, but the second half was completely different.

Bayern came out in the second half and looked like they have figured Arteta’s game plan out and although they played very defensively, that is what worked for them against a side who was making little passes and trying to build play up through the middle. Both games Bayern were very defensive, and I think that worked to their advantage.

Again, we weren’t clinical enough when we had chances, I hate to single a player out, but Martinelli had the opportunity to score a number of times and didn’t take advantage of those opportunities. He is still a very young player and still learning but when you’re handed chances like he was, in a game this big, you have to take them.

I think Arteta should have brought Jesus on earlier and played him on the wing, Jesus has the experience I think we needed on the pitch last night. If you look at his stats in the Champions League, they really speak for themselves. Bayern took advantage of Arsenal’s weaknesses and exploited them, making the front line distant and unable to connect with each other. I think Jesus would have changed that.

As I said, Bayern were defending well and looked to had figured out the tikki takki passes we were doing to try build up play, and I think that’s when a manager must step in and change the plan, push the ball out wide and cross balls into the box. Give your team a fighting chance and a back-up plan when the first one doesn’t seem to be working.

You can blame whoever you want, but I think as a collective we just weren’t good enough and the better team won on the night. It’s disappointing but that’s football and hopefully we learn from our mistakes and next season we grow from it and do better. I am proud of how far we have come and what we’ve done this season in Europe, but it still hurts all the same.

We will go again next season and hopefully go even further…