Arsene Wenger slammed Arsenal’s “extremely poor” defensive display at Bayern Munich as their record 5-1 defeat left them with just a slender chance of progressing in the Champions League.
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Only seven of the Arsenal FC side who beat FC Bayern Munich at the Emirates Stadium started at the Allianz Arena on Wednesday.
Two goals from Thomas Müller and one apiece from Robert Lewandowski, David Alaba and Arjen Robben put the visitors to the sword, but what made the difference for Josep Guardiola’s side? Mueller added his second in the 89th.
Olivier Giroud did pull one back with an excellent chest and volley finish from inside the area. That’s a no-brainer for me, the Greeks will have no chance in Munich because Bayern will want to top the group.
“We’ve hit our target of winning the game”, the Germany worldwide said. “We played a serious match”. We have no more injuries, apart from the one to our heads. Wayne Rooney grabbed a 79th minute victor but it was Smalling who once again impressed at the back. “We have to give everything, and realise that what we did tonight against Bayern wasn’t good enough to qualify anyway”.
“There are a few positives in the second half but obviously we need to do better defensively and be more aggressive because we allowed them too much time on the ball”.
Wenger said: “I believe first you have to give credit to Bayern for their quality and on top of that I think we made things quite easy for them with our defensive performance”.
Cech showed fantastic reflexes to tip Muller’s effort from eight yards over the bar as half-time loomed, but Arsenal saw any hopes dashed in the 44th minute as Bayern scored a third. Bayern doubled their lead with the half hour approaching when Coman fired in a shot, which was blocked and Mueller stabbed home the rebound, which took a deflection off Arsenal centre-back Per Mertesacker.
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So if anyone is going to be put at a disadvantage by the games this week it will those from down the road. Alaba robbed Santi Cazorla and then fired from outside the box into the roof of the net over Cech. They’ve got a home tie against Zagreb, and while they lost against them in their first game, it’s at home this time so Arsenal should beat them comfortably.
