And 10 minutes later, Lionel Messi finished off a quick counter-attack to put the visitors ahead in the first leg of their round-of-16 meeting.
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London, Feb.24: Extremely disappointed with his side’s defeat against Barcelona in the Champions League tie, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has slammed his boys, describing them as “naive”.
“I said beforehand that we need to be cautious and that if we cannot win the game we can’t concede goals to keep our chances for the second leg, even if at Camp Nou it is very, very hard to win”, he said. “I liked everything about us today from the very beginning”, Luis Enrique said.
“I think the only thing we didn’t fulfil was that we didn’t score”.
“They are one of the best teams in the world with their transitions, but we coped with them, kept the game level and then turned it in our favour”.
Barcelona are 95 per cent through and it is only five per cent for us. The regret I had was we looked like we could dominate the game, then we give the goal away.
“When you lose 2-0 at home in the Champions League it is not a happy dressing room”.
Nacho Monreal had clearly taken Wenger’s words to heart and he earned an early booking for chopping down Ivan Rakitic.
Wenger’s anger was compounded because, for much of the match, he could have no complaints as Arsenal frustrated the European champions with a composed performance that could have yielded a lead if not for poor finishing. A clever backheel by Aron Ramsey found Mesut Ozil, but the return pass wasn’t good enough for the Wales midfielder to get a clean shot away.
Arsenal missed a host of chances in their 0-0 draw with Hull in the FA Cup fifth round on Saturday and their woes in front of goal continued as Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Olivier Giroud spurned good opportunities against Luis Enrique’s side.
Suarez headed Dani Alves’s dinked cross wide when he should have scored at the end of the opening period and Neymar was denied by Cech after being played in by Andres Iniesta.
“From Arsenal’s point of view, people are going to be scrutinising to see where they sit in the title race and if Arsenal don’t win a game, there will be a lot of analysis”.
Messi had a half-chance for Barcelona just past the 30-minute mark after the Argentine was picked out by Neymar, but the attacker’s header was over Petr Cech’s crossbar.
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Barcelona showed the threat they posed just before the break as Neymar slipped the ball to Messi, who flicked the ball to Suarez, but the former Liverpool striker’s pull-back was cleared.
