In the wake of Tuesday night’s 2-0 loss to the Spaniards in the Champions League Round of 16 first leg at the Emirates Stadium, Wenger questioned Barcelona’s integrity as they continued to fall to the ground with apparent ease.
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Seeing Barcelona’s lethal forward trio of Luis Suarez, Neymar and Messi combine on the counter-attack to open the scoring was an aspect Wenger found particularly galling.
Arsenal seemed to have heeded the painful lessons that have blighted their recent Champions League campaigns when the score was 0-0 against Barcelona with 20 minutes left on Tuesday.
Barcelona coach Luis Enrique was delighted with his side’s performance against Arsenal as they secured a 2-0 lead to take back to the Nou Camp.
“Fortunately I scored the penalty”, he said. We knew that if we have to keep a 0-0, we keep a 0-0. The regret I had was that just as we looked like we could dominate the game, we gave the goal away.
“Realistically it is very, very hard, if not impossible [to go through]”. We had the chances but didn’t score. “When we looked like we could win this game we just gave it away”.
In 2010, Uefa fined Real Madrid duo Sergio Ramos and Xabi Alonso after deciding they were both sent off on goal for time-wasting at the end of a group game against Ajax.
“It’s a shame we didn’t get any satisfaction because we put everything into it”.
Wenger added: “Barcelona is through it 95 percent certainly but we want to go there and play”.
The Argentine captain has now scored eight Champions League goals against Arsenal which is the second most he’s scored against one opponent in the European tournament.
For the past three seasons Arsene Wenger’s side have exited at the same stage, having imploded in the opening home leg.
“Technically we were very average”.
We knew we couldn’t afford to give them counterattacks and that is exactly what we did. “There is a small chance, small margins obviously but we could see they were vulnerable at times”.
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“We’ll need great solidarity because we’ll need to defend well, and make the maximum of our possession, which we didn’t do today”, Wenger told Goal.com post-match.
