Arsene Wenger says Arsenal should have wrapped up qualification to the quarter-finals of the Champions League in the first half of their 2-0 win against Monaco.
In the end the Gunners went out on away goals, paying for their 3-1 defeat at the Emirates, although the manager did find time to praise his players despite their profligacy in front of goal.
“We produced the performance we wanted,” Wenger told Sky Sports at full-time. “Overall I feel the game should have been over at half time.
“We had five clear cut chances and I think as well we were unlucky with some refereeing decisions, in the first half especially. We produced the game we wanted, Monaco had no shots on target at all and we played in one half. They defended well until the end. I think it was a tight game.
“I don’t believe that [the best team went through]. If you look at the shots on target over the two games. I think the team that made less mistakes defensively went through.
“The players are on a good run, we won the game tonight. We only paid tonight for the fact we lost our concentration in the first game.”
Shortly after, Wenger added in his press conference: “We were overconfident in the first leg, we were not cautious enough. Congratulations to Monaco. We did what we wanted to do but we were unlucky.”
In contrast to his manager a frustrated Per Mertesacker claimed that Monaco deserved their victory over the two legs.
“I think the best team went through,” the BFG told UEFA.com. “They deserved it because of the first leg. We came here and tried absolutely everything but it wasn’t enough.
“We responded well but our regrets are with the first game. The beauty of the UEFA Champions League is if you have one bad game then you are out.”
We should of won it in the first leg!
Yeah, it’s not like in the league where a defeat is just 3 points and you can move on. This will come back to haunt you. It was a real shame we didn’t do anything in the CL this year, but I know deep down that no one is really that surprised.
should have*
This is a grammar error that needs to be rid have /s
Errr FIRST LEG MAYBE?
I fail to see how people are so angry at the result. We were heros to a man tonight. Yes, we fucked up the first leg but we have surely made our peace with that by now?
No, definitely not. A club like Arsenal should not be getting eliminated in the Round of 16 every year. As heroic as our performance was, we only brought it upon ourselves to need to play like that. We’ve played really well for the last few years in the second leg but never went through because we messed up so badly in the first leg.
I think the best thing for all us supporters is to just move on and be glad of our friend Mo Mentum.
There’s always next year.
Yes of course we should, the emperors outfit is just fine
Indeed it is, truly magnificent as long as you’re not blind.
Its the best outfit any emperor has that wasn’t bought with the ill gotten gains of the stolen birth right of the abu dhabi or russian people
Valiant effort. Would love to blame it on the ref tonight (he decided it this evening), but it was yet another supposedly easy game/draw where the players didn’t have the right mental preparation. I’m not sure whether they believe the hype in the press (best possible draw etc.), or if it’s a management problem.
If they were as psyched up in both legs, we would have gone through without question.
Good effort tonight though lads.
Was it the ref though..or the oil money..or the ‘bad luck’ with injuries, or a little bit with the handbrake on, or were we jaded, or did we forget….
Maybe we didn’t complain and disparage the players and manager enough.
Ozil trading jersey at 1/2 time. Nice. Shows what he cares. Overrated. Lackadaisical. Going through the motions. Does not care about being Arsenal
…and one of our best players in the second half.
Theone has an unhealthy trolling compulsion in regards to Ozil. You’ll see it below as you read on.
Fair enough. I was just trying to work out in my head whether that was sarcasm or he’s genuinely being a troll
Piers, you’re not welcome here. Kindly fuck off, yeah?
I think you’ll find Kondogbia wanted his shirt mate, not many times you play against a current world cup winner, before you start on the Ozil bashing get your facts straight, he actually had a decent game. COYG
Wrong wrong wrong. What he does when the game is in progress is what matters and he put in a full shift tonight. One of his best games this season
Scholes in disguise…
Utter rubbish. Swapping shirts at half time means fucking nothing, it’s a strangely insecure, British mindset that gets so worked up about it. Ozil’s desire was plain to see on the pitch tonight. Another valiant effort but I’m tired of glorious failures. I think we have the core of an excellent team here; our season isn’t over, there’s still a lot to play for. We all know what went wrong in this tie. We need to learn and we need to cope. Let’s pick ourselves up and murder Newcastle on Saturday. The league isn’t over until it’s over and we’ve… Read more »
Had enough of this lazy Ozil bashing. He has improved massively since coming back into the team and was immense tonight.
Leave it out mate, Ozil was probably the best player on the pitch! Gave so much the entire game and after 90 minutes his touch is still out of this world. You’d notice him if he wasn’t there, he’s full of class. Him and Cazorla are an unreal pair to have together.
Do you really think he wanted some cheap Monaco shirt? That bloke probably wouldn’t leave him alone
Ozil was arguably one of our better players tonight, he certainly had a better game than Sanchez.
Ozil wasn’t involved much at the start and he spent most of his time dropping deep to get involved. He also made a few surging runs, one of which led to the free kick that Giroud and Sanchez couldn’t convert at the back post. Stop reading the papers and creating sensationalistic bollocks to obscure your view of a world class player actually having a good game.
Do fuck off, Scholes. We’re sick enough of hearing your voice on TV, so stay off our blog.
Who fucking cares? Save it for talkshite.
Urgh, that was so frustrated And unable to sleep now I might even contact one of these single hot moms in my local area that advertise on this site. Odd that there are so many hot single moms in Bishop’s Stortford.
They are single because they caught their husbands looking for hot single moms in Bishop’s Stortford.
We were just missing something tonight, it had to be sensational and in the end it was just really, really good. Needed some magic from somewhere and Giroud’s pretty amazing finish was as close as it got. We needed a wondergoal or an amazing dribble, they never came.
…Alex Oxlade Chamberlain….
If only. He could have made up for giving them their 3rd at our place.
Slate me if you want. Ramsey deserves that spot not Ozil
But of a dis-jointed argument. I agree that Ramsey should be in the pitch, but I wholly disagree that ozil shouldn’t. Have them both, Ozil has been excellent
Are you serious??? Ozil was incredible tonight
They aren’t competing for the same spot. If anyone had Ramsey’s spot tonight, it was Welbeck, who I don’t think is in the same form as Ramsey right now.
Ozil and Ramsey need to be on there together, they bring out the best in each other and have an almost telepathic type connection with each other. Two top class players them two. We benefit so much when they are on song.
Positionally Cazorla was in Ramsey’s best position, not Ozil, and definitely not Welbeck.
If you want them all on someone has to go to the wing or we play with no DM.
Ozil just isn’t good enough, consistent with shit passes and deliveries in this game.
You’re an idiot.
Ha ha, you jest…… or need to go to specsavers before you make further comment.
we have to learn from our mistakes and move on from this game. what i think is that we are maturing as a team. Now we are in a position where we can challenge for trophies. Out target should be winning every match we play till the end of the season. Lets play like every match is a final. Come on you Gunners. I am pumped up for the rest of the season. #ATID
I realise it’s fair to expect a lot from ozil ( I think he was reasonably good tonight). But I am really very tired of everything being about him. We lost because we defended poorly in first leg and missed lots of chances in both games. Yet it’s akwAys about ozil and nobody else. It’s tiresome. I’m glad we have him and look forward to seeing this team and mesut progress.
42.5 million it is about him
£16.72m it’s all about Santi.
Don’t get what mentioning figures proved.
30m +/- for Alexis. 16m for Welbeck. $100k / wk for Theo.
We’re long done being a 1 man team. Save the finger pointing for primary school.
Yawn…
I defend özil a lot when others slate him, but that’s going to stop. If somebody can’t understand his influence and importance in a football match, they have no knowledge about the game. Yes he won’t chase everything down but boy does he make this team flow
The thing is he chased Monaco players down the pitch at the end of the game to stop a counter. The fans saying Ozil is not good enough need to stop now. He’s part of the team and we should be cheering him on because he’s given it all in the past weeks!
Those guys probably left/shut off the TV at 75 minute mark.
Possibly! or they could just be ‘fuck-wits’!
I very much noted that TRACKING BACK myself. He played the full 90, and showed true fight. The whole squad did tonight.
It’s true, it makes you sound a little elitist to say it, but some people are just idiots.
Ramsey and even Wilshere offer more. My opinion.
You watched the game right? I suggest you remove your blinkers and watch it again without the shit commentary. Better still, just watch Özil dragging defenders out of place, creating space for his teammates, watch the way they don’t have to break stride when he passes to them, watch the way he anticipates what they will do and finds space to make himself available. Or just blindly follow morons like Pat Nevin in unfairly criticising him. Your choice but you’ll never appreciate him like the rest of us do. That makes me sad for you
Well, back it up with something. Suggest a reason why a World Cup winner and a guy who caused Real Madrid fans to wail and gnash their teeth when he left doesn’t fit in here, or justify why Wilshere’s inconsistent contribution would be more important than what Ozil brings. Just saying it is an opinion doesn;t make it one, it needs flesh on it otherwise it’s just a random statement.
Well said, Dick. Theone is an anti football moron, imo.
He’s just trolling. Nothing more to see here.
Ozil would fit into the likes of bayern, madrid and barca easily. Same can’t be said of Jack.
Good try lads… Hope we get it right Next time! We now need to shift all focus to firstly possibly finishing above city in the League as well as giving our best shot at winning and retaining the FA Cup. It Can only get better gunners! #StrongerTogether #COYG
Defend Ozil if you like but I stand by what I saw, he is not doing enough and just not good enough.
Fortunately someone much smarter than you continues to put him on the field.
I’m going to posit this is just Theone double posting. Twin trolls.
Its a shame and calls for concern when a coach with the pedigree of AW admits that his team underrated another@this stage. I knew we’ll win but I’m not flattered. Our cycle of poor 1st leg and near-perfect-but-not-good-enough 2nd leg continues. Same old same old Arsenal. We live to fight another day…in the 2nd leg.
I found this a staggering thing to admit also- to publicly say ‘we’ underestimated them in the first leg…
It’s not a conscious thing, you head says it’s easy but your mouth says ‘we don’t underestimate them’. It’s easily done and no matter what you’re told by the manage/coaches/team mates, it will continue sometimes. The chavs did it with Bradford (as we did a few years back). ManUre did it in the Europa. Many many teams have done it before and will do it again, but we need to do it less often in the future. We’ve done it occasionally for the last 100 years. What makes this look worse is that we are doing this following a few… Read more »
Good point. Actually I’m trying to let the whole thing go and look to the weekend but a lot of niggling things keep irking. One of them is the continued writing off of Monaco as a crap team (media as well as out fans). They aren’t (and weren’t). Yes, Arsenal are the better team by far but Monaco deserve some respect. Their defense is superb and it’s something we could learn from. Additionally they have worked on a strict budget and bought in a handful of youngsters with almost no experience who have excelled. They stand little chance of winning… Read more »
Same shit different year!
How many times do we have to get knocked out on away goals rules!
Ffs! Win 2nil at home and lose 3-1 away.
What’s the point in feeling gutted!
We would have got knocked out in the next round anyway!
Some cunt on, Some cunt off 😉
Please, let us once and for all kill the myth saying Monaco played better than us in the first leg. Yes, they pressed us well and narrowed the central space in a good way but we managed to play through it time and time again. At the end of the day, what kept us from going through was the lack of efficiency on our behalf rather than good defending on their behalf. If you believe otherwise you will have a hard time making me understand how the “open goal”-misses from Giroud and Welbeck equals good defending. I’ll give them cred… Read more »
Yeah, I mean since Alexis’ goals dried up it’s been tough for us to score more than 1-2 goals a game (don’t be surprised to see Arsene continue to focus on this in the summer, we’ve got to improve our attacking efficiency!) and add in the missed chances and they got away with murder in the first leg. The most critical failing we had was a lack of recovery speed in defense. The 2nd goal was a preventable counter and even with Ox’s error for the 3rd we should have been able to cope with a single attacker. Fuck all… Read more »
We need to stop going on about how Giroud missed chances in the first leg. It’s football, it always happens. The problem for me was how we defended.
Like Arsene always says, if we defend well or keep a clean sheet, then we always have a chance to win the game because we know we can score anywhere against anyone.
And there’s no reward for being the better team. We’re out, they’re through. That’s what matters.
Hey. We’re going win every game from now on and win the Prem, right?!
Why Alexis lasted 90mins is beyond me. Walcott should have taken his place. Welbeck was doing better than him.
Ozil is really coming into some form. His little flicks and tricks are coming back into his game and he just plays the right ball under immense pressure. Freak.
Dare I say he’s pegged Alexis back over the last month to be our most important player.
Sadly, I agree. But only because I would have loved to have seen Mesut at this point playing with the form that Alexis had at the start of the season, very, very excited to see how those two link up in the future when both are firing on all cylinders at the same time.
This has been the story of our last few seasons! We need to have all GUNS BLAZING injury-free at the same time Swish. Your comment actually makes me sad.
Adding in injury free will be the story of the last 10 years. Injuries have cost us at least 3 leagues since we won the FA Cup in ’05. You could probably even throw this year into the pot with them, with a fully fit Giroud and Ozil in the team, along with Debuchy’s injury leaving our defence in tatters for a couple of months, it would be a completely different story this year, especially with the form we have now. But every cloud has a silver lining, imagine this team bonding even better next year with the confidence of… Read more »
A little too much for us to do in the end. Absolutely agree with Wenger that we could have at very least put two in first half. That would have made a difference. We are still shy of the consistency needed to win the league and the extra power to win the CL. Still, we should have made quarters at least had we not been so negligent first leg. That said, we are not far off. A quality addition or two this summer may see us mount a better assault in Europe and domestically. We don’t need reconstructive surgery anymore… Read more »
Our current consistency in the league will get us very close to the top come crunch time. I don’t think we’ll pull it off, but it will be closer than we ever thought possible.
I’m pissed in Monaco. Some lunatic supporter behind kept saying sugarballs, the entire fucking game like a mentalist.
I love you all, especially Santi
good effort but i don’t think we could have finished them off in the 1st half…our chances weren’t very clear cut…we didn’t attack them in the blitz mode our attack is capable of…monaco were very controlled and calm even after conceding…but santi, ozil and alexis picked the wrong game to be average
But think if that shite call on what should have been a PK for Alexis had gone correct. It would have sent them into frightened fits far earlier.
I love our team.
What game were the ozil bashers watching??
What in God’s name must Ozil do to satisfy these guys??
Here we have one of the most intelligent player of his generation in our team and yet people don’t appreciate him because of his “body language” despite stats proving it to be all myth.
I bet if we had zidane during his peak at arsenal, these moronic pundits wouldn’t appreciate him because wenger signed him.
No wonder england gets knocked out at the quarters at every tournament.
Yes we played brilliantly tonight, I’d go as far to say we would have beaten any team in Europe with the total performance we gave, we got very few decisions our way, and even had goal bound shots deflected by their defenders with their back to the ball and it hitting them when they didn’t even know where the ball was. Very frustrating. But we need to realize we played like this because we had no pressure and were not expected to win. Until we can give this kind of performance in the big games week in week out like… Read more »
On a night like this.. Dare I say we missed Ol’Rozza.. That last
substitution should’ve been him..
I agree with Per, and appreciate his honesty. Monaco won because they were far better than we were in the 1st leg – I paid over £90 to watch one of the most complacent, flat, disastrous performances I’ve ever seen from us – and they had 3 chances and took them all. We had at least 3 chances last night and didn’t unfortunately take them all. I’ve have had Ramsey on at half time and Alexis off as he worked hard but isn’t playing well and is giving the ball away constantly. Just hope the effort last night doesn’t mean… Read more »