Per Mertesacker says Arsenal’s failure to prevent an early goal in the Allianz Arena proved too costly as Bayern powered past the Gunners to secure a 5-1 victory.
The German defender insists that Arsene Wenger’s men won’t give up on the Champions League, despite qualification for the knockout rounds being out of their hands, and says lessons will be learned from their Bavarian humbling and lack of courage on the ball.
Speaking to BT Sport, the BFG reflected: “They scored too early for us and then they got into their rhythm. That was too difficult for us to go against.
“We scored the [disallowed] equaliser, but I heard that it was handball. That could have given us a bit more confidence because we played without courage today. That’s very disappointing from out point of view.
“They scored very early and got into their rhythm and we had nothing against it.
“They are absolutely amazing in the one-on-ones and made it difficult for us. At home we had much more courage to play, to play the ball with more bravery. It was very difficult and they were brilliant. We have to analyse [this game] quickly and get [injured] players back quickly, but with this display we are very disappointed.
“I think we have to win both games [to give us a chance of qualifying] and get at least two goals at Olympiacos…we’ve been through even more difficult periods [in the past]. It’s not over and that’s how we approach the situation now.
“That was difficult tonight, but we’ll learn from it as always, bounce back quickly on Sunday [against Sp*rs], switch off negative energy and fight back.”
I thought what we mostly lacked was the ball.
Probably you wanted to write that we lacked balls.
I honestly think the players were holding back. I couldn’t care less about the champions league. Let’s focus on the Premier League.
Nope, well and truly beaten. No one was holding back anything.
Agreed – I mean come on guys it’s not like we had a chance of winning it, certainly not on that display.
With the Greeks winning it looks like we’ll be heading straight into the Europa League which could mean some of our kids get a decent run and some game time.
On our day we can beat anybody but sadly consistency seems to be the vital thing that’s been lacking in recent years.
Oh and fuck you injury gods!
I blame the hideous blue kit.
Thanks to that kit we managed to make Bayern Munich look as good as Sheffield Wednesday.
It was debuted very close to Halloween. Says it all really.
I’m so glad this kit is universally hated. It’s absolutely horrible .
The random colour strips at the bottom of the shirt do it for me. It’s awful.
I think out of the puma ones so far , I like 4 out of 6.
We seem destined to have shocking third/cup kits.
Why can’t we just have yellow and blue away kit FFS
Well, the second half was encouraging, I wonder what could have been if we went gung ho from beginning bcuz defending against that lot seems inconsequential….no worries though COYG
There is no shame losing to Bayern away from home Per, We are proud of you. Please just make sure you beat Spurs on sunday
You do not win the PL with the mindset that a 5-1 loss is OK.
But the team need our support not only in good times
There seems to be a fan following going on that we should bomb out of all competitions so we can win the PL.
Dangerous thinking.
I wonder if the injury crisis continues , if AW will get players in , in January ?
We lacked a bit of intelligence as well, too many mental mistakes (esp from Gabriel who was directly at fault for three of their goals).
You really cannot lay the blame at one person’s feet. You could argue that nobody closed down the ball in many instances. We looked lethargic and out of ideas. I truly believe that the occasion got to us, as it so often does, we’re one of the best ball retaining sides in Europe and Bayern were snuffing out every pass. We need that same drive. I’d rather the team learnt how Bayern pressed and took that with them.
Bit of a strange summation of the game if you ask me. Not sure where the players were supposed to have been more ‘courageous’ in their passing – maybe Per should look at how ‘courageous’ he was in trying to block the 2nd goal? btw – that doesn’t mean I suddenly think Per’s shit, just that it’s a bit rich to blame the defeat on the attacking part of the team’s performance, when the back 4 made a load of errors in that game. Also, I think it’s a bit worrying how badly we play if we concede the first… Read more »
A 4-0 win next Sunday will be the perfect antidote!
We lacked pace in defence and I also agree that blue kit is a jinx (not the pokemon)
It’s not couraged we lacked. It’s Koscielny, Bellerin, Walcott, and Ramsey. Walcott alone would’ve changed the game, give that Bayern played a high line and we had some sweet counter attack opportunities.
The lose isn’t too surprising. The only thing abnormal is to let 5 goals in but that tend to happen with 2 of your first team defenders out.
The truth is the real lost of courage is the old senile who invented fourth place as a trophy.
Haha. Wow. I must, however, say thank you. I was a bit down about our thrashing, but your laughable comment has helped. Gotta love the plastics.
gotta love the plastic fan kid that thought 25 year me as a gooner is false.
hmmm kids these days.
It’s amazing ho many plastic fans kids these days not even from George Graham era can be so perverted brai damage to this wenger’s idol thing.
Every time someone insult wenger for his failures, how fast they react to defend hi.
No wonder so many kroenke’s interns paid off spread to many internets opinions sites to counter the negativity to discredit their comfy being. Amazing.
Hargreaves kept doing me head in time and again because anything done by Bayern is BEST IN THE WORLD.
He’s no good at commentary /punditry .
Seems to have some needle for Arsenal too.
Yup, he’s awful. I swear there’s a clause in some commentators’ contracts where taking the piss out of Arsenal is required. Cameramen and producers too. Ever notice how they always portray Wenger as a whinging pr**k? 4th official, touchline rants, bottle-slams, shakes of the head, whatever. All negative. Other managers, however, ‘show fire’, ‘have passion’, ‘have a case/point to argue’, blah, blah. I mean, for fuck’s sake, they couldn’t stop zooming in on his coat zipper for an entire season. I’m convinced Wenger was having fun with it in the end. c**nts, the lot of them. Us against the world,… Read more »
It’s fair to say Campbell chances of doing a Coq is as good zero. Same Debuchy doing a Bellerine
We could wear that blue kit Sunday,have Mike Dean as referee and play Maroune Chamakh up front….we would still beat Spurs.
Some of our football in the 2nd half was sublime – how about Sanchez trying to keep up with Ozil for assist of the year. Personally I like this team too much to stay disappointed.
It’s okay. All is forgiven and forgotten. Did you lot not wipe the floor with United? Are you not on a 5 match winning streak – hopefully 6 by Monday morning?
You have given us much to cheer this season so I can oblige you this one – we are talking about the best team in Europe nay World here.
Only get the courage back and blow the North London pretenders to smitherins on Sunday.
*smithereens
You kinda sorta ruin a very good speech there, a wee bit with your pedatism. Pendticity?
Just realised you were correcting your self. Oh well, back to bed.
Players’ pride dictates that Per invoke intangibles like courage but the base truth is Bayern are a cut above us.
Question: Why do we need two goals at Olympiacos? Why is it not just pure goal differential? (i.e. if we beat Zagreb 5-0 and Bayern beats them 5-0, why would a 1-0 over at their place not suffice?)
If we win 1-0 at their place, then the goal differential between the two teams in question (Oly and Arse) would be equal (3-3 aggregate), so the next tiebreaker is away goals – they got 3. So we need to win by two goals to have a higher goal differential between us and them in matches played only between us and them. Not the whole group.
Anti soccer is not in Wenger’s dna.This is not the first time Arsenal have been so utterly
humiliated and neither willit be the last until the fm changes his philosophy or is replaced .
I aint no soccer coach but I know that common sense dictates you shd flood the md to stifle the BM players. Of course it aint easy.Especially since the gunners have a number of key players missing.
I hope the fm will force Wenger to acknowledge the limitations of the squad.Hopefully he will
know what needs to be done.Spurs will want to rub it in.
Ozil, Sanchez and Cech aren’t used to getting thrashed…..but this is how we roll against top sides away from home.
Beating the likes of Swan 3-0 is different from facing BM,a to p side in Euro soccer. I don’t know but Gabriel had not been playing for some and was expected to cover the bg. The latter is prone to speed and can be a liability in a one on one. This 5-1 defeat reminds me of the 6-1 loss to MU in 2001. There was this Stepanov,afine player in the Russian league. He was expected to form the cd of the then tema.needless to say there was little cohesion and they were humiliated.Cole and York were given acres of… Read more »
I agree with Per I think you take a couple of our regular players out of the equation and somehow the confidence level drops. There is (understandably) a degree of uncertainty with the addition of unfamiliar (relatively) players in like Campbell, Debuchy, and Gabriel. The confidence to pass or take players on isn’t there as usual. Not that the players coming in were that much poorer, Debuchy did alright. Cambell was OK. Gabriel was a bit out of depth (So much for all this talk about him replacing Metersecker who put in a decent performance I thought) OTOH people choose… Read more »
We were never going to take anything from Bayern away without Walcott and a League Cup back 4.
This team has been good at responding to negative results so far this season and I expect the same in the derby.
As long as we beat Spurs, all will be good again in Arse land.
Typical wenger’s naive shite.
When we expected to park the bus and play fast paced counter attack to get at least 1 point, nnnhhhh,
he didn’t change tactics to defensive minded and played instead campbell, girude, and worst debuchy.
I already had the prediction to a fortress in line up before that shoul’ve been with 4-2-3-1:
Cech
Chambers BFG Gab Mon
Coq Flam
Ozil Caz Gibbs
Sanchez
Lol Chambers would have gotten smoked at RB, he was barely able to perform last week against Sheffield. Playing Gibbs in midfield for a whole game is asking for trouble.
so debuchy you sticked with?
what a naive? arsene fc. hey?
Love the way the BFG always comments after losses saying ‘we were this and we were that’when he’s usually one of the worst players on the field!!!
carzola lost 2 clear goals, Giroud opportunities. I think we had chances to make it 4-3 towards the 80s. The last ten minutes could have seen a draw but the lads screwed up. I have suppported wenger throughout but it is kinda getting out of hand 1) lack of depth 2) why do we suffer serious injuries annually. training intensity? fragile players? 3) Mertesacker should have contested muller for the second goal 4) No point going for the offside trap when someone is close to you@gabriel 5) Carzola continues with his bad habit of losing goals that can really cost… Read more »
What we lacked was a CB who can prevent goals from going in, the BFG is finished if he ever even started, And poor debucey has played 2 games with this man whose attitude stinks in the last few weeks and lost both heavily. If debucey has to start against Spurs then I hope to god kosh and gab start with him . Now I know he would probably be able to cope with the slow Kane but this is the position winger needs to strengthen in Jan if possible or else pack his bags , no more of this… Read more »