Aaron Ramsey says that this exit from the Champions League is particularly painful as it hasn’t come against one of Europe’s top sides.
In previous seasons Arsenal have gone out against Bayern Munich, Barcelona and an AC Milan side that wasn’t yet a pathetic shambles that would struggle in most Sunday leagues, but this time around defeat on away goals to Monaco is a bitter pill to swallow.
“We have to learn to keep ourselves in the game in the first leg,” said the Welshman. “That’s what we’ve been punished for again this year.
“We need to be a lot more wise in the first game then go to places like this and win. That’s the main thing that we need to put right as quickly as possible.
“We’ve always played teams like Bayern Munich and Barcelona,” he continued. “No disrespect to Monaco, but I thought we’d have a really good chance of qualifying. We were given a tough test from the first game.
“It’s not an easy place to come and their record has shown that. We’ve been full of confidence recently and we knew we could come here and give it a real go to maybe qualify, but we came a bit short in the end.”
His thoughts were echoed by Laurent Koscielny, who said, “We say same thing every year. Our first game is catastrophic. We have to put it right and play well in two games.”
Now the target is to finish top four so we have a chance to do this all over again next season!
So what’s to learn from this? Underestimate no one! Monaco did what they had to do to win and they did it well enough.
Also, Piers Morgan is a bellend. But that is known and understood by absolutely everyone though.
Ramsey should have started the game before ozil in my opinion, or at least came on at half time. But in the end we can credit the players for their performance tonight, but that same performance should have been shown at home! I will be happy with the FA cup, but i am disgusted we through this tie away in the first leg, at home too! Was the best chance we had in years of going through 🙁
So Glad you not the manager.
I refer you to Swish’s comment in the player ratings.
I just about through up reading that …
Ozil was excellent. Ramsay should have replaced Coq at hafltime.
we had no chance of biting Barca anyway … Man City are there for the taking in EPL. And we will bt Pool in FA cup final. Can’t wait for next year. too … we are back
I’m still tired this morning weighed down by the effort of the players but the nearly inevitable outcome! They should be proud and look forward to the domestic games. Chelsea still have to play ManU, Pool and us. It’s a long shot but if we keep our focus, we would very well run them close, very close. The only regret for the season is too often we have not been mentally ready for the games, Monaco first leg being the most recent example. Like Sanchez said, hopefully we have that winning mentality now and go on to finish this season… Read more »
I think this is the fourth year in a row we’ve done this (Inter, Bayern, Bayern, Monaco)? All but lose the tie in the first leg, and then produce a feat of heroic failure in the second leg.
The players worked hard tonight, and I feel for them. On the other hand, we’re not lucky with injuries, and for our squad, I think two competitions is just about right. Time to focus on the FA Cup and the league.
It’s Milan not Inter
It was AC Milan though, not Inter.
So it was. Cheers.
Also, Monaco are serial foulers, divers, and play Chelseaish non-football. Their manager is also registering his classlessness by going on and on with accusations of Arsenal’s arrogance.
In short, I will be cheering for whichever team plays them in the quarterfinals.
the inexperience of Ox cost us in the end, but I hope he’ll especially learn and develop into a future superstar for us. Gotta applaud the lads tonight for giving it a real go. Monaco’s defensive record is to be admired and we punished them twice, and should’ve probably done so even more.
Really do hope the manager drills this lesson into them today so in future everyones bit more wiser. Lots to look forward to still, hoping we can mount a late title challenge too! Gotta be optimistic 🙂
Give the Ox some credit for that goal tho…
Ox didn’t allow the first two goals…
Harsh on the Ox, but if he had not contributed to the first leg (i.e. hadn’t scored but also hadn’t led to the concession of the 3rd goal), we would have gone to extra time today.
Exactly. Whilst I’m not putting the blame squarely on the ox, ultimately he was a big part of why we had such a mountain to climb is all I’m saying. If he didn’t score, and we didn’t concede, we would’ve seen extra time yesterday. I don’t blame him for it, just his inexperience showed, as it did with Theo and Ramsey a couple years ago against Bayern. I just hope we keep this squad together for a few years as they will have learnt from all these mistakes and hopefully we can cope and progress further in the coming seasons.
That’s an ingenuous and over simplistic arguments. events don’t occur in a vacuum but rather in a continuous and contingent form. in plain language, every single events has different outcomes that create different paths depending on what happens next. the world is not that simple.
I think we were bad in first leg but desperately unlucky not to go though. However, we can’t really put Bayern and Barca games under the same category. They were better teams than us so there is little we could do. We should look forward and not backward.
The team is getting better on weekly basis and we should be really competitive for the next season.
Same thing we said last season and the season before.
And the season before.
And it has been true. I think the nadir was two seasons back, then we got tight and started picking up points, now we’ve started playing well and are on a good run.
I call that progress.
Sadly momentum doesn’t make the summer leap from one season to the next. Even winning the FA Cup is followed by a holiday or an International tournament to dull the feeling of superiority. We’ll be starting from scratch again next August. Do we have any sports psychologists on the payroll? We should have some sort of preparation before each game that reinforces the tactical plan for the games, and builds up the team’s belief in themselves as kickoff approaches so that we go out with an absolute determination to be winners. I know I’ve mentioned it a couple of times… Read more »
Guess I can settle for a league\ cup double then
Not sure how I feel tbh. If we’re in the same position next year will we have learned our lesson or will it just be a case of history repeating itself? I still think the players need either some or better mental preparation before big matches but that’s not Arsene’s style. I know we’ve added some quality to our ranks and that is showing but deep down, I suspect this team will always bottle it when push comes to shove. Hate to say it but that’s my honest opinion.
You can’t prepare mentally for underestimating the opposition. You may not be in the situation yet but I guarantee you’ll do it playing games with your kids. Only when they’ve really beaten you at something will you stop underestimating them. Yes the manager/coaches/team mates can tell them it’ll be tough but some of them just won’t take it in until it’s too late. We’ve seen every team in the whole football league do it before. The only thing we can do is hope that our players finally learn from this. It was a very different situation from Milan, Bayern and… Read more »
For fuck sake stop blaming fox, the game was dead.
An attacker can always lose balls, he has defenders behind him who should have done better
That’s well said. Fox is a horrible network, but they’re not to blame for our exit.
There is a reason for a stat named turnovers. And there is a reason that low numbers for that stat are considered good.
No-one’s arguing that giving the ball away is a good thing, more that it is only one thing amongst a sea of troubles.
And I think he knows the 3rd was his fault and has learnt from it.
Hope they all learn not to underestimate CL teams (or all teams even).
Lets be real for a second, with the likes of bayern still in the competition and our potential defensive brainfarts, we were never going to actually win in, still, with this 2-0 victory, we’ve salvaged some pride, kept the momentum going and we can now concentrate on finishing 2nd and winning the FA cup.
If we do qualify for the knockout stage next year, and we are playing at home for the first leg, we should just park the bus since we are going to win our away game anyway. Sigh.
I hope the team carry the belief that they brought to this game forward. I think they have addressed a number of weaknesses we’ve all known about and are on the cusp of doing something special. Onward!
I was so happy with the performance today. I was pretty surprised to come on arseblog and see all the negativity. The first game was awful and I was sick for days afterward. But this was a quality performance, no sense in ruing the first game now. Onwards and upwards!
Wiser is not repeating the same mistakes year in year out for five seasons granted this season we actually had a good chance to go further.
Complacency and naivity combined = not very wise.
BUt at least we won it and are on a continuous run of good form now.
Media still babbling about fourth spot. Have they not notice we are but 1 point off City? We won’t be the ones losing out if UEFA decides to cull Cl spots for England. What a bunch of plonkers.
Forget the 1st leg, tonight performance cant be called heroic failures ala seasons prior imo. We dominate possession, we dont over commits and we scores at good time. But we also dont create enough chances, while our counters and dribbles stopped/fouled.
What really hurts me most is that after Ramsey’s goal, we easily lose the initiative from those long balls that fails to reach our forward line and the time wasted upon their succesive clearances. Per really dont reach the end of our attacking set pieces anymore do he? Sad.
Kos’ comments were amazing though – said it as is
This. He needed to vent…and I think more and more points to the fact (effing unbelievably) we were not prepared for the first leg.
On a night like this.. Dare I say we missed Ol’Rozza.. That last substitution should’ve been him..
Yes, when Rosicky comes in, something good always happens.
Well, we need to target 1st place in our group next season. May be if we play away first the first leg monkey will be off our backs. AC Milan? Oh, no… that must be an exception!
Like Kos said, same sh*t every year.
Players who think “Same shit every year” soon start to think “Maybe I should move somewhere else”.
Didn’t we just do 8 years of that?
Let’s put the things into some perspective:Real Madrid tried for 6 years to overcome the last 16 hurdle: http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/season=2013/clubs/club=50051/history/index.html.
We will win this competition in the following 5 years. What Arsene did is to build a club, not a f..g 1-2 years collection of stars l
Can’t ignore the 1st leg. If we’d played with more caution and control we’d have beaten them over 2 legs without a doubt. Why the players panicked to try and win the tie in the first leg is a mystery. Still we were never going to win the thing so it will allows us to concentrate on getting 2nd and pushing the fur coat and no underwear Surrey boys all the way. What this does mean though is that we are still a couple of players short to compete in this competition and I expect a couple of players including… Read more »
Just do not understand why some fans now think of Theo as surplus to requirement. The guy came back from injury and has got little game time so far. Give him a break.
Arsene is obviously not happy with the mistakes made over the two legs at both ends of the pitch but seems especially peeved with the number of changes squandered. I’m pretty confident that the boat will be pushed out to ship in a ‘top, top quality’ striker in the summer, possibly part financed by the sale of Walcott so maybe even Cavani can be considered.
So many of the players say things like “We have to wiser”, “we need to focus”, “we need to be stronger mentally”, etc.. I know much blame falls on Wenger, but it has to fall on the players too for the breakdowns in the first leg, especially that last goal allowed. They are grown men and professionals and should be communicating on the field about keeping shape and not conceding needless goals. You see this type of thing often with Arsenal which drives me crazy when we have a one goal lead as time is running out we keep trying… Read more »
Maybe we should pick a Captain who will keep the players following the game plan and give them a bollocking when they need it? Do we have any players like that though? Maybe Wenger needs to go out and buy a Captain rather than a top, top, toppity top striker. Clearly the team forgets it’s instructions when they get excited, and equally clearly, Wenger doesn’t do much to stop it. He’s a watcher and a thinker, not a bollocker on the sidelines. If he can’t do it then he needs a Captain who will. We haven’t had one for a… Read more »
more or less hear something similar every season!
Don’t see any point in the being in the CL other than for the money. I have no expectations from this team and they never fail to disappoint me.
No change no chance.
We get an occasional win against a big team, and our presence in the competition makes us attractive to better players then we’d get otherwise. You wouldn’t be watching Alexis and Ozil each week if we weren’t in the CL.
Wenger need to be more vocal like sir alex.He definitely wont let the club his manage waiting for 9 years to get a throphy.come on wenger you have a very talented squad.show them who the boss,no one bigger than arsenal club.if them dont perform for a period of time chop,chop & chop them from the squad!