Humiliated
Wenger urged to quit by fans after Arsenal suffer one of worst ever Champions League defeats
It is spring in European football’s greatest competition and as usual at the Emirates Stadium they are pulling down the shutters on Champions League football for another year – lights out, doors closed, dissent murmured and see you again next season for more of the same.
But can it really be the same next year? The seventh successive round-of-16 exit was painful and humiliating for Arsène Wenger in a new way, a 10-man team still attacking in suicidal fashion en route to conceding 10 goals over two legs against one of the modern game’s most indomitable sides – in front of an Emirates that was emptying at a rate.
It felt like a mini-apocalypse even in these troubled times of late for Wenger, days when the support turn upon each other, as they did again on this occasion, and all anyone can agree upon is that it has to change.
There was a dreadful symmetry to the two 5-1 defeats away and at home and something of the schoolboy-team thrashing about the way Douglas Costa and then Arturo Vidal added three goals between them in the last 12 minutes.
Wenger’s team were caught between attacking in search of goals they knew they could not score and defending against a team they knew they could not stop.
Yet watching hollow-eyed from the bench, the Arsenal manager had already made up his mind who was to blame and it may not surprise you to hear this was not the fault of anyone connected to Arsenal. The Greek referee’s decision to send off Laurent Koscielny was, Wenger said “unexplainable” and “scandalous” and his team were “in great shape”.
Arguing with Wenger in these circumstances is futile because already he has reordered history to suit his hypothesis: a team fighting against impossible odds dealt a monstrous injustice, and damn all those in the room who point reluctantly to an established pattern of failure.
In the Clock End they briefly sang for majority owner Stan Kroenke to “get out of our club” and those who had them waved the “Wenger Out” placards, always carried to be deployed in an emergency.
On the bench it looked like Alexis Sánchez, withdrawn in the second half, might have been disguising a laugh, although at what or who it was not clear.
Yet he will know that at this delicate point in his relationship with the club every public act is to be subject to scrutiny and one gets the impression that he does nothing without a reason.
As ever, Wenger was impervious to the criticism, finishing his press conference with a shot at Bayern Munich’s financial dominance of German football, “they take the players they want, they are a bit lonely in the market”.
He lamented the absence of Koscielny for crucial periods of the home and away legs. In Munich he was injured and here he was sent off on the say-so of the additional assistant referee, who advised referee Tasos Sidiropoulos that he should upgrade a yellow card for a foul on Robert Lewandowski in the 53rd minute to a red card.
Having thrown an arm across Lewandowski in the box, for which he was penalised with a spot-kick, it was then judged that Koscielny had made no honest attempt to play the ball and was not to benefit from the mercy of the new rules on denying opportunities to score.
At that point Arsenal led the game 1-0 and trailed 5-2 in the tie, but went on to concede five starting with Lewandowski’s penalty.
It had begun in unpromising circumstances, with Mesut Özil, who missed the defeat by Liverpool on Saturday with illness, stepping up to the bench to replace Alex Iwobi, who was declared too ill to play. Then Danny Welbeck, who had played a full part in the warm-up also succumbed to illness and Olivier Giroud was promoted from the bench to replace the Englishman.
Moved to the left side to accommodate Giroud, Sánchez was obviously the subject of some interest. But the first half did not centre upon the left, rather it was Arsenal’s right, where Theo Walcott and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain were their team’s best attacking threat. Wenger had spotted something in the Bayern left side, and they targeted David Alaba remorselessly.
There is something about the trajectory of Walcott’s career that could have told you that in the first half of a second leg, at home in a tie Arsenal were trailing 5-1, he would be the man to show. It was admirable as well as frustrating in equal measure for those who wish for more from him.
Manuel Neuer remained in position, his arms above his head, long after Walcott had powered away from Franck Ribéry, got a rebound off Giroud’s heel and rifled a rightfoot shot past the great German goalkeeper. Wenger claimed a penalty for a tackle by Xabi Alonso on Walcott on 32 minutes, but the Spanish midfielder got enough on the ball, with his studs.
Bayern were rocking a bit but held on until half-time and it was after Giroud had missed his second decent chance that the penalty came. After that it seemed Bayern could score at any moment.
Arjen Robben seized on an error by Sánchez to score a second after a poor goal-kick from David Ospina had put his team in trouble. Lewandowski hit the post before the next three went in.
The first was brilliantly done by Costa, who took his time before cutting in from the right and bending one in the far corner with his left. Vidal’s two goals were scored against an Arsenal team unable even to hold a defensive line, and desperate for the end.