ARSENE IN THE LIONS’ DEN
And Pep’s superstars have won 13 on trot
THIS time last year, on a steamy night i nside the Allianz Arena, the great and the good in this Baye r n Munich team wobbled in a way we have never seen before.
Manuel Neuer l ooked at his captain Philipp Lahm to ask what could be done. Lahm looked at Arjen Robben. Robben looked at Toni Kroos. Kroos l ooked at Thomas Muller. Blank faces all round. Only Arsenal, with dramatic strikes from Olivier Giroud and Laurent Koscielny, had the answers in a powerful Champions League performance.
It was i mpossible not to get carried away, to will them on to score the goal that would put one of European football’s superpowers to bed. It was not to be.
Instead it ended for Arsenal in a way that it always seems to end for them these days — glorious failure. Bayern, under coach Jupp Heynckes, squeaked through and went on to win the trophy.
This evening, when Arsenal step into this giant hot-air balloon of a stadium on the outskirts of Munich, they will need the same again and more following a 2-0 first-leg defeat at the Emirates if they are to topple Pep Guardiola’s team.
‘Bayern are the big favourites in Europe, but I hope we can show we are very strong opponents,’ said Wenger when he arrived at the Allianz Arena last night.
‘The statistics are against us, but we have won 5-1 at Inter Milan and we have won pretty much everywhere in Europe.
‘So if we are 1-0 up it makes the result possible and that is what we will try to do. We scored twice against Everton on Saturday in the last five minutes so we can’t be nervous. We can be patient.’
History is not on Wenger’s side. No team in the Champions League have recovered from a 2-0 deficit in the first leg at home to outscore the opposition on their own turf.
Since Manchester City came here and beat Bayern 3-2 in December Guardiola’s team have won every game they have played at the stadium.
They have won their l ast 13 matches — including the Club World Cup in Morocco — and scored 46 goals. They are formidable.
Last Saturday they warmed up for this fixture by romping to a 6-1 victory at fifth-placed Wolfsburg in the Bundesliga. Guardiola’s team are unbeaten in 49 league games and are on course to win the title for the 24th time.
At every turn there is trouble ahead for Arsenal and it will not help if they are clobbered here. ‘It’s the moment of the season where we want to be consistent,’ Wenger said. ‘ Bayern won everything last season, but it’s hard to say what they will win this season.
‘I think they will win the title, but will they win the Champions League again? I don’t know. We want to win this game, but they have the quality to be right up there at the top.’
To do it, Arsenal must first get the ball off Bayern’s outstanding midfielder Toni Kroos, who scored for the second successive season at the Emirates and had 172 touches of the ball in the first leg.
That was more than the entire Arsenal midfield managed. He is a special player, one to watch again this evening as the champions step out in front of their own fans.
WENGERknows the 2-0 defeat in the first leg is virtually insurmountable, but he was at his compelling best when he spoke inside Bayern’s 70,000 capacity home.
He spoke of fulfilling his Champions League ambition, to get his hands on the trophy after years of near misses. The closest he has come was the agonising 2-1 defeat in the 2006 final by Barcelona in Stade de France. It is a respectable record.
Arsenal are through to an FA Cup semi- f i nal against Wigan next month, yet Wenger somehow made it sound as important as the Emirates Cup last night. ‘It is more vital for us to focus on the Premier League and, of course, the Champions League,’ Wenger said.
‘These are two very important competitions for us. The FA Cup will come later and we have a month to prepare for that.
‘ Over the weekend, against Everton, we produced a performance that we wanted. We have not had an easy run in the FA Cup. We’ve played Tottenham, Liverpool and Everton all at home and it’s three tricky ties.’
European football has a different feel, an intensity that is unrivalled i n common- or- garden Premier League fixtures. This will be a difficult evening for his players, particularly Mesut Ozil, who was booed by Germany fans during last week’s 1-0 victory over Chile in Stuttgart.
It came after his missed penalty in the first leg of Arsenal’s clash against Bayern and he must be ready for the inevitable whistles that will ring around this stadium.
‘He was affected by his performance because he missed the penalty, but he has recovered,’ Wenger said. ‘I’m confident he will have a good game.’
To win here, Ozil will have to be better than good.