The Demon of Carthage wrote:

srigooner wrote:In the unlikely scenario that Arsenal do end up winning this, against all sense of logic and reason and expectation, I can only come to the conjecture that the Fraudiola (no pretense wrt how much I dislike him) was simply doing a big, big favor to (what RG reckons will be) his future club.

Give yourselves some credit, dude. You won fair and square. Congratulations.

Wenger won the battle of intelligence tonight. Pep can go back to thrashing scrubs in the Bundi.

Oh I prefer saving credits till the final whistle.

Thanks for your pleasant words here, in the mean time!

LADSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Bellerin MOTM,
1st min he knicked the ball off Lewa's toes
Last min he provides to ozil to seal the game.

Also, special mention to Theo and all those doubters who argued with me at the beginning of the season about how important he will be this season.

Pep got schooled by Professor

Hapless_Hans wrote:Playing ourselves to sleep

Great last half hour by Arsenal. Overall great defending too.

Don't worry, we'll definitely do the bending over when we visit in a couple of weeks.

https://vine.co/v/e9E9TqBdx5F

savage

Pirloisjesus wrote:Pep got schooled by Professor

That's a tad too far

FFS we're still bottom of the table on H2H

Let's get this out the way: Bayern were robbed and can feel hard done by. The refs missed a blatant pen at the end of the first half, and Giroud's goal was handball. We got a huge load of luck.

Nonetheless, a great win for us. We set out from the start to defend and counter and we did it well. Early on we weren't compact enough and Bayern were getting a lot of room on the edge of our box, but Cech made a great save. Our counter-attacks were good, but we didn't take advantage of the pace we had. Then Neuer makes that save/Walcott misses a great chance.

The second half saw us have less threat on the break. For some reason, though, Douglas Costa swapped flanks. He was roasting Bellerin all throughout the first half and that looked like Bayern's best bet of scoring, but they swapped him over and tried to get Muller in behind Monreal. Fortunately Monreal was outstanding.

In a way, that might have contributed to the second goal. Bellerin had less defending to do, and could reserve some energy for that last burst of pace at the end of the game.

Wenger had a great game. Got his tactics right and made the right subs. Giroud bullied Bayern's defence when he came on, and Alexis had a terrible game and was losing the ball in poor areas.

It was a great collective effort. Cech and Monreal were our best players, Alexis our worst. Bellerin had a poor game defensively but made a big difference offensively.

Just need to do it all again in Germany now

Absolutely buzzing

Yeap credit to our players but we were lucky. I guess to beat this Bayer side, every team needs some luck and we had it today. Now to do it in Germany

One of our best performance of the season. Easily.

Tactics were absolutely spot on.

We can get 9 points lads from zagreb n olympiacos wins. We can do this ffs

From 1-2 points to 9 points quite a jump

GoonerJay29 wrote:Let's get this out the way: Bayern were robbed and can feel hard done by. The refs missed a blatant pen at the end of the first half, and Giroud's goal was handball. We got a huge load of luck.

Meh. Only ourselves to blame.

GoonerJay29 wrote:
The second half saw us have less threat on the break. For some reason, though, Douglas Costa swapped flanks. He was roasting Bellerin all throughout the first half and that looked like Bayern's best bet of scoring, but they swapped him over and tried to get Muller in behind Monreal. Fortunately Monreal was outstanding.

In a way, that might have contributed to the second goal. Bellerin had less defending to do, and could reserve some energy for that last burst of pace at the end of the game.

Wenger had a great game. Got his tactics right and made the right subs. Giroud bullied Bayern's defence when he came on, and Alexis had a terrible game and was losing the ball in poor areas.

didn't get either why Costa went to the right.

About the tactics being spot on, weeeell I don't know. I think the switch from sitting back to pressing worked great in the first half.
Still don't think the absolute passivity, sitting back over large stretches was a good thing. You were lucky we weren't sharp enough, and most of all you had an outstanding central defensive unit in Merte, Koscielny and Cech.

Reading Jay's post, I realized where my cynicism had gone.

No, we have enough games where refs shit on us. I do not feel sorry one bit for Fraudiola or his team feeling hard done in any way. To do so, in my opinion, is taking credit away from the performance our lads put in.

I said it after Watford. I wanted to see a performance worthy of pride. And the lads put in that shift today. I am pretty sure we also had the bigger chances, in terms of big saves pulled off by Cech vs. Neuer. So no, I don't think Bayern were robbed in any way.

Pirloisjesus wrote:From 1-2 points to 9 points quite a jump

You're learning about RG

Hapless_Hans wrote:

GoonerJay29 wrote:Let's get this out the way: Bayern were robbed and can feel hard done by. The refs missed a blatant pen at the end of the first half, and Giroud's goal was handball. We got a huge load of luck.

Meh. Only ourselves to blame.

GoonerJay29 wrote:
The second half saw us have less threat on the break. For some reason, though, Douglas Costa swapped flanks. He was roasting Bellerin all throughout the first half and that looked like Bayern's best bet of scoring, but they swapped him over and tried to get Muller in behind Monreal. Fortunately Monreal was outstanding.

In a way, that might have contributed to the second goal. Bellerin had less defending to do, and could reserve some energy for that last burst of pace at the end of the game.

Wenger had a great game. Got his tactics right and made the right subs. Giroud bullied Bayern's defence when he came on, and Alexis had a terrible game and was losing the ball in poor areas.

didn't get either why Costa went to the right.

About the tactics being spot on, weeeell I don't know. I think the switch from sitting back to pressing worked great in the first half.
Still don't think the absolute passivity, sitting back over large stretches was a good thing. You were lucky we weren't sharp enough, and most of all you had an outstanding central defensive unit in Merte, Koscielny and Cech.

To both of you: you make your own luck.

Get in There you Beauts

That central unit plays better when we sit deep, though. I agree that playing that way is risky against teams as good as Bayern - I said as much after the United game - but at the same time this way suits us better at the moment because we haven't mastered the high press yet. It's not a tactic we use consistently, so it's best not to use it in such a big game. We at least had success playing this way before.

Btw, are Bayern fans sick of Petr Cech by now?

No team has ever managed more shots on target Vs a Pep Guardiola side in the UCL than the 8 Arsenal mustered tonight.

GoonerJay29 wrote:
Btw, are Bayern fans sick of Petr Cech by now?

Well, it may be asking for too much, but I hope we can ask this question on the night of 04 Nov.

Love cech man

so good to have a WC keeper

Only beating Mourinho makes me happier than beating Fraudiola.

Thank you Arsenal for this wonderful night.

Just to sober us up a bit: Ramsey likely to be out for another few weeks after doing his hammy yet again. Right when he was showing signs of getting his goalscoring form back, too (typically).

On the brighter side: Ozil. Fantastic effort from him. Did his defensive duties on the left, and was there at the end to score. Don't want anyone accusing him of being lazy ever again.

One more downside (or is it?): after this perfomance, big clubs are going to try and raid some of our best players. If they keep performing during the season.

I hope the club is in a strong enough position to deny them unlike the banter era Arsenal.