Arsène Wenger betrayed the depths of his anger and anguish after Arsenal were pressed towards the Champions League exit by Monaco, accusing his team of “suicidal” defending and losing their “nerve and rationality”.Arsenal slumped 3-1 in the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie to stare at a fifth successive exit at this stage of the competition on a night when all of the recent positivity, hope and excitement turned to dust.
They were fancied to beat an injury-hit Monaco, who are fourth in Ligue 1, but the game followed a sadly familiar pattern, with Arsenal dropping physically in the second half and over-committing in the search to get back on level terms.
Monaco twice picked them off on the counterattack, most devastatingly in the 94th minute, when the substitute Yannick Ferreira Carrasco raced through unchallenged to restore his team’s two-goal advantage. Moments earlier the Arsenal substitute Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain had made it 2-1 but he lost the ball for Ferreira-Carrasco’s breakaway as he tried to make something happen in the Monaco half.
Wenger even suggested that complacency might have been a factor in the defeat. “It looks, when you have not that kind of sharpness, anything is possible,” the Arsenal manager said. “We were not at the level defensively. We were a bit unlucky as well because the first goal was deflected. But on the second and third goals, we were suicidal.
“We had the luck to come back to 2-1 and you do not have the right to give a goal away the way we did. That makes our task in the second leg extremely difficult. It looks like we have lost our nerves and our rationality on the pitch. The heart took over the head and, at this level, it doesn’t work. Mentally we were not ready, not sharp enough to get into this game. We paid for it.”
Arsenal 1-3 Monaco: five talking points from the Emirates Stadium
A host of Arsenal players underperformed, with the centre-forward Olivier Giroud missing three gilt-edged chances early in the second-half before his substitution on the hour. But Wenger made it plain that he was most angry with his defenders.
Per Mertesacker, the World Cup-winning Germany centre-half, lost his bearings completely on Monaco’s second goal – which was scored by Dimitar Berbatov – and Wenger was unhappy at the way the defender turned his back on Geoffrey Kondogbia’s 38th-minute shot for the first. The ball deflected off Mertesacker to beat the flat-footed David Ospina.
“Kondogbia was free to come and have a shot but the ball is deflected by Per,” Wenger said. “He turned a little bit and it deflected. That is the most dangerous deflection, if you don’t face the ball. Oxlade-Chamberlain is very disappointed [with Monaco’s third goal] but it can happen that you lose a ball 70 yards from goal. It doesn’t mean that it has to be a goal. You have defenders behind you.
“Giroud had an off night. He missed easy chances and it looked like it was not one of his best games. But our weakness was more mentally. We rushed our game. We knew at half-time it was important not to concede a second goal and we were too impatient. This is a game of 180 minutes and if you look at the second and third goals, it’s difficult to explain how we conceded them. You cannot afford that.
“The players wanted to do well and come back. At 2-1 they thought: ‘Let’s come back to 2-2’ and they forgot the elementary cautiousness. The balance of the team wasn’t right because we had always to attack and when we lost the ball we were exposed. Physically we dropped in the second half in midfield and we were more exposed and, at the back, it was not one of our best nights.”
Leonardo Jardim, the Monaco manager, suggested Arsenal’s second-half travails came as no surprise to him. “We analysed their games and we knew that they were stronger in the first half of games,” he said. “We know they struggle a bit after the interval. We were very organised in the first 45 minutes and that enabled us to take advantage of the space we were given in the second half on the counterattack.”
Berbatov said: “Arsenal is a good team but we probably wanted the win more than them. We fought all over the pitch, won our challenges and scored the goals. I don’t think Arsenal can allow themselves to underestimate our team but, if they did, then it’s up to them.”
David Hytner, Guardian
