UEFA to blame for Arsenal’s impending exit from the Champions League

Wojciech Szczesny fouls Bayern Munich’s Arjen Robben

It’s a harsh rule. It’s a double punishment. This rules needs to be re-thought. It kills games. Unless the tackle showed intent to harm it should be a yellow and a penalty.

The referee also refused to send Boateng off for a second bookable offence. Weak decision making.

We see refereeing decisions dominating matches all of the time yet the football hierarchy refuses to use technology to assist them; but that’s a different debate. Barcelona and City had to suffer a referee whose league has not played a game in 4 months. Also, it’s the Swedish league! No disrespect to the Allsvenskan, but the level of competition is not at the standard of Champions League matches.

It’s incredibly frustrating as inconsistent refereeing spoiled what promised to be, and was delivering as, a wonderful spectacle. And that leads me onto why we should be proud.

Arsenal came out of the blocks like men possessed. They certainly dominated the first 10 minutes and looked to be giving Bayern a real match. Bayern were seeing more of the ball, but they didn’t look in control of the match. It looked very even. The players showed no fear and were proving they belong on the same pitch.

Our surprise starter, Sanogo, showed great movement, excellent link play, speed, strength and some wonderful touches. He brings a lot of what Giroud does but he has that additional dynamism Giroud does not, albeit tempered with youthful exuberance and inexperience. We have a real player on our hands here.

It was really tough to go down to 10-men against the best team in the world and to lose Gibbs to injury. Monreal is an extremely able deputy but he is limited and those limitations were exposed by Bayern although it should be noted Nacho performed admirably in the face of these exposures.

To go down to 10-men and only lose 2-0 against Bayern is a wonderful achievement in and of itself. Few teams could boast such a scoreline with 11 men and facing Bayern’s “reserves”.

Most impressive were the majority of the supporters in the ground. The joint-effort between the club and REDaction with the card display must be praised, but it would not have worked without the supporters in the ground getting involved. The display was a visual feast only surpassed by the audio atmosphere created by our supporters singing their hearts out. This is the sort of atmosphere we should create every match, and it is clear we can.

There is much to be proud about, and we should not be pointing fingers at anyone internally for this defeat. It is what it is, and there is nothing we could have done about it. UEFA need to sort out their refereeing system and demand consistency in decision making from their officials.

Coming back to beat Bayern is a tall order but it is something I have no doubt we will try to do. Address me as you please once I say this but I would be tempted to play a team good enough to not be embarrassed at the Allianz whilst resting as many key players as we can get away with. Getting past Bayern is almost mission impossible, and despite coming close to achieving mission impossible over the past few years against Bayern and Milan those were years we had almost nothing to play for. This season we have two competitions we have a great chance of winning and overexerting ourselves trying to achieve the unrealistic could be our undoing.

I want to see us prove to the world what we can do against a Bayern in an even fight but even if we went out with a 2-1 win at their place it would prove nothing to the world who would claim complacency on Bayern’s part again. It would be nice to show we have the minerals to beat them, but it would be even nicer to be fresher for the run in and make a real go of the FA Cup.