Running scared again (and clutching at straws)

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Date	Time	C	Opponent	F	A	R	S
08 Mar	7:45 PM	CL	Barcelona (A)	1	3	Lost

Before carrying on any further, I am not interested in labouring on referee Massimo Busacca's frankly shocking performance for too long. It was indeed as I have just labelled it, worthy of any homer you will ever see (and you will probably see being played out again at Old Trafford come Saturday evening just so you know).

I am also not particularly keen on purring over Barcelona much. After all, you have many other an avenue from which you can tease out such eulogies. In any case, yesterday's show, a show of 18 on goal, 700-odd passes and 72% possession speak for themselves.

What I will focus on, however, is the disappointment, the agony, the dawning of reality that we need to stand up to and realise. The fact is, and we have begun to realise this once and for all over the last few weeks, some individuals in the squad are simply out of their depth, not good enough to carry the fight against the very best. Could you say that about anyone out there in a Barca shirt last night? Doubtful.

Never mind winning or losing. Losing: it can happen against anyone, and it can certainly happen at Barcelona. But this was a foregone conclusion only minutes after a ball was kicked at Camp Nou.

This was a night where, from our viewpoint, the good never got going and where the bad reared their ugly head, having been shown up horribly time and time again.

I just wonder whether Arsène Wenger can be bothered to put as much effort into highlighting, to himself if anything, his players' glaring shortcomings as he does pointing the finger at referees and their officials these days. You had it against Sunderland following a derisory performance with the exception of the 10-15 minutes with the decisions that had irked Wenger and the rest of us. And you had it again last night. Robin van Persie's dismissal having just got back into the tie out of nowhere was, as the Dutchman rightly put it, a joke. But to say that more than a few eyebrows will be raised with Wenger's insistence that we would have gone through with eleven on the pitch is an understatement, bearing in mind that we could only complete half of our passes, and bearing in mind that we failed to muster one single shot at the opposition's goal in nearly a hundred minutes.

I mean, if those I watched that sinking ship rendition with could all see it; punters, barmen, friends, as well as yours truly, why couldn't the manager for heaven's sake?!

Where was he at half-time after the shambles that was the first half? A half played in our own half virtually in its entirety! Forget about solid defensive containment, we were anything but. Done time and again with a stupidly high defensive line, flying in with reckless challenges against twinkle-toed geniuses, and infuriatingly, catastrophically "playing our football" in and around our bloody box! It was therefore no surprise that the disastrously anonymous Cesc Fàbregas' back-heel on the stroke of half-time set us on the way to being well and truly buried. What had followed was good vision from Andres Iniesta, and a stupendous piece of skill by Lionel Messi for the goal, but it would and should have been avoided but for the Captain's best piece of skill for the night! Did we cut that out after the interval? Hell no, if anything, we got "better", with Laurent Koscielny excelling in his makeshift playmaker role for Messi and co!

I could go on and on and on.

At Gaël Clichy and Bacary Sagna both getting it horribly wrong throughout, tucking in horrendously inappropriately and giving the ever-marauding Barca fullbacks all the time in the world to stretch our wobbly back four. A wobbly back four where Johan Djourou tried, but ultimately tired, to keep secure, and which was left so exposed by the invincibly incompetent Abou Diaby.

At Nicklas "I'm the man" Bendtner demonstrating once and for all that he sure does talk a good game, better than any game of football he's likely to ever play. Lee Dixon was spot on when he baulked at the Dane's cock-up when through on goal in the dying moments: "having just come on, he took the touch like my grandma. He's talked about it all week and the time he could actually make a big name for himself, he fluffs his lines!" Need I say more?

At the invariable tendency to chuck the ball away within moments of retrieving it from Barcelona long before Bendtner's unsavoury arrival. As if the they needed any help in getting the ball?! A recipe for disaster. And so it proved.

The manager had accentuated the need to show the world that his players were a different team to the one that succumbed to the same opposition so meekly last year. And, in some ways, we probably have improved, enjoying the greatest night the young Emirates Stadium had so far witnessed following the first leg.

But not near enough, not for this level. In many ways, there was the same fear, the same anonymity, the same lack of street wisdom in the very big games that has dogged us for years, and will continue to do so should the manager not act remedially and decisively this summer. And in doing so, getting rid of the sheer amount of dead wood present at the Club, dead wood you will not have found on the opposite side last night, as I pointed out at the top of the page.

I repeat, defeats are part and parcel of football and Barcelona are a brilliant team, the best side in the world. But they are not unbeatable, not without their weaknesses, as no one is, and as others have shown before and might yet show this season (or else they'd win everything every single year).

People can say all they like about the shambolic Swiss referee, the possession that Barca had, their brilliant mastery over a football and so on. But the players of Arsenal FC set themselves up to be dominated from the outset and they played it perfectly.

And for that, they, and we, can have many regrets.

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