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UEL Round of 32 2nd Leg: Arsenal (1) v Benfica (1) | Thursday February 25 | KO: 17:55 UTC | BT Sport

Who Advances To The Round of 16?


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Mo Britain

Doom Monger
When people criticise Auba they don't seem to understand how few goals there are in this team. Laca is not going to rack up big numbers, neither is Pepe. Saka has more goals in him as has Martinelli (if he'll ever play him). Our midfield has very few goals in it.
 

Big Poppa

Established Member
Trusted ⭐

Country: USA

Player:Saliba
The negativity toward this result is so strange to me.

Poor recent form or not, Benfica is unquestionably a PL-level team and not some bum Austrian farmers like Sp**s were playing.

We categorically outplayed them over both legs and widely outchanced them in open play but had some poor finishing from Auba in the first leg and they scored off a BS penalty (handball that deflected off ESR's body), a wonder free kick, and then a blown backpass.

On merit, the team played well and this should have been a comfortable result but Benfica were opportunistic with the few chances/situations they had. Stuff like this happens in small sample sizes but we did well to bear down and pull it out.

I could be missing something but I don’t think anyone feels negative about the result. The performance maybe but not the result.

There will always be differences of opinion about the approach, and evidently that matters more to some than others, but what everyone here has in common is the wish for Arsenal to be a success.

I personally don’t agree that we categorically outplayed them. We had the lead twice, they had the lead twice. Lots of sideways and backwards passing to feet means little.

We had just 2 shots on target in the first game and 7 attempts overall. We were hardly peppering their goal. In the second we had 5, and that’s from a total of 1400 passes over the 2 games. All strikers miss chances, refs and players make mistakes, but we are giving ourselves zero margin for error and won’t get away with it against better opposition (of which there are many).

We played like we have done all season i.e retaining the ball and attacking down the sides. Again. Don’t get this twisted thinking I and others aren’t delighted with the result. Just want to see us play with more urgency from the start.
 

Riou

In The Winchester, Waiting For This To Blow Over

Country: Northern Ireland

Player:Gabriel
What a great read this thread was, brilliant stuff!

An Arsenal win and the Arteta trolls have to pretend to be happy through their tears.

What a lovely evening.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

There was another post after Auba scored his second, everyone was celebrating, one poster was like "Calm, remember last season." ...that got me!
 

Big Poppa

Established Member
Trusted ⭐

Country: USA

Player:Saliba
Uh i guess I'm in a different parallel universe then. In mine we advanced despite gifting them two goals via massive errors.

Haha I could’ve worded it better. I just meant that we take our foot off the gas when it’s 0-0 or only 1-0, meaning that any mistake we make is magnified as it let’s the opposition get ahead or back into the game.
 

Riou

In The Winchester, Waiting For This To Blow Over

Country: Northern Ireland

Player:Gabriel
A hard fought 4-3 win, could end up being significantly more important for us than if we rolled them over 4-0.

The belief of coming through a game when you are tested will give us that extra bit of confidence when we get tested again, this result could be massive!
 
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CaseUteinberger

Established Member

Country: Sweden
If the Wenger and Özil Out posters could be accused of having an agenda behind their posting then the Arteta Out brigade has surely learnt well.

**** me, Arteta and the team can do nothing right. We win a game then the other team is always ****, has key players injured, gifted us the win. If we lose it is Arteta made mistakes, manages the players incorrectly etc. If we lose and it isn’t big enough it is because the other team didn’t really want to score 5 which they could easily have done. It’s like some are simply unable to have a neutral, nuanced and indeed realistic view of things.
 

CaseUteinberger

Established Member

Country: Sweden
Are you still distraught that Arsenal won a vital knockout European cup game in dramatic circumstances?

Thinking of you x
Remember you must HATE Arteta as that is the only way to show your LOVE for Wenger! Once you get into that mindset things become easier. Then only defeats under Arteta are acceptable. You can ***** and moan on AM and rack up likes from your likeminded internet friends.
 

Rasmi

Negative Nancy

Country: England
If the Wenger and Özil Out posters could be accused of having an agenda behind their posting then the Arteta Out brigade has surely learnt well.

**** me, Arteta and the team can do nothing right. We win a game then the other team is always ****, has key players injured, gifted us the win. If we lose it is Arteta made mistakes, manages the players incorrectly etc. If we lose and it isn’t big enough it is because the other team didn’t really want to score 5 which they could easily have done. It’s like some are simply unable to have a neutral, nuanced and indeed realistic view of things.
Arteta and the team have not had a good season, hence they done more bad than good this season. If he wins this competition then I would say I was wrong and he deserves credit. But scrapping through last 32 in the Europa league doesn’t prove anything

If the Arteta lovers didn’t bring the standards to the bottom to find a way to praise him, then they wouldn’t be ridiculous much
 

dashsnow17

Doesn’t Rate Any Of Our Attackers
Trusted ⭐
I think my biggest take-away from that game is that Calum Chambers is a player at Arsenal Football Club. You really do learn something new every day.
 

Melquiades

Active Member
I could be missing something but I don’t think anyone feels negative about the result. The performance maybe but not the result.

There will always be differences of opinion about the approach, and evidently that matters more to some than others, but what everyone here has in common is the wish for Arsenal to be a success.

I personally don’t agree that we categorically outplayed them. We had the lead twice, they had the lead twice. Lots of sideways and backwards passing to feet means little.

We had just 2 shots on target in the first game and 7 attempts overall. We were hardly peppering their goal. In the second we had 5, and that’s from a total of 1400 passes over the 2 games. All strikers miss chances, refs and players make mistakes, but we are giving ourselves zero margin for error and won’t get away with it against better opposition (of which there are many).

We played like we have done all season i.e retaining the ball and attacking down the sides. Again. Don’t get this twisted thinking I and others aren’t delighted with the result. Just want to see us play with more urgency from the start.

There are things the manager can control and things the manager can't control.

The manager can control the defensive setup and put the players on the pitch in a formation to score goals in open play.

They were parking the bus in a low block. It's not easy to break down and it's never going to look pretty, but we scored four quality buildup play goals against them in 2 games. Plus had another lost to a marginal offside call. Plus lost another when Auba missed the easiest sitter of his career.

Conversely, Benfica generated nothing from open play. Nothing in buildup. Nothing on counterattack. Almost no chances of any sort.

In open play, this was a 4-0 result for us. What we did in terms of strategy worked decisively.

But the manager can't control a BS handball penalty when a cross is whipped in right at ESR. Can't control them taking a wonder free kick. Can't control Ceballos making a huge individual mistake and fluffing a back pass for a breakaway goal. And those situations and their ability to capitalize created the 'back and forth' tight nature of these fixtures.

We've had some awful performances this year. But I don't believe we played that badly or did anything particularly 'wrong' in these games.
 
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