Misfiring Arsenal punished by Monaco

Arsenal 1 Monaco 3

One of the banners in the corner housing Monaco’s colour-coordinated fans thanked Arsene Wenger for turning the club into an “impassable rock”. Yet it would be far too kind on Arsenal to suggest they have just been taken apart by a really elite team. Monaco had scored only four times in the group stages and never won on their foreign excursions in the Champions League’s knockout rounds. This was about as obliging a draw as Arsenal could have hoped for and the fact they turned it into such a terrible night’s work must be deeply worrying for a club with their ambitions.

Olivier Giroud certainly chose a bad night to have one of his least distinguished matches in Arsenal’s colours. Monaco’s second goal, rifled in by Dimitar Berbatov, was a personal ordeal for Per Mertesacker and it would need a generous mind to clear David Ospina of any culpability for the first one. Yet this was a collective failure and it was remarkable to see a team at the highest level of competition being so susceptible to the counter-attack.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s curling shot just as the match ticked into stoppage time briefly threatened to alter the complexion before the second leg on March 17th. At this level, however, no side can play with this kind of scattered thinking and expect to get away with it. A couple of minutes later, the same player lost the ball in midfield and the substitute Yannick Ferreira-Carrasco hared away to complete the scoring. Arsenal had been painfully naive. It is far from the first time we have seen these shortcomings and from here it will need some kind of football miracle to make it into the quarter-finals.

Leonardo Jardim’s team had looked ripe to be beaten during the opening exchanges. The number-crunchers had worked out after the first eight minutes that the Monegasques had put together only eight passes whereas Arsenal set off as though affronted by the statistic they had gone out at this stage of the competition in each of the last four seasons.

The problem for Arsenal was how quickly they lost their early momentum. Monaco might be only fourth in Ligue 1, 11 points back in Lyon’s wing mirrors, but they do have the joint best defence in the division. Their tactics seemed to be based around taking the sting out of the occasion then trying to pick off Arsenal on the break, and by half-time they were probably entitled to think everything was going according to plan. Maybe it would have been a more straightforward night for Arsenal had the officials noticed what happened in the 11th minute when Wallace used his right hand to lever the ball away from Mesut Ozil in the penalty area.

Wenger, however, was entitled to expect more from his players. Santi Cazorla’s driving runs from midfield were a prominent feature but the Spaniard largely stood out because Arsenal’s other creative players were so subdued. Passes were misplaced and Monaco were encouraged to start playing with more adventure. Their goal still came as a jolt bearing in mind the cleanness of David Ospina’s gloves until that moment, after 39 minutes, when Geoffrey Kondogbia let fly from 25 yards and the ball deflected off Per Mertesacker to spin away from Arsenal’s goalkeeper. Should Ospina have done better?

The deflection was undoubtedly cruel and, in mitigation, the ball was hit with considerable power. Yet there was still a relatively long distance between the ball changing direction and hitting the net and it would not be unreasonable to think Ospina might have at least tried to improvise.

What could not be disputed was that it was a sloppy goal to concede. The attack started because Daniel Welbeck tamely lost a challenge to Almamy Toure on Arsenal’s left and the home players were guilty thereafter of too much backing off and not enough going to the ball. Joao Moutinho, who showed some lovely touches in midfield, moved the ball inside to Kondogbia and there was an alarming amount of space for him to look up, take aim and swing his left foot.

Giroud will not want to be put through a replay of those two chances early in the second half when he seemed to mistake the frame of the goal for a barn door, and those misses were fundamental to the story because Monaco’s second goal arrived shortly afterwards. Again it felt like such a typical Arsenal goal to concede, starting with them on the edge of the opposition penalty area. As soon as the attack broke down they were vulnerable. Mertesacker made a wretched decision to leave his defence to come for a ball he was never going to reach and suddenly it was a two-on-one break. Martial slipped his pass into Berbatov’s path and the former Spurs man finished emphatically.

Giroud’s night deteriorated even further when Sanchez tested Danijel Subasic and the rebound fell for a player who had scored eight times in his last 11 matches. This was his worst miss of the night and soon afterwards there were loud cheers when the electronic board signalled that Theo Walcott was replacing him.

Walcott quickly had a chance to pull one back but his shot came back off Subasic and it probably summed up Arsenal’s night that Welbeck’s follow-up effort was heading in until it struck his colleague. Oxlade-Chamberlain’s goal was a beauty but Arsenal continued to unravel. Guardian Service