Arsenal exit with pride intact
Arsenal knew that clawing back a two-goal deficit from the first leg of their last 16 tie would almost certainly prove beyond them — and it was.
Yet this was a Champions League exit with dignity. Arsene Wenger’s side could have crumbled after conceding to Bastian Schweinsteiger shortly into the second half to go three goals behind on aggregate but they rallied impressively.
With Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain leading the charge with a virtuoso, barn-storming display there were moments when you could believe they might pull off mission impossible.
Lukas Podolski brought them back into the contest with a brutal shot into the roof of the net and Bayern were briefly on the rack. Yet this is a side who have swept all before them at home and abroad for the past 18 months and they were too streetwise to be caught out.
Cynical fouls were made and the ball was kept before they missed the chance to add a late flourish, Lukas Fabianski keeping out Thomas Muller’s injury-time penalty.
Yet Arsenal can feel proud, despite extending a run of Champions League knock-out defeats at this stage to four successive seasons. If you keep drawing Barcelona and Bayern in the first round of the knock-out stage then early exits are almost guaranteed.
But there was no sign of disintegration. Wenger’s side were in this all the way, but they never seemed likely to cause a shock for what he had admitted before the game would have been his greatest ever European night.
The evening started in woeful fashion for the visitors with an embarrassing mix-up left them with just six substitutes.
Ryo Miyaichi had travelled with the club believing he was eligible as he was on their ‘B’ list of players — but the rules stipulate a player has to have been at the club for three continuous years to qualify. As the Japanese has spent time on loan he did not — and Wenger was left a man down before the start.
Yet in truth the youngster was never likely to make much of a difference here, not against this Bayern team.
The statistics are brutal, and the scale of Bayern’s domination has simply served to make them almost mundane.
In short, it has been a year since they failed to score, while they have won 30 of their last 32 games — the only defeat coming in a dead-rubber tie against Manchester City.
They could afford to leave Thomas Muller and Toni Kroos — players who would walk into pretty much any Premier League side — on the bench, and took care to pass the ball around Arsenal, probing and looking for chinks in the armour.
The first chance came after 20 minutes as Bacary Sagna found himself outnumbered on the right, allowing Franck Ribery to pick out a cross. He found Arjen Robben at the far post but the former Chelsea man volleyed the ball into the ground and over. He should have done better.
The hosts thought they had taken the lead when Javi Martinez tucked home Thiago Alcantara’s free-kick, but the goal was rightly ruled out for offside.
If there was hope for Arsenal it was in the form of Oxlade-Chamberlain. The only Englishman to start the game was everywhere, running at Bayern and at times terrifying the life out of them.
One such run ended with a cynical foul against him by Alcantara, with Olivier Giroud heading at goalkeeper Manuel Neuer from the resulting set-piece.
But Bayern were starting to turn the screw and Arsenal were struggling to live with them. Firstly Robben’s drive was blocked on the line by Laurent Koscielny, before Mario Mandzukic’s header landed on the roof of Fabianki’s net.
Indeed, it is almost frightening to think how Bayern will improve when Robert Lewandowski arrives from Borussia Dortmund next season to almost certainly replace Mandzukic. He certainly won’t struggle for chances playing in this team.
Mesut Ozil went off at half-time, struggling with a tight hamstring, and that sparked the game into life.
Bayern took the lead with a brutally simple goal, Ribery cutting inside and delaying his pass for Schweinsteiger to run on and finish with ease.
That seemed to be that but Podolski, who had been anonymous until then, had other ideas. True, it seemed rather as if he had fouled Philipp Lahm in the build-up but there was no doubt about the finish, a rasping, vicious drive into the roof of Neuer’s net.
Bayern were rattled, unsure whether to stick or twist. It even had the air of last year’s game, when Arsenal were in almost exactly the same position and just failed to press home their advantage.
Arsenal threw on Serge Gnabry to go for goals late on, but Bayern had enough in the tank to keep them at bay and could afford to have Fabianski save Muller’s spot-kick.
Now Arsenal can concentrate on the FA Cup — surely their best hope of a trophy — and the Premier League. Going out to this Bayern team brings with it no shame.
BAYERN MUNICH: Neuer 6, Lahm 7, Dante 5, Martinez 7, Alaba 6, Thiago 6, Schweinsteiger 7, Robben 6, Gotze 7 (Kroos, 59; 7), Ribery 8 (Muller, 85; 6), Mandzukic 6.
ARSENAL: Fabianski 8, Sagna 7, Mertesacker 7, Vermaelen 7, Arteta 6, Oxlade-Chamberlain 9 (Flamini, 84; 6), Podolski 7, Ozil 4 (Rosicky, 45; 7), Cazorla 7, Giroud 6.
Ref: Svein Oddvar Moen (Nor).
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