Bayern vs Arsenal: Instant Reaction

Thoughts at full time

Headline: Keeping it tight works, until it doesn’t

It was almost a perfect game plan from Arteta and Arsenal.

That is until Joshua Kimmich lost Gabriel Martinelli and beat Takeherio Tomiyasu to a cross to slam home a header that would end up being enough to end Arsenal’s Champions League dreams.

That was the biggest chance of the night for either team and it was just a 35% chance. Outside of that Arsenal had two chances that was higher than 10%, Bayern had 2 others, all three were under 25%.

It was a game where both coaches kept it close and the one big opportunity fell to Bayern and they converted it.

I would bet that this was not far from how Mikel Arteta would have wanted things to go for most of the night but with the chance falling to Arsenal instead of Bayern.

Arsenal have run this game plan before to great success this season, it just didn’t work today, and with the finest margins at the top of the game that is all it takes to be sent home with nothing.

I think you also have to tip your cap to Bayern. They showed an amazing ability to kill a game with their game management and ability to not let Arsenal get any sort of foothold after they went ahead.

They got the goal, and they then dominated the next 20 minutes sapping any sort of belief that Arsenal would have a chance to get anything from the match.

This was a big learning experience for Arsenal and Arteta. They looked like they belonged at this stage of the competition playing the biggest teams. That is huge and a departure from when Arsenal would regularly get embarrassed during these tests. There is still work to do and lessons learned to implement but things are still bright for this team.

I don’t have the energy to do full stocks today after the match, more tomorrow to break down what will be a match that has a lot of nuggets.