But before talking about the game I would personally like to thank Wenger for one thing alone. For making Monreal one of the best, if not the best LB right now in the English League. Wait, why thank Wenger you ask? Flashback last season when we were having a defensive crisis and played Monreal at Centre Back and everyone hated Monreal back then. Playing at CB has made Monreal much more adept defensively and we are reaping the benefits of that move. A similar move of playing Ramsey in the wings when he returned from injury and switching him to the centre worked a treat with his goal scoring exploits 2 seasons back.
Now moving on to the game Arsenal started with the same team at Watford, Cech in goal (not Ospina yay!), Bellerin and Monreal as full backs. Koscielny and Mert at CB. Cazorla and Coq as the deep lying midfielders and Ramsey and Sanchez as the wingers. Ozil at 10 and Walcott at 9.
Lest we forget Guardiola is a man who fears Walcott, quoting him as saying "He's faster than our whole team put together – he could not even be stopped by a gun,". Now as we have seen a couple of seasons back Bayern struggled against Oxlade Chamberlain. The weakness was there to be seen, and it was pace. However one could also argue given Bayern's height disadvantage that a player like Giroud could punish them as he already has.
Wenger went with his Plan A. It did not take long to realise it was not working. Walcott was isolated up front and there was too much of a gap between midfield and attack. Plan B was probably Giroud. Making a substitution so early in the game would be pointless so there had to be a change in the tactical approach.
What did Arsene do? He shifted Ozil to the left wing, almost as a left sided midfielder, dropped Ramsey deeper to a right sided midfielder, pushed Sanchez as a Deep Lying Forward with Theo as the advanced forward. Tactics what? What this did was, it firstly suppressed Bayern's wide play and also gave Sanchez a lot of space to work his ass off. This ultimately made us better offensively and a well drilled back 8 made it impossible for Bayern to break through. The way the team lined up in this new formation was so un-Wengeresque.
This created a lot of problems for Bayern and ultimately tilted the game in Arsenal's favour. When the game was 0-0 till the 74th minute, knowing a win was an absolute necessity plan B was put forward where Walcott who is a poacher was replaced by Giroud, a target man. Giroud's presence immediately caught Bayern off guard. His introduction got us the lead (thank you Neuer).
So you are telling me Wenger changed his tactics 3 times in 1 game? Impossible to believe this man does not do tactics! Now that I'm done praising him I would love to know why the fuck did we play Ospina and make lives so much harder for ourselves!? Losing to Olympiacos at home when they have never won in England! Like seriously WTF!!!
On Field Battles..
Now that I have praised Wenger for tactics I would love to highlight some of Pep's failures during the game. Firstly playing Muller wide right and making him hug the touchline. Like seriously against Monreal? Trying to overcrowd that side of the pitch was a smart idea if Monreal wasn't playing there.
But what most people are assuming is that Guardiola considered Monreal the weak link of the team. Being Spanish I'm sure he rates Monreal more than anyone of us. So what was the reason to do that? Well Sanchez playing on the LW had to drop deeper to help Monreal out, effectively cutting out his offensive contribution. This happened early on the game when Thiago and Muller kept attacking that side of the pitch. So how does Arsene respond? Puts Ozil wide and Sanchez centre. It worked a treat for as long as it stayed that way.
Sanchez was uncharacteristically poor, giving the ball away 2 times in dangerous positions. However defensively Ozil and Santi shook me. Both recovered the ball 6 times. This was probably the most shocking Ozil performace I've seen. Shocking in a good way though, he played his heart out, almost as if he had a point to prove.
Another player needless to say was impressive was Koscielny, especially that one tackle to deny Lewa a clear goal scoring opportunity. Mertesacker too was very impressive, saving Sanchez on 2 occasions and making 6 headed clearances, most by any player on the pitch.
How much ground did the player cover?
When you play a defense first match you tend to cover a lot of ground “chasing ghosts” as they say on the tee vee. Aaron Ramsey was the top runner again today, clocking up 7439 meters in just 56 minutes of play. That’s 133 meters per minute and basically he was running the length of the Emirates pitch (105m) plus 1/4 every minute for 56 minutes.
If he’d have kept that pace going, he would have broken 12k in 94 minutes.
Cazorla finished the match clocking up the most distance of any Gunner with 11487m. Ozil was second with 10876 and Bellerin third with 10787.
Bayern Munich’s hardest working player was Thiago Alcántara, he covered 11070 meters today.
(via 7amkickoff)
Cech made some good saves and a special mention to Hector Bellerin who got ripped off in the first half, but had the final laugh with a breath taking run and assist.
They said Bayern would trash us, Lewa would smack us etc. Lewa remains in Kosc's pocket and Bayern could have lost 4-0 if not for Neuer. Is this Arsene's biggest ever tactical win?