Image courtesy of Arsenal Tickets

Arsenal 0-2 Bayern Munich

Another year, another mountain to climb. This time, it’s all about the frustrating ‘what ifs’. Things could and should have been so different but a missed penalty, an injury to Gibbs and a red card for Szczesny meant we were up against it with limited scope to do much about it.

Instead, in the end, being down to ten men made the whole second half something of a turkey shoot, with Bayern registering more possession than Borley Rectory. They are a phenomenal side to face with eleven men. With ten men – forget it. It’s sad as the red card ruined a fabulous end-to-end game. It stopped it dead as a proper contest. Red cards often do.

Was it a red? The trouble is, clear goal-scoring opportunity or not, it was an easy one for refs to give and this one didn’t think twice. I’m not armed with the stats but I suspect those ones are given more often than they are not. That said, it’s debatable whether Robben had any real chance of scoring.

Before that we had made a fantastic, bright start and seriously rattled the Bavarians. Ozil should have put us a goal up from the spot but fluffed his lines. How we needed that. In hindsight, how he needed that too as he faded badly as the game wore on. He’s not a man who gives much away so it’s hard to know what’s going through Ozil’s mind at the moment, but he doesn’t seem the happiest of sorts right now. Unfortunately, when you come with a £42.5m price tag you are observed and judged more frequently, and the pressure is always on. I think he needs, at the very least, a break – a few games away from the spotlight – but Wenger seems very reluctant to countenance that.

Other things conspired against us. Gibbs, playing so well, went off injured and was replaced by Monreal, who struggled. Fabianski came on for Szczesny. So we’d made two subs before half-time, leaving us with no room for manoeuvre at all.

Sanogo, the surprise starter ahead of Giroud (there’s a whole other sub-plot there I can’t be bothered to get into) did well enough for a while but struggled thereafter. Hardly surprising once we were down to ten men, but it was a big gamble on such a big night. I imagine he’d have come off had we not already made two subs (Podolski remained marooned on the bench – there’s another subplot, if you’re after more).

So here we are again, staring down the barrel of a last 16 exit for the fourth year running. I know we won at the Allianz last year but don’t bet on Bayern switching off like they did then.

It’s a funny competition, this. We bust a gut to get into it (valuing it over a real trophy), get through to the knockouts then come unstuck time and again when we meet the behemoths of Germany, Italy and Spain.

That’s why last night was so frustrating. That 0-2 should have been 1-0 and that, with eleven men, would have given the night a different complexion entirely.

One last, positive thing – the red and white display was amazing. Hats off to Red Action.