UEFA Champions League/Europa League thread

Well, yeah. Arguably the penalty being given means the clear goalscoring opportunity has only been delayed rather than denied.

 

One of my biggest bugbears in football is that players can just boot the ball out of play or well out of their reach and then ride a challenge and get a foul/get the player carded for it, and that was my initial impression of that incident but I do think Robben would actually have got there. I agree though that a red and a penalty is excessive, it just kills games.

 

Ozil has been shocking! £42m?

 

I thought he would be a fantastic player for Arsenal, but has been disappointing.

 

I don't think they can do that. If that was the rule, the keeper would basically have a license to do what he wants when there was a one on one. It would be much more difficult to go past the keeper and turn it in, as the keeper would just try to take the opposing player out when he thinks (or knows) he's been beaten. I would like that to be the rule for the second last opponent though, with a yellow card being given instead. I put second last opponent (like the offside rule) instead of outfield players, as you could have a situation where the keeper has misjudged coming off his line or gone up for a corner. An opposing player may be clean through running onto it and a defender may be able to take the opposing player out to prevent a goal.

For me, Robben was definitely going to score. I think Szczesny getting a red card for that is fair.

 

Hasn't brought the goods on the pitch but still worth every penny for me.

 

Tbf, he was fantastic in the early part of the season, but granted, he has become ordinary amongst the Arsenal squad. It has been said that the competitiveness of the long Premier League season has taken its toll.

Perhaps Osvaldo saw something there and went back to Serie A for a nice time.

 

And what if he carries on like this?

 

Depends what their transfer policy is in the near future. I think he has been average since early in the season but if they had bought a £5m nobody who had put in exactly the same performances as Ozil has they would be 5 or 6 points worse off.

 

2-0 Muller.

 

What a ball from Lahm.

 

Almost a carbon copy of last night's game.

 

Good goal. Simple, yet not easy. It was fright in the Arsenal defence that gave Muller the space.

 

...and that's Bayern through and Arsenal out.

 

Pizarro dragged Mertesacker across.

 

Bayern are a class act. The sending off obviously didn't help, but they have so much quality.

 

Was so excited about these ties but they're both already over. May as well call off the next two legs to be honest!

 

Well there's always the FA Cup.

 

Only adding Lewandowski and interested in Draxler, Meyer and Goretzka. So won't get too much better....

 

In the Prem he might have got away with a yellow. Everything seems to be a little bit stricter in Europe so I wasn't really shocked.