Poor tactical awareness cost us the match: Wenger

The Frenchman insists Arsenal do not have “no chance”, but that Barcelona are “95 per cent through”.

Messi had never scored against Cech in six encounters with the Arsenal goalkeeper during his time at Chelsea.

What we want is to focus on our next game.

This graphic highlights those positional deficiencies, showing where Mertesacker probably should have been to stop the attack…compared with where he actually was.

Wenger brought on Flamini for the tiring Francis Coquelin, but the French midfielder’s first action was to trip Messi in the penalty area in the 83rd minute after a poor clearance from Mertesacker.

If only Gabriel could have played…

Suarez headed wastefully wide in the final minute of the first half, but Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain scuffed arguably the clearest chance of the opening 45 minutes for Arsene Wenger’s men. “We’ve played a few against them, we know what they’re capable of, they’re a good team and so it’s not done and dusted”.

Arsenal were also convincing 3-0 winners in the Premier League at the Emirates in October – two from Alexis Sanchez and another from Mesut Ozil wrapped up the points in 20 minutes.

Gerard Pique will miss the second leg through suspension after picking up a late caution in Tuesday night’s clash. “We were disciplined defensively but we knew that if we had to keep a 0-0 we keep a 0-0.” he added. “We didn’t allow them many counter-attacks, but the one they scored from was ideal”. Wenger had sent out a team to press their hosts high up and prevent them moving the ball unchallenged out of defence. That’s exactly what we did. But their spirit seemed to fizzle out in the second half – more so after Messi’s opener in the 71st minute, which had an incredible build-up involving Luis Suarez and Neymar.

Arsenal replied with a header from Olivier Giroud from a Nacho Monreal cross that Ter Stegen did well to block as the pace and tempo of the game ticked up. I felt there was room to beat them.

“It’s just that the first pass is not right, the first position is not right, you lose the ball when you don’t want to lose it and then suddenly you’re out of position and they take advantage of that”, continued Wenger.

“But we have to go there and fight”.

Had Arsenal managed to take the lead in the UEFA Champions League last-16 first leg, who knows how the match might have panned out?