Me too, I think I kinda psyched myself up a bit before the game, knowing deep down we weren’t going to progress tbh. So i’m pretty mellow about it.
At least we didn’t get thumped 5-1, or something stupid 
First year back in the UCL, quarter-finals — that’s a strong run-in.
How is it knee jerk though?
City are not going to drop points, we failed to take advantage of putting ourselves in a great position against Villa and over two legs have been outplayed by the worst Bayern team for years. Those are the facts of the matter, the last 3 half’s of football from us have been pretty poor.
upset/disappointed is one thing, but I think most of us are pretty okay to reach quarter final in our first CL after years of absence.
Dude. Look at that second half performance tonight. We have nothing left in the tank right now.
This is true, the last 3 games have been pretty dire.
And now we face Wolves and then Chelsea who seems to have picked up some belief.
Palmer will be chomping at the bit, but I think we have enough to stop them - especially as it’s at our ground.
just fly to Dubai directly for a short 2 day trip and prepare for the weekend league game
Writing off a title challenge when there’s 2 points in it is pretty questionable no matter the circumstances IMO.
CL group stages: We were brilliant.
CL Knockout stages: Poor. Unconvincingly got past Porto, and against Bayern there was no direction offensively. I think we should definitely have done well in the CL.
PL: Defensively we are incredible, and competing against Manchester City who are unreal. We have done well.
I think we definitely should have better in the CL knock out stages. The rotation of the squad by Arteta has been poor. Players that did really well last season have not been consistent (Martinelli, Jesus, Zinny, Partey) etc. Tactically we seem limited, only one way of playing football which is out wide to Saka.
Good run in the CL, we’ll be back next season with hopefully better quality.
Think we just ran out of gas again, much to do with our lack of rotation options for Saka, White etc.
Atleast this time we didn’t break down early.
Seems like in order for us to progress we need to spend another £200m in the summer + also accounting for sales, to truly have a squad that can compete.
We seem so thin in multiple areas across the pitch.
Sure, we have numbers but they’re just bodies… Whilst we actually need ballers who can change and influence the game.
Bayern were playing with a back 6 at one point mate.
Cracking them down is easier said than done. It’s not their first rodeo in this competition, both for Bayern and Tuchel.
I don’t understand how that mitigates our terrible performance.
They’re used the occasion. Our players aren’t.
Because they played a big part in causing that “terrible” performance.
Sorry to pick on you here and even a selected part of your post at that…but personally I don’t see the point in bothering if you can’t let yourself do this.
Crashing back to reality sucks but it’s all part of the experience for me. I’d rather this a million % over most of the last ten years.
Not telling anyone how to think, just reacting to a post with my own feelings.
We’re fantastic to watch but from a casual fan POV we really need more dynamic options to our build-up. I said it 4 months ago when we had our bad little run and I feel it again that the Odegaard and Saka combination is being way too relied on.
We either need to vary things up or Mikel needs to add some players he can trust to expand our game on.
Nketiah, Nelson and Smith-Rowe / Vieira need to be replaced with players that Arteta trusts. Pointless having these guys in the squad.
Pisses me off that we haven’t used Nketiah in any serious way for basically months, and then we bring him on to salvage a CL quarter final away at Bayern? Lol.
Our first 14 or 15 players are solid. But we have nothing serious after that. Need some proper attacking signings in the summer to challenge Martinelli and Saka. Williams, Neto, Leao or whoever the fuck. 2 seasons in a row where we have run out of steam and ideas in attack right when it matters most.
My first thoughts after the game were about how sterile, rigid, predictable we were when attacking and I focused mainly on Arteta there and aimed my criticism towards him.
But after thinking through that… and going throigh many aspects of our attack I realised we fucking lack a lot of quality.
I mean, we had enough to annihilate West Ham, Luton and keep going against those. But when the season is beaking and you’re up against the big boys… The “system” and the “system solutions” can only get you to a certain point, but then you need more.
We just lack at least one (preferably two or more) proper class player who can make a difference on his own.
Whether that’s a class 9, a winger an additional skilled 8 next to Ode… Doesn’t matter much, but we need more GAME CHANGERS.
Going through this season we actually lost TWO of them and that was a big hit. Partey and Jesus.
Partey is basically gone, Jesus sadly seems to follow him. Sadly the injuies have left a big mark on him, lost a ton of his agility, pace… Far from his average level from the last season atm, not to mention his peak pre WC period.
I think his level now is about the same as Trossard, a useful impact sub but nothing more.
I think we have a few game changers with Odegaard, Saka and Martinelli and our defence is pretty solid but we are desperate for a top quality goal scorer.
As I said before, no club is going to win the title or CL with striker options of Jesus and Nketiah.
Yups, we play a very predictable, mechanical style of football. I think it’s partly why it cancels out Man City’s so well.
But against teams that adopt fast-moving, counter-attack play; we’re sitting ducks. When we go forward, our players ‘think too much’ about who and where to pass to, that it completely stifles and kills our attacking flow.
We have two wingers who can’t ever seem to beat their man. Strikers afraid of shooting that when they do, it has to be from 5 yrds and they still miss.
This is the complete opposite to last season’s style that was more expressive, exuberant and energetic.
I think we’ve been figured out by opposition defensively too in these past few games. Isolate our midfield, target who’s on that LB (cause they’re all pretty average let’s be honest); force a mistake from the back 5 and pounce in numbers.
If Ben White is high up the pitch on a counter-attack, Saka will be the one trying to chase back, but he can’t defend for his life anymore, so often gets beat easily which invites the opposition to our goal.
Wolves will be watching our last 3-4 games and will know what they have to do.
We have zero game-changers or actual A* quality in the team. Odegaard is the closest thing, but he can’t do everything on his own.
I’m actually impressed that we’re sitting in 2nd place only 2 points behind, because the way we’ve approached many games this season appears to be a ‘negative’ style of football but it has worked at times.
Just wonder whether their legs have run out or it’s something else.
I’ve also noticed that our set pieces have sucked for the last ~7+ games now
I think we go through last night + win 3/4 of our last games if our set piece quality was what it normally is. That’s been the key differentiator we’ve used to combat our lack of a striker.