Speaking after Arsenal’s 5-1 loss to Bayern Munich on Tuesday night, Hector Bellerin revealed that he believes there are some positives to take from the game, such as the Gunners’ first half performance.
Despite the outcome, Arsenal gave a plucky (sigh) first half performance against the German giants and managed to go 1-0 ahead through Theo Walcott in the 20th minute. However, the sending off of Laurent Koscielny and subsequent penalty in the second half changed the game and the Gunners essentially rolled over, exiting the Champions League 2-10 on aggregate.
After the game, Bellerin gave an interview in which he wasn’t prepared to really get into the referee’s bizarre display but praised his side’s first half performance.
“The team have demonstrated that we can play good football, so I think we just need to be consistent,” the right-back said. “We need to start every game the same way we started this game by trying to play through the lines and creating encouraging situations. We just need to be more consistent and more efficient, but we have to take a lot of positives from tonight. There were lots of them, especially in the first half. We have to take them on board and hopefully finish the season well.”
Arsenal are usually pretty poor in first halves so it’s a small positive that the team played well against Bayern. However, it wasn’t enough and despite the contentious officiated during this leg, the first leg’s 5-1 loss was completely fair. Once again, if the team hadn’t dug such a deep hole to climb out of, the match at the Emirates might have ended differently.
The players and manager have been talking about consistency and efficiency for a few seasons now but where is it? If we know how to improve, why aren’t we?