Arsenal fell disappointingly short on Thursday night in Madrid, failing to match the away goal Atletico scored in North London and ending up on the end of a 1-0 defeat.
In the end, the result means Arsenal won’t play in next season’s Champions League. The team knew that’s what was on the line, but they couldn’t do enough over the two legs to prevent another year of Europa League football.
Truthfully, Arsenal lost the tie before they even went to Spain. That away goal from Antoine Griezmann gave Arsene Wenger’s side a near impossible task. Still, it’s difficult to defend their lacklustre efforts to complete it.
For most of the match, despite their desperate need for a goal, the team didn’t even look like they believed they could score one. This was far from the ‘give everything for Wenger’ performance they promised us. Instead, the manager will have to settle for sixth and no trophies in his final season.
Here are the individual player ratings:
3Attack
Mesut Özil 5
Özil needed to do more than this to get Arsenal the win, but again there were plenty of worse performers. Believe it or not he was second only to Ramsey in terms of number of tackles made. That probably tells you all you need to know about how he unfortunately spent his time on the pitch. Just the one chance created, which wasn’t enough.
Danny Welbeck 4
Wenger took a gamble playing Welbeck instead of Henrikh Mkhitaryan. In fairness, you can understand why, with the team needing a goal and Mkhitaryan’s injury. It didn’t pay off, as Welbeck didn’t have a single shot throughout the match. Even the Armenian managed more from the bench.
Alexandre Lacazette 5
Lacazette really didn’t have much help around him, but he played a pretty good game, hardly ever passing the ball away, and creating chances for his teammates. On the other hand, the one time he had a chance himself he chose not to shoot, and his touch around the goalkeeper was too heavy.