UEFA to blame for Arsenal’s impending exit from the Champions League

Jack Wilshere and Per Mertesacker dejected after Bayern Munich’s first goal.

Last night was one of those defeats you come away from feeling slightly proud. A 0-2 loss at home to probably the best club side in the world pretty much sealing your exit from Europe’s premier club competition isn’t really something you would expect people to be proud of but it was the manner of the defeat that has left me with a sense of pride.

Before I get into my stride, for balance sake, I should probably go over a few of the “bad” points. Firstly, Özil’s penalty. It was awful , there is no escaping that. He has now missed two because of his lackadaisical approach to the ball and weak shooting. Should he have taken it? Superstitious ex-players would remind you they never took penalties they won and with Cazorla and Oxlade-Chamberlain on the pitch, both in fine scoring form, you would forgive me for thinking he was the wrong choice.

Watching the game with James ‘Raul’ Stokes, we agreed that Özil would miss before he struck the ball. Everything just seemed wrong, the look in his eyes, the bloody commentator reminding us how he had missed one before and his short distance from the ball. We were devastated to be wrong.

This is not an Özil bashing post, not at all. He has been magnificent and will only get better, but I am of the opinion, you miss one penalty in the manner he did against Marseille, you don’t take one again. Wenger said he prefers people to run at the ball properly. He also said do what you feel comfortable doing, but Mesut never looked comfortable to me.

Did it have a bearing on the outcome of the game? It probably did. He scores and nothing that happened after happens because the course of history has been changed, but we cannot blame him for it. No, that would be wrong and unjust.

He made a mistake, learn from it and move on.

Koscielny’s poor positioning for their second was a killer blow and probably ended the tie, as at 1-0 down you feel you have a chance in the second leg, but he is not to blame either.

Robben is a dirty little diving git, but I don’t blame him either; you expect him to fly through the air and hit the deck like Flappy Bird.

I blame UEFA. I blame UEFA and the FA, and every single FA across Europe for the abysmal standard of refereeing we are seeing.

Nicola Rizzoli is probably a competently trained referee but, like all referees, he cocked up the big decisions. I think he allowed us to get away with a little more after the red card for Szczesny, and I believe it was because he knew he had cocked up.

Szczesny brought down Robben, no two ways about it but if that was a red card so was Boateng’s on Özil. By the letter of the law Szczesny’s was a red card but Robben made a mountain out of a molehill plus the ball was in a very difficult place to control, if it was that easy to control and score you get the feeling he would have because his greed knows he isn’t the penalty taker. In the spirit of the game it was a yellow card.