THROUGH ME TO THE CITY OF PAIN,
THROUGH ME TO ETERNAL AGONY...
SHED ALL HOPE, YOU WHO ENTER
So reads the sign on the gateway to Hell, according to Dante's Inferno. For Arsene Wenger and his Arsenal team, those words could be inscribed on the door leading out of the Away dressing room at Camp Nou.
For the second time in a year, Arsenal took a promising first leg scoreline and for the second time in a year they were utterly dominated by a far superior Barca team. Lionel Messi got his sixth goal against the Gunners in 2 home legs against them, and the City of Pain left their best goalkeeper wounded and their best striker red-carded.
Don't get me wrong - Arsenal did not disgrace themselves (losing to the best team in the World can arguably never be seen as a disgrace) and to be fair, had Nicklas Bendtner been someone other than Nicklas Bendtner, they might even have pulled off a shock LoseWin, the type of result only possible in two-legged knockout football where a defeat can still be enough to see you celebrating. The gulf in class between the teams was, as is so often the case with Pep Guardiola's superteam, incredible - Arsenal barely touched the ball, they were out-passed by a factor of almost 4 passes to every 1, and they did not have a single shot on goal. Despite all of this, for me they did not actually play that poorly. Djourou was very impressive in defence, Jack Wilshere showed an admirable desire to play decent football, and Manuel Almunia gave an extremely unlikely but nonetheless impressive Knut impression. Almunia can throw himself around, looking like a slightly confused Jean Reno, and getting in the way of countless attacks all he wants - against this team in this mood, every effort was perhaps always going to be futile. You just can't stop the tide.
Wenger could (and indeed has) raged against the incredibly harsh and utterly lacking in common sense decision to red card Robin van Persie for taking a shot when already flagged offside. Van Persie was in equal measures unlucky to come up against a stickler ref applying the letter of the law, but also somewhat stupid for doing it in the first place - the ref had already shown he was 'one of those' and RvP was asking for trouble after a petulant first yellow. Wenger could also point to the lack of key players, certainly Theo Walcott would have been a perfect outlet for the counter attack, and the sloppy backheeled touch from a clearly unfit Fabregas spoke volumes for how off pace he was - the fact that this led directly to the first goal has led Fabregas to announce he takes full blame for the result. However the truth is that neither the referee, nor Cesc Fabregas, nor anyone involved with Arsenal should be taking too much blame for this one. They were well beaten, by a magnificent team, plain and simple.
The fact that the Gunners came so close to advancing would have surely been one of the most baffling results in recent times. Barcelona were so irresistible in both their pressing of the opposition and their incisive movement when going forward, that they could quite easily have run out with a 6 or 7 goal winning margin this morning.
Whoever they face in the quarter final will need to come up with a way of combatting the dynamic attacking play and suffocating stranglehold on possession that they are sure to demonstrate for a long time to come. Clearly 'parking the bus' is one option - the only option? Even if that is the chosen tactic for whoever gets the short straw of Barca in the next round, as that bus rolls into position they might have to take good note of the sign, and Shed All Hope.
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