On Wednesday night, Arsenal’s return to the Champions League knockout stages was cruel.
Up until Galeno’s stoppage-time goal, the Gunners appeared to be heading into their first leg against Porto at the Estadio Do Dragao with honors. With seconds to go, the Brazilian attacker took matters into his own hands and beat David Raya with a looping shot from 20 yards to secure the victory.
Over the course of the 90 minutes, Mikel Arteta’s team failed to register a shot on goal, and in order to advance to the competition’s quarterfinals, they now need to overcome a deficit
Along with Roma, Bayer Leverkusen, Celtic, and Real Madrid, they are now one of five teams to lose five straight knockout round games. They will be hoping to avoid adding to an already dismal record.
Arteta’s direct evaluation
The manager of Arsenal thought his team might have done better and feels they did not handle the ball with enough care for the whole ninety minutes. The Spaniard was frustrated that there had not been more aggression and admitted that the Gunners were not frightening enough.
“Obviously we have to manage much better when you cannot win. The way we handled the ball on three occasions in deep areas is not good enough. And then it’s half-time. If you want to win the quarter-finals, you have to beat your opponent. And this is what we have to do at the Emirates now.”
“We lacked threat,” Arsenal’s head coach added. “We lacked much more threat, more aggression [was needed] especially when we had the ball in the final third, especially in the back as well, more purpose to help them. So we will tweak a few things to attack better especially because to be fair we haven’t conceded [chances] at all but we can do better.”
