Arsenal needed to win to make sure of qualification to the knockout stages of the Champions League, but with 20 minutes to go they were still only drawing against a team that hadn’t won any points at all in the group games.
Arsene Wenger says he wasn’t unduly nervous at that point. “I was never really nervous. Worried yes, because you cannot say you don’t worry when it is 1-1.” he said.
“But I felt we had the resources to score and in the last 20 minutes they would drop physically.
“I was always confident that we would qualify but you never know.
“it was a bit of a low-key game because we didn’t find our pace in the game.
“We couldn’t find openings in their defence. They defended very well, they were focused on closing us down everywhere. We were just below our normal pace.
“You have to give them credit, they defended very well and on every single ball they closed us down.”
Luckily Walcott and Nasri (of course!) came to Arsenal’s rescue, but now they face a difficult tie in the next round as they only finished second in their group. Could it be Barcelona again?
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