5 Things We Learned From The Barca Game

This article was written by a young man named Lewis Wright who is an Arsenal fan and aspiring sports journalist, who's going to be writing a weekly piece for them at Vital Arsenal.

5 Things We Learned From The Barcelona Match:

Confidence isn`t Everything

Nicklas Bendtner certainly talks a good game. He has claimed that he will be 'amongst the best strikers in the world` within 5 years. He`s also stated on a number of occasions that he 'deserves to start every game.`

On a recent self confidence test he even outscored Thierry Henry, Nicolas Anelka and David Trezeguet. The test showed that 'When Bendtner misses a chance, he is always genuinely convinced that it wasn`t his fault.` It`s difficult to see who the Dane could blame for missing last night`s sitter.

He has pace, height, an excellent first touch and on occasion, an unnerving ability to finish, but if Bendtner wants to make it to the top work needs to be done on his mind not his game. His hat trick against Leyton Orient was appreciated, and superbly taken, but too many times, when he is given the chance to make a real difference, under real pressure, his usually pristine technique lets him down.

Unless he learns to accept that mistakes happen, and aren`t other people`s fault, it`s hard to see him ever making the Arsenal striker`s shirt his own.

The future of Arsenal is English

For all the pre match talk about Fabregas being back in the team, and Song being absent, the midfield held its own. Diaby was strong in the tackle and as effective in distribution as anyone else.

The moment Arsenal did create, such as the corner that led to the goal, came about when Nasri ran at the Barcelona defence with pace. Walcott would have provided an outlet; a straight route into Barcelona territory. His directness offers the team an alternative and a way of moving the ball at a speed no defender in world football can deal with.

If Guardiola has a B team full of Jack Wilsheres, as suggested, one wonders why the Barcelona B side sit 9 points off the play offs in the Segunda Division, having lost 8 times already. Thiago and Dos Santos may well be quality players, but they`re no Wilshere. At just 19 the midfielder ran the first game at The Emirates, outshining both Xavi and Iniesta. At The Nou Camp his game changed to be more defensive, but he was no less effective for it. He showed his tenacity, passion and willingness to run himself into the ground for the team.

Surely it`s a matter of when, not if Wilshere becomes club captain.

Sometimes Wenger can be adaptable

Much was made of the difference in possession, the difference in passes made, but for all their ball retention it took a Fabregas howler to allow Barcelona to score. Until that point, and indeed, until the red card, Barcelona probed but with no real incisiveness.

Arsenal looked solid and were able to adapt their game to accept there would be fewer chances early on, but to hold on for more quality ones later in the game.

Each time Arsenal have faced Barcelona in the last 2 seasons they have finished the game strongly, scoring goals late on in two of them. For all the fanfare about passing 5 yards sideways over and over, Arsenal are a much fitter and stronger side than Barcelona, and 11 vs 11, history shows they could have expected a much greater chance of holding on to the game and coming back later on. Would Van Persie have accepted the gift that Bendtner spurned? The stats would say yes.

The Referee Choked

Much of the fuss about Van Persie`s dismissal centres around whether he heard the whistle or not. It`s irrelevant. One second passed between the whistle and the shot. One second to react and counter an instinct to score.

The bitter irony is that the very reason that RVP couldn`t hear a whistle is the very same reason the decision was made; crowd noise.


Barcelona is not 'more than club,` it`s just another club

Guardiola crowed about a reserve side packed full of young world beaters. Yet at the last European U21 Championship, England beat Spain on route to the final.

The club`s Director of football Raul Sanllehi claimed he was 'shocked` by the transfer spending in England over the winter saying about Torres` move to Chelsea that 'Barcelona would not make that signing. We would not even consider it.` Barcelona had to borrow £125 million just to pay the team`s wages earlier last year, in the main due to the fact that in the last year only Real Madrid and Manchester City spent more than their 113 million Euros outlay. The year before it was 90 million, with the club spending 66 million Euros on Zlatan Ibrahimovich. He made 29 appearances for the Catalans before leaving to head back to Milan, on loan, for free.

The club claimed Arsenal were 'morally wrong` for using the Spanish League as a 'fishing pond`, and that clubs should choose local talent. Messi was 12 when he moved 6,000 miles to Barcelona, and in the fabled B team there are 'local` products of the youth academy from countries including Brazil, Canada, England and The Netherlands.

Xavi gave an interview to The Guardian where he professed to be a 'football romantic,` and that 'Some youth academies worry about winning, we worry about education.` That education saw Abidal and Valdes see fit to grab RVP round his throat. That education regularly see its players fall to the ground after little to minimal contact and then wave imaginary cards when a foul is given.

Next season the 'more than a club` will be sponsored by the Qatar Foundation, from a country where homosexuality is illegal, dissident bloggers are arrested and Amnesty International have released several warnings about human rights violations.

They may have lost last night, but Arsenal have no reason to believe that Barcelona are superior in anything other than results.

The dark artists of Catalonia

Well, that was brilliant wasn't it? A match winning performance if ever I saw one. Yes,Barcelona must be delighted at the performance of the Swiss official Massimo Busaca last night. You can come here and tell me, till you're blue in the face if you like, that Barcelona were the better team- they were, that they dominated possession- they did and that they created enough chances to win the game- likewise. But what you have to concede in return is that Bussaca's red card for Arsenal came at a time when Arsenal had just begun to gain a foothold in last night's match. It also came at a time when, for all Barca's possession, Arsenal were leading the tie. You will also have to concede that it was a staggeringly harsh punishment.

In fact, issuing a second yellow card of the evening and then sending a centre forward off for the crime of having a shot on goal one second after you've blown your whistle in a stadium full of 95,000 noisy catalans is not just harsh, it's ridiculous. The insult to injury comes when you consider that, had Busacca done his job properly in the first place, Robin wouldn't have been on a yellow card to begin with. What? Allow me to enlighten you. Late in the first half the fracas that followed a pretty hefty tackle on Jack Wilshere, certainly Eric Abidal had Robin van Persie around the throat whilst another Barca suspect (Alves? Busquets?) did the same to Samir Nasri. And what was the referees response to this/ Well, he and his two linesman decide to do a Horatio Nelson and pretend that they saw the square root of nada. Just minutes later, understandably fired up the by the continual refusal to do anything about Barcelona's skullduggery, van Persie raises his hands to Dani Alves- though barely enough to trigger the reaction that followed and finds his way into the book.

In truth, the referee had set his stall out early as, it has to be said, had the Barca team. Barca played the way that they apparently always play, excellent in possession, speed of thought and movement making them extremely difficult to cope with. The fact that they greeted almost every tackle by collapsing to the floor make them difficult to tackle, the fact that the referee seemed more than happy to allow them to leave their feet in made it all the more difficult to keep the ball. Especially in an Arsenal side clearly already struggling.

On reflection, the story of Arsenal's night was a comedy of errors, but with all the comedy taken out. We got the psychological boost of seeing van Persie and Fabregas restored to the starting lineup, only to witness the reality of their states of "fitness", we got Diaby and Rosicky in the midfield- when really all these two can be good for is the bench. And not the bench at a club with Champions League aspirations. We gotWojciech Szczesny dislocating his finger in gathering an Alves free kick- just one more reason to hate one of the biggest cheats I've ever seen on a football pitch. And yes, I include Eboue in that assessment. Which, of course, saw the return of Manuel Almunia to the first team, and didn't he play well? We got, deep into the injury time that resulted from Szczesny's injury, Cesc's first contribution to the match, the mother of all brain farts and a backheel- a backheel!- on the edge of our penalty area. Iniesta pounced, teed up Messi, who flicked the ball over Almunia and smacked it home on the volley.

Barca were worth their goal lead, I think, though aside from the Maxwell shot that smacked off the post, it was tough to think of many clear sights of our goal- our centre backs working hard to put out any number of fires. You have to say though, that not had only had we not had a shot in anger, we hadn't even threatened one.

The second half began in a much more positive vein, I thought. And in that positive vein, Samir Nasri dribbled down our left taking on three Barca players. He won a corner. He took the corner. Diaby jumped, the ball ended up in the Barca net- off Busquets! Busquets, the only man who migbht have a bigger claim to being a cheat than Alves, the Karma Police had arrived! Just as during last season's tie though, our joy was limited to about three minutes worth. Unlike last season when it was the magic of Messi pissing all over our dreams, we have a whistle happy cheat from Switzerland to thank.
And once van Persie was gone, I think it was simply a case of delaying the inevitable. We didn't delay Barca too long. I can sit here and rage about the way they marry their brilliant football with the dark arts. But sometimes you have to just give credit to that brilliant football and that was never more evident than in Xavi's heartbreaking goal with just under a quarter of the match left. As in 2006, the turnaround was completed quickly, with Messi blasting the ball into the corner from the penalty spot after a Koscielny foul on Pedro.

They could have had more, Villa was denied by Almunia. When Afellay replaced him, the substitute had two chances to get four on the board again but passed them up. Against all the odds, we came so, so close to securing a memorable passage through to the quarter finals when the tireless and excpetional Jack Wilshere won the ball, drove forward and fed Bendtner on the edge of the Barcelona box- Bendtner had replaced Fabregas by then. He was one on one with the keeper, could he hold his nerve and score? You all know the answer now, this legend in his own lunchtime couldn't even control the ball well enough to get his shot away- Javier Mascherano making a cracking recovery tackle he should never have been allowed to. To add to the chance Bendtner messed up late in the first tie, this one was gone and with it so were we.

I don't have any problem with saying the better team won, but I'm not sure how Graeme Souness can sit on a sofa and say that playing for 40 minutes with a man less than the best passing side in the world wouldn't have affected the result. Once we lost our centre forward and settled into a 4-5 bank, we were opened up time and time again. Say what you like about Barca, but they didn't manage this with such ease whilst it was 11 v 11. Why? Because it's easy to go forward against a team with no centre forward. Obviously, we were looking to hold Barca and hit them on the break towards the end, the dismissal of van Persie robbed us of that opportunity, More to the point, what would the Dutchman have made of that late chance? He would have got his shot away at least, Massimo Bussaca knows that much. Barca had 40 of 180 minutes against 10 men and for all their, well documented, superiority they beat us by one single, solitary goal. Talking of solitary goals, we now know the true cost of Eduardo's winner against us late last year. That's one to ponder on, isn't it? Effectively knocked out by our former striker.

I think we now have confirmation, as if we didn't know it already, that this Arsenal squad- although they still have a good chance of winning the league- are not going to be good enough against the very best the continent has to offer. There are too many passengers in the squad, too many players that you just can't rely on. I think 1-11 we're as good as anyone, except the dark artists of Catalonia, but when you start having to throw in the likes of Diaby, Bendtner, Rosicky, Almunia (though no blame to him for last night- he was brilliant), you are going to struggle. Then you look at players like Eboue and Denilson, what is the point of them, really? I think the time has come for Arsène to bite the bullet and go and get us the kind of striker that would have put away that chance last night, we know now that having one of them just isn't enough.

Just as I began this piece, news came in that both Samir Nasri and Arsène Wengerhave been charged byUEFA as a result of comments made to Bussaca last night. Great, he screws up and we cop it twice over. Merci beaucoup, Platini.

Arsenal goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny can handle Nou Camp pressure - former mentor Krzysztof Dowhan

Wojciech Szczesny's former mentor has backed the young goalkeeper to shine on the big stage as Arsenal take onBarcelona in their Champions League last 16 clash at the Nou Camp.

Krzysztof Dowhan, coach of Polish side Legia Warsaw, has brought through a number of young goalkeepers in his time in football and he believes Szczesny’s confidence stands him out from the rest.

Arsenal will be looking to defend a 2-1 advantage against free-scoring Barcelona, but Dowhan has backed his former player to handle the pressure against the likes of Lionel Messi, Pedro and David Villa.

“It is like a dream come true for a young keeper like Wojciech,” he was quoted as saying by The Telegraph.

“In the first game he showed what he is made of and that he can handle the pressure.

“I expect it to be no different at the Nou Camp although it looks like this test could be even harder.”

Dowhan, who has coached goalkeepers such as Jan Mucha and Artur Boruc during his career, remembers meeting Szczesny when the Pole was 10 years old.

“He was a 10-year-old boy and his father, whom I was coaching at the time, brought him for me to see if he had a chance to become a goalkeeper," he said.

“I could already see that the lad had a great potential and a natural talent for quick learning.

“He only needs to repeat a given exercise a few times to master it. His self-confidence is also a key attribute. This is something you cannot learn.

“My guess is that he inherited this one from his father. He has always been a very charismatic person.”

The youngster has made 16 appearances for Arsenal, keeping nine clean sheets in the process.