Arsenal vs Paris St Germain - 29.04.2025 - KO 20:00 GMT

[Marc Overmars]

I don’t believe this was all about momentum as such, I just feel like we hit a ceiling tonight. We’ve shown for most of the season that while we are difficult to beat, we aren’t actually very good and desperately need better players in certain positions if we are ever going to get over the line and win a trophy.

Every dog has its day and maybe Real Madrid was that day for us. Deep down we all know the second leg of this is beyond us even though it’s still close. I would be stunned if we somehow found the courage and quality to turn it around.

[HCZ_Reborn]

There's literally two decades of examples. Even with the Invincibles, we fucking knew when they were slacking off, and they did. And they were innvincible by the skin of their teeth, some of those games were knife-edge because the boys took a day off. Then there are the world famous collpases. Usuaily ushered in by not bothering to turn up for cup games. Then there goes the league followed by Europe all in the space of weeks - you never saw any of that?

Best streak of momentum I can recall is when not just the first team but also the reserves were putting it out there, 100%, game after game and you couldn't tell the difference between them. I remember going into games KNOWING we'd win - that was a given. I;d be pissed sometimes because the performance was not all it could be, or because we'd slack off after the 4th goal.

I get injuries and season demands - but we have a fucking ton of injuries anyway, playing pitter patter! Throw it all on the line and see who's left standing. Only way to play sport, every time. It's what winners do. It's the reason everyone KNEW we wouldn't catch City, or City would overhaul us, because we all said - they won't lose a single game.

MOMENTUM. Counts.

It clearly didn’t count for PSG tonight

As I keep saying it’s not an either or. This season momentum has meant fuck all to us because we’ve never had any. We’ve got to the semi finals despite never winning more than three league games in a row all season.

Momentum can be very important of course in football. What I’m dismissing is the false binary that it’s either always important or never important. And this season, it’s been largely peripheral for us.

The most obvious factors in tonight’s defeat were missing Partey and PSG making us behave like a load of cowards when it came to 50/50 balls. We could have pulverised Palace and that would have still been a problem for us tonight

[21_GOONER_SALUTE]

I am unsure why you are all this pessimistic.

From what I see, their style of play suits us and as long as we don't have injuries and Arteta does a 360 and gets them to take the league seriously (which we always had to anyway), I think we will be ok in Paris.

[Mac76]

I don’t believe this was all about momentum as such, I just feel like we hit a ceiling tonight. We’ve shown for most of the season that while we are difficult to beat, we aren’t actually very good and desperately need better players in certain positions if we are ever going to get over the line and win a trophy.

Every dog has its day and maybe Real Madrid was that day for us. Deep down we all know the second leg of this is beyond us even though it’s still close. I would be stunned if we somehow found the courage and quality to turn it around.

Generally agree, though I wouldn't be stunned but it would certainly require an unlikely turnaround, still just one goal is just one goal, maybe Arteta goes into FAC 2019-20 mode and contrives to pub a win

[HCZ_Reborn]

I am unsure why you are all this pessimistic.

From what I see, their style of play suits us and as long as we don't have injuries and Arteta does a 360 and gets them to take the league seriously (which we always had to anyway), I think we will be ok in Paris.

I’m being cruel to be kind. It’s over

You saw for yourself how they were able to smother the game in the second half. They didn’t feel the need to over exert themselves…that’s why the scoreline is 1-0.

They won’t need to come out at us like Real did two weeks ago. We may even keep a clean sheet over there. But they aren’t giving us the time or space to score. Why would they, they wont be chasing the tie.

It’s done with

[Mac76]

Nwaneri coming on fucked me off unimaginably, why the fuck wasn’t this done at least twenty minutes sooner

And yes absolutely think we should have dropped Odegaard and used the league games to give Nwaneri game time in central midfield

Odegaard is approaching the state where he's completely pointless, while he doesn't generally fuck up as royally as Zinchenko, the uselessness of his play gets to a similar point where he's just standing in between two players who could just as easily ( and more effectively) pass directly to each other

[Marc Overmars]

I am unsure why you are all this pessimistic.

From what I see, their style of play suits us and as long as we don't have injuries and Arteta does a 360 and gets them to take the league seriously (which we always had to anyway), I think we will be ok in Paris.

Not sure how you can say their style of play suits us because for large parts of the game we couldn’t even get the ball off them. Partey in the second leg should improve us but overall I feel like we are just going to be huffing and puffing and they will probably go and score a goal or two in transitions.

It’s not impossible but based on this game they are a much better team than us.

Crazy things can happen though in the CL and hopefully we are able to settle quickly out there. Villa cranked it up a notch and they wobbled, so the pressure is all on them to see this out. Can’t remember us turning around many first leg deficits though it has to be said, would be our greatest CL night ever if we did.

[dazthegooner]

I read a couple of days ago that Odegaard hasn't reeally fully recovered from his injury and will have to have an op to fix it a the end of the season.
So it seems if this is the case Arteta shoildn't have been playing him, have him on the bench and play Nwaneri instead.

[KSE Comedy Club]

PSG were not that good IMO, yes they had some chances but so did we. Their 'ferocious attack' only really lasted 20 odd mins or so and then it was more about retaining possession in the midfield areas. In fact if we weren't being so bloody cowardly, there is a good chance we would have been able to put some attacking pressure on them in the second half.

I don't think our performance was good enough and there was way too much safety back passing and a lack of real energy (Rice walking over to take a fucking corner ffs)

However, we are only 1-0 down and Partey will be back.
That means Merino back up top and Trossard on the bench where he belongs - we will have much more control of the game and I think we will beat them and go through.

[KSE Comedy Club]

If we showed our professionalism in the previous game I'd have no case to present.

I've seen this so many times from us an yet I'm being told I am creating fallacies.

Your example is ridiculous and you know it. How many times have you heard about momentum in football.

Now how many times have you heard about sneezing in preparation for a game of this magnitude.

Why you don't want us to be leaving no stone unturned and leaving nothing to chance I cannot fathom.

You said we were pussies so clearly you don't think we've left everything out there, so why not?

Sneezing and car alarms I guess.

I feel the same.

They gave zero fucks about the Palace game and then levels were dropped too far to be able to raise them again for this game.

Mind you using hcz's analogy, I did think that the fans were drawn into almost comical silence, by the lame, hafl arsed performance against Palace - and that in turn made it more difficult to get the atmosphere up to high levels for last night.

Had we beaten Palace, that would have been a spring board to continue the 'high' and maintain the winning attitude.