Arsenal show character after dominating win over Dinamo Zagreb
Mesut Ozil and Alex Sanchez kept Arsenal's UEFA Champions League campaign alive after defeating Dinamo Zagreb 3-0 on Tuesday night as Group G leader Bayern Munich assisted the London club by beating Olympiakos 4-0 at the Allianz Arena.
The Gunners will reach the Round of 16 for the 15th successive season if it beats Olympiakos by two goals or more -- or by a single goal while scoring at least three -- in Piraeus in the final round of group games. That is its task, but the bold fact says little about what an achievement that would be. Nor indeed, of what a mess Arsenal had to make of the group to make it an achievement.
"It was important for us to respond straight away as confidence can drop quickly," Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger told reporters after the victory. "This time we go to Olympiakos looking to qualify. It will be tough but I believe we can do it."
Perhaps Olympiakos, the Greek champion, is a little better than many gave it credit for. Still, Arsenal should never have made such heavy weather of progression through a group that, by Champions League standards, was straightforward. There’s something extraordinary -- and very Arsenal -- about beating Bayern Munich and still ending up needing a result away to the Greek champion.
Credit, though, is due to Arsenal for battling back to this position. It takes some character to lose to Olympiakos at home and Dinamo away and still find a possible route through the group. It may be a peculiarly Arsenal form of mental strength -- the ability to get into seemingly hopeless positions and then rally -- but that doesn’t make it any less valuable. If nothing else, the win ensures that Arsenal will at least be in the Europa League in the New Year.
There were two factors at play here: What Arsenal did against Dynamo and, just as importantly, what Olympiakos did against Bayern. Arsenal needed to win and hope Olympiakos lost to set up the grand finale in two weeks’ time. Within only 20 minutes gone, the second of those boxes was ticked, with Bayern already 3-0 up.
Arsenal’s side of the equation took a little longer to effect, but first-half goals from Ozil and Sanchez meant the result was never really in doubt. Sanchez added a second with 20 minutes to go. Dinamo looked a very limited side, perhaps retroactively explaining why Wenger felt emboldened to make so many changes for the game in Zagreb. Then again, if he had fielded a full-strength side in that game, Arsenal might not be in the position it is now.
Arsenal dominated almost from the start against Dynamo, but almost half an hour it was slightly toothless possession, lots of dancing and jinking and neat skeins of passes that didn’t really hurt an opponent that was happy to sit deep. Not for the first time this season there was occasion to reflect on just how much heavier Joel Campbell’s touch looked than any other Arsenal forward or midfielder. With Aaron Ramsey sufficiently fit to come on for Olivier Giroud midway through the second half, the Costa Rican’s time in the starting eleven may be coming to an end, even if he did set up the third goal with a clever angled pass.
The other intriguing introduction from the bench was Calum Chambers, who came on for Santi Cazorla to operate at the back of midfield -- something he had done only once before, in a 2-0 defeat at Southampton on New Year’s Day. With Francis Coquelin and Mikel Arteta injured, that’s an area in which Arsenal is short and it may be that Wenger sees the centerback as possible cover.
When the breakthrough came it was, perhaps inevitably, the result of a Dynamo attempt to attack. Suddenly there was space behind its back four, and that was exploited by Sanchez whose arcing cross was headed in by a plunging Ozil after 29 minutes. The second, which arrived four minutes later, also wasn’t the result of Arsenal slicing through Dinamo’s massed defense, but of a poor clearance from Leonardo Sigali after he’d cut off a typical Arsenal move. Nacho Monreal intercepted, darted into the box, and rolled the ball square for Sanchez to score. That’s the unseen effect of pressure, the attritional process that wears the opposition into mistakes.
This was Ozil’s night, one of those games in which he is so elusive, so good at finding space, that it’s as if he were made out of air. Only two fine saves from Eduardo denied him goals but his influence over the play was undeniable. He has three goals and eight assists in his last nine games for Arsenal. He very nearly added a late fourth with a deft back-header from a Sanchez chip.
By then, the game had slipped to almost walking pace, Arsenal superiority confirmed. But at the end the applause was polite rather than rapturous. The real job is to be done in Greece in two weeks.
"The team know it was an important day today and we had to turn up," Hector Bellerin told BT Sport. "We're going to play for our lives [at Olympiacos] but this was an important test and the team responded very well. We've shown all through the season a lot of quality, a lot of creativity and we're defending very solidly. I think we're going to be a team that's going to be up there [at the end of the competition]."
Goal.com and FOXSoccer.com's newswire services contributed to this report.
