PinoyPS Fifa 11 League

Watching the 2nd leg late last night, it seems that the gunners were just waiting for the inevitable which was a Barcelona victory. Arsenal spend the whole game backpedelling and never had a clear cut chance the whole game. The only good thing that came from the match for Arsenal was the corner kick that led to Busquets own goal, but It will be remember as a Barcelona mistake rather than a decisive play by Arsenal.

Arsenal played with their tradional (4-3-2-1) formation but with all the constant Barcelona pressure the formation began to look like a (4-4-2) and sometimes (4-5-1). As a result, Robin Van Persie never had a chance to run the break as he was left to battle virtually alone and loosing the ball countless of times. The weakest links for the match was Cesc Fabregas and Laurent Koscielny. The only contribution Fabregas was the good backheel assist to Iniesta that led to Messi’s first goal, he shouldn’t have played in this game as he was just a liability. Koscielny  look out of position the whole game, letting his mark past him countless of times and leading to countless Barcelona Chances. He made tons of reckless fouls and gave away the penalty, a pitiful performance.

Barcelona played with their famous (4-3-3) formation,and just destroyed the Arsenal midfield with slick 1-2 passing. Besides Messi ,Xavi and Iniesta, two players caught my attention and that would be Pedro and Adriano. Both of them caused trouble to the right flank of Arsenal and really made Sagna work. Adriano runs were explosives that almost resulted to a goal but the ball just hit the woodwork. Pedro run Sagna to the ground and fully supported David Villa and Messi, his work led to the third goal for Barcelona as he was pull down by Koscielny. The Barcelona defense had no trouble stopping Arsenal , not including the own goal, both Abidal and Busquets (Played for Puyol and Pique) were solid the whole night.


Post match – Arsene Wegner said that the had the chance to win the game but the referee blew it by sending of Robin Van Persie because of kicking the ball away seconds after he was caught offside. In my opinion, that was the right call as this was really a card booking offense. Fifa already sent a memoramdum about this play way before the season started. In fact , the same thing happened to Ibrahimovic during the match against Roma this season.