Arsenal manager, Arsene Wenger, has described his players as “naive”, after they were beaten 2-0 by Barcelona, in the first leg of their Champions League round of 16 tie.
The Gunners held the Spanish giants for 70 minutes, before Lionel Messi finished off a fine counter-attack. The Argentine grabbed his brace with a penalty six minutes from time.
Wenger pointed out that it was the same mistake they made against Monaco and conceded, saying it will be hard to qualify.
“The regret I have is that once we looked like we could dominate the game in the last 15 minutes we gave the goal away,” Wenger told BT Sport.
“It was similar to Monaco. Naive. And that’s what’s frustrating. Because when it looked like we could win this game, we just gave it away.”
In his postgame news conference, Wenger added: “I feel that we were extremely guilty and have no excuses for that goal.
“The players didn’t give them a counter-attack on purpose. They want to defend it. It’s just that the first pass is not right, the first position is not right, you lose the ball when you don’t want to lose it and then suddenly you’re out of position and they take advantage of that.
“It’s not because the players do not want to respect the instructions, they were just caught by the pace of the game. It was an unexpected wrong pass or unexpected position of the first play.”
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