Arsene Wenger admits that "Barcelona" took a big step towards the Champions League quarterfinals, but leaves his team five percent chance to recover in the away match.
Two Lionel Messi goals in the second half of the match put "Arsenal" in a difficult situation and it seems that the "Gunners" will drop out of the Champions League quarterfinals for the sixth consecutive year. However, Wenger is not yet ready to admit final failure.
"Barcelona" is already 95 percent through to the next round, but we want to go there and play our game. We are "Arsenal" and we will not go there without any chances," Wenger believes.
The manager also believes that his team had opportunities in the first leg to fight for victory.
"I'm most sorry that we had chances to beat them, but we didn't take advantage of them. Sometimes you just lose to the other team and can't change anything, but we could have beaten them. They are better than us and everyone knows that, but if we had maintained discipline until the end of the match - we could have won that match. The same thing happened as last year against Monaco. We made the same mistakes," the Frenchman said.
Arsenal's strategist was also disappointed in how his players played against Barcelona's attack when the first goal of the match was scored.
"We had two or three chances to stop the attack when the first goal was scored, but we didn't do it because the players misjudged the situation happening on the field. In attacks, we were impatient, we lost balls that we don't usually lose, and it wasn't because Barcelona forced us to do so - we just weren't accurate in passing the ball. In the first half of the match, we had an incredible opportunity to score. How we utilized our chances was a huge problem, and I felt that we lacked something in finishing our attacks," Wenger said after the match.
The second leg of the UEFA Champions League match between Barcelona and Arsenal will take place on March 16th.
