NEWS… BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT
Former Italy, Fiorentina and Bayern Munich striker Luca Toni was not at all impressed by Arsenal’s performance at Inter Milan on Wednesday night.
The Gunners were beaten 1-0 at the San Siro, with a Hakan Calhanoglu penalty the difference between the sides.
It leaves Mikel Arteta’s side 12th in the Champions League standings, although with seven points from four games they are still very much in contention for a top eight finish.
Toni feels they must liven up in attack, though, saying their display in Milan was completely lacking in ideas and genuine threat.
‘It seems to me that Arsenal were really poor in the offensive phase,’ the World Cup winning striker told Prime Italy. ‘No one tried to beat the man, only [Bukayo] Saka a few times.
‘Lots of crosses with the defence lined up, Arsenal created very little thanks to Inter’s physicality and skill in defence. Arsenal could have played for six hours and never would have scored.
‘Arsenal were really bad, they only made simple crosses for Inter’s defenders. Inter suffered but didn’t suffer chances, Sommer didn’t make any saves.’
Toni knows a thing or two about scoring goals having finished Serie A top-scorer twice (for Fiorentina and Verona) and once again in the Bundesliga over his brilliant career.
Another Serie A icon weighed in on the match, with Clarence Seedorf hailing the defensive masterclass of Inter rather than the blunt peformance from the away team.
‘Inter won in the Italian style, at a certain point they threw away the key and said that there was no way through,’ said the Dutchman.
‘I didn’t understand [Simone] Inzaghi’s changes, then I saw that he designed the 5-4-1. With those men, Arsenal would never have been able to score.’
Arsenal legend Thierry Henry worries about his former side’s approach away from home, feeling that Inter were happy to let the Gunners have the ball but they didn’t know what to do with it.
‘I don’t know what we’re going to do, I’ll be honest with you. I actually don’t know how we’re going to go,’ the Frenchman said on CBS Sports.
‘I know today we were 1-0 down and we had to attack and Inter gave them the ball.
‘I just don’t know how we’re going to play away from home.’
‘But my issue, and always has been, we talked about it on matchday two [after Arsenal drew with Atalanta], away from home I don’t think it was good enough. But we were getting away with it for a very long time, now we’re not any more.
‘That’s what I’m saying, let’s see what’s going to happen against Chelsea [on Sunday].’
Arteta was not panicking about the performance, but was left frustrated by his team’s inability to turn dominance into goals.
‘The worst thing of the night, for sure, is the result,’ he said. ‘Because the performance, the attitude, the dominance that we showed against one of the best teams in Europe in this stadium, I haven’t seen it in all the other games that I’ve watched but the reality is the result and we participated in that because we had many situations that we can resolve much better in front of goal and score at least two goals and then extremely frustrated as well because there are two decisions that at the end marks the result and the course of the game.’
There was also frustration for the Arsenal boss over two penalty decisions, one given for Inter and one denied for his own side.
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Mikel Merino did not get a spot-kick after being heavily caught by Inter goalkeeper Yann Sommer, but was penalised for a harsh handball decision in his own box.
‘I feel like we were really harshly done tonight,’ Arteta told TNT Sports. ‘Especially if you are going to give the other penalty in the other box the other has to be because he [Sommer] punches him [Merino] in the head.’
On Inter’s penalty incident, Arteta continued: ‘It’s not a shot, it is just a deflection there is no danger in the box, there is nothing you can do, the ball is very close to your body.
‘There is nothing you can do to get away from it. So if you give that one the other one 100 per cent has to be a penalty.’
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