We were well and truly outclassed against Barcelona, far more so than I had expected to be honest. I knew we were a level below the Spanish giants but f*** me that sure is one big level right now. We were spanked in every department for the full 90 minutes and it became so badly one sided that getting the ball out of our own half felt like an achievement throughout most of the match. When Almunia came on in the first half an hour I cringed in anticipation of what might unfold in front of my very eyes over the next hour or so. But to be fair he was probably our man of the match which says all you need to know about how the game unfolded.

Cesc in my opinion looked nowhere near fit so I guess you can excuse him an off day but for me what you can’t excuse is the all round back slapping of every Barcelona player that ‘our captain’ gave in the tunnel before the game. This is an Arsenal player that was tapped up before our very eyes during the summer, one that was filmed in a Barcelona shirt and one that very clearly holds his hometown club in a much higher regard than he does the club he currently captains. I know it is his dream to go back home and play for his hometown club but come on, if you had more respect for the club you currently get paid by after all that had gone on during the summer and the embarrassment of the Barcelona shirt incident, would you not five minutes before the biggest game of the season be more interested in focusing on the game ahead with a steely face on rather than bum licking every Barcelona player insight? The back heel that led to Barcelona’s first goal is easier to forgive than the facts listed above in my eyes.

The truth is we are Arsenal fans first and foremost, we are not Cesc Fabregas fans. We are merely Cesc fans because he plays for the club we love. The club will live on once he has achieved his ambition of pulling the Barcelona shirt on every week, regardless of his talent. For me you can give the man all the plaudits going but in the real big games he doesn’t always do the things he does against the lesser lights and let us not forget we have won nothing over the past six seasons with him playing week in week out. I for one would take Jack Wilshere’s heart, commitment and drive every time over Cesc’s pure talent. The former man is small in stature but in every other aspect of the game he is proving to be the very standard that others should aim for. Quite simply he has at a tender age become a giant. The latter is a World Cup and European Championship winner but it could also be argued that he didn’t really contribute much to either of those winning campaigns, as let’s face facts he was hardly on the pitch during either tournament and the reasons behind the fact that he hardly featured in either tournament were shown live to the world on Tuesday evening in flashing neon lights. Xavi and Iniesta are a cut above him. This fact may seem harsh but it is factually correct at the time of writing.

Even though we were well and truly outclassed for the full 90 minutes we still got presented with a very acceptable chance of stealing a route through to the quarter finals in the dying minutes of the tie. Unfortunately for us it was none other than Barry Bender who received this chance and before you could say ‘I am the best forward in the world’ the chance had gone. Some pundits that suggested that RVP getting sent off didn’t alter the game in any way should simply look to the fact that had RVP been on the pitch to accept Jack’s through ball in the same position as Barry Bender did we may well still be in the Champions League this morning.

If we had taken the late opportunity and progressed to the next phase I guess we would have almost felt a sense of embarrassment at beating such a clearly superior opponent. Would it have been unjust? This attitude goes some way for me to finding out the reason why we currently sit trophyless for the past six years. Do you think Bolton, Stoke or Blackburn give two tosses about that fact every time they turn us over? Do they look back at the video of the game and feel sheepish and embarrassed at the fact that they won the game even though they were dominated in every single stat of the match? Can you imagine Big Sam sitting down and realising we had 17 shots to his team’s one and cringeing at the scoreline of 1-0 to his boys from up north? Football is a game of wins and losses and how they come about is meaningless. You either go through or go out and if we had have nicked victory from the jaws of defeat then we should have felt delighted by it and rejoiced in our good fortune, we shouldn’t feel sheepish about missing that last minute chance of success. We should have taken it with both hands and ran off into the Spanish sunset sticking two fingers up at Alves and the rest of Guardiola’s men.

Anyway onto more important matters, the ones that we have left on our plate and the ones that we have a realistic chance of success in, the FA Cup and the Premier League. I for one couldn’t give much of a toss about the game at OT on Saturday. If we win great but if we go out then so be it. We need to give ourselves the best possible chance of lifting a trophy come May and that as things stand for me is achieved by focusing 100% right now on the Premier League. The FA Cup is a slightly more alluring version of the League Cup in my eyes these days and that is it. Great if we win it, but is it worth cluttering up your title run-in for? Not in my book it isn’t. That is the reason why I wasn’t too disheartened by our exit from Europe. If we had got through we would have only been in the Quarter Final, sure we would have just knocked out the best team in the tournament, but how many teams that do that actually go on to win the thing? I could have seen us getting the likes of Bayern Munich and going out with more injuries to come and more rested players in important league games because of the added burden on the fixture list. Let us get our priorities sorted out right now and try and lift the biggest and most realistic trophy that we can have a real go at winning.

I have a funny feeling that we are destined to draw at OT and then face the postponement of the away WBA game due to the replay being pencilled in for that same weekend. I would rather take a defeat first time round and focus 100% on winning the league. That might sound defeatist to a lot of you reading this article but for me it is the right call. With RVP back fit and Theo to come shortly we should be set fair to go pretty damn close over the next couple of months and if we don’t, serious questions would need to be asked at that stage. I can accept getting beaten by the best team on the planet. I can accept one giant cock up losing us the League Cup and I can even accept AW putting out an under strength side at the weekend at OT due to getting our priorities sorted out. One thing I will not take as lightly would be us, from our current position, not at the bare minimum going very close to winning the League against what I see as very mediocre opposition. No team is getting above an average six or seven out of ten this season in the Premier League and it goes without saying that it is there for the taking. If we are not up to that standard then why as supporters are we being asked to cough up a minimum of £1000 per season for our tickets? You only pay top dollar to watch top dollar performers, you don’t pay £100 to eat a Big Mac at the end of the day.

I will refrain from calling us a team full of gutless chokers for the time being as it simply isn’t called for at this stage of the season. But if we do start to drop points in the upcoming league fixtures against the likes of WBA, Blackburn and Blackpool then this current Arsenal side will have lost my faith and belief in them and then we will need to take a serious look at things in the summer once ‘our captain’ has left for pastures new.