Arsenal, Arteta are the best in Europe as Man Utd hero spot on with 2008 comparison | OneFootball

Arsenal swatted Bayern Munich aside in the second half at the Emirates to confirm their status as the very best team in Europe. Mikel Arteta might just be the very best manager.

Arsenal and Eberechi Eze did excellent work against Tottenham on Sunday to avoid this game between the top scorers in Europe’s top five leagues and them as a side reliant on set pieces with the meanest defence of anyone being billed as Beauty vs The Beast. But the first-half certainly lived up to that billing.

“We’ve analysed that and worked on it,” Vincent Kompany said ahead of the game, well aware of Arsenal’s threat from corners and wide free-kicks after admitting “we haven’t showed our usual strength from set pieces”. That work was in vain.

Bukayo Saka delivered impeccably and Jurrien Timber flicked it in just ahead of Manuel Neuer. So simple and so easy, but there was some smart blocking and a bump from Timber on the Bayern keeper as he moved in front of him that definitely wasn’t by accident. There are so many clearly practised intricacies in these Arsenal set pieces which make them the masters of them.

Bayern’s equaliser was glorious. Joshua Kimmich dropped as deep as any Bayern player to play a beautiful cross-field pass to Serge Gnabry, whose first-touch pass was out of this world to tee up Lennart Karl, who had run in behind William Saliba in the middle before making a tricky finish look as absurd easy as the 17-year-old makes the game of football in general. Beautiful.

Myles Lewis-Skelly was caught and not for the first time on a night to forget for the Hale End graduate, who’s struggled for game time this season and won’t expect a lot more as the horribly evident weak link for Arsenal here. Karl, Gnabry and Michael Olise all got the better of him, and without much trouble.

It was his hooking for Riccardo Calafiori in a double substitution which also saw the eyebrow-raising introduction of Gabriel Martinelli for Bukayo Saka that ensured victory for Arsenal.

The Gunners had dominated the second half before those changes in the 70th minute. Mikel Merino should have scored from a Declan Rice corner and Cristhian Mosquera forced a point-blank save from Neuer after a devilish Rice free-kick from deep, but it was those masterful changes by Arteta which made the difference.

Calafiori’s first touch was a screaming cross through the six-yard box to find Noni Madueke, who guided the ball brilliantly past Neuer with his first touch having switched flanks to the right. Rarely does a manager get such immediate and overwhelmingly positive feedback from a change, particularly when it involved taking off your best attacking player, who had arguably been the Gunners’ most potent threat on the night.

And in an apparent bid for the footballing gods to hammer home Arteta’s genius at the Emirates, it was Martinelli who wrapped up the victory, catching Neuer in no man’s land as the Bayern keeper got nowhere close to beating Arsenal’s top ‘finisher’ to an excellent lofted pass from Eberechi Eze, allowing the Brazilian to slot the ball into an empty net.

Declan Rice was and is ridiculous. Mosquera slotted in seamlessly in place of Gabriel, just as Piero Hincapie did against Spurs. Madueke has come back from injury looking as sharp, if not even sharper than he did at the start of the campaign.

And with only a monumental injury crisis likely to now stop them walking to the Premier League title, they laid down a serious Champions League marker here, not just beating one of the other favourites for the competition but dismissing them in that second half.

After reigning Paris Saint-Germain lost to Bayern last time out and conceded three goals to actual Tottenham Hotspur on Wednesday night, Arsenal are undeniably the best team in Europe right now and Owen Hargreaves was bang on in suggesting similarities to Arteta’s side and the Manchester United team he played in to win the Champions League final in 2008.

“You feel like you can walk out and beat anyone.” Literally anyone.