Arsene Wenger speaking on Bein Sports during Chelsea vs Bayern:
They make you run too much and you cannot survive for 90 minutes. In the Champions League, if you lose the midfield, you’re in trouble. That’s rule number one because you play against such good teams. If they can feed their strikers, you will pay for it. We’ve all gone through that.
I agree with Wenger, which makes the last five years of the Champions League a fascinating exercise in analysis. Why have midfield dominant teams not been winning as much as they should have in the knockout stages? It just goes to show that the competition is so difficult and random, that even having the most important core ingredient can’t guarantee you success in it.