Wenger facing anxious times

So it was that Willy Sagnol sloppily failed to clear his ranks in the 88th minute, allowing Kolo Toure to bury what could prove more than a consolation. With it, perhaps the Ivorian, who had been responsible for Arsenal gifting two goals and who Wenger reckons is struggling for confidence, may have found a new lease of life along with the whole team.

"That goal really hurt us," moaned Magath. "It makes things tense." Realistically, though, it will only provide tension if Arsenal can keep a clean sheet while also delivering the sort of exhilarating fare so often absent on their continental nights out.

A clean sheet? In 11 matches in 2005, they've achieved this just twice and, with Wenger expressing doubts about Sol Campbell's fitness for the second leg, you wouldn't wager a Euro on it. Worse still, Michael Ballack will definitely be fit for Bayern then.

Then the age-old mystery of their continuing Champions League under-performance? In November 2001, I recall Wenger wondering aloud after a wretched display in La Coruna whether it was "more down to psychological reasons and belief than down to tactics". On last night's woeful effort, he could only muse in similar vein: "Is it down to psychological or physical reasons? I don't know frankly."

Well, if he doesn't, who does? In three years, he's never really come any closer to ridding the club of these baffling absent-minded nights in Europe which, though he tries his best to hide it, must haunt him because they do represent his ultimate examination.

He wouldn't accept that an arctic night, nor his decision to skip training in the exposed Olympiastadion the previous evening, had anything to do with why his champions "weren't sharp and didn't have our usual movement and passing".

Yet his team - those Champions League statistics nuts will doubtless tell us if this was the first all-gloved overseas XI to compete for an English club - did appear to freeze in those opening minutes before Oliver Kahn's hoofed ball was headed by a retreating Toure into the path of the grateful Claudio Pizarro.

Here again was the one thread which always seems to run through his side's worst European nights, like last season's 3-0 caning by Inter Milan at Highbury - incompetent defending which you may just get away with in the Premiership but not in this company. The Peruvian Pizarro buried his volley as greedily as he headed home his second after 58 minutes from Mehmet Scholl's free-kick while his hapless marker Toure dozed.

What was maddening was that, between the goals, Bayern had looked distinctly ordinary. Wenger believed the injury to Edu just as Arsenal were finding some rhythm was the turning point but, in truth, their pretty midfield patterns had never promised an end product anyway.

By the time Frings crossed for Hasan Salihamidzic to volley home the third goal, six visiting defenders were in Frings' vicinity but none anywhere near the scorer and, by now, it was shocking to see the rapidity and extent of Arsenal's disintegration. The blameless Jens Lehmann scolded himself for not clearing the third but probably only because he felt he had lost the ludicrously hyped battle of the goalies with the underemployed Kahn.

Most worrying was to hear Wenger admit unprompted that "Bayern wanted it a fraction more" than his side, although he later checked himself, declaring: "I still have confidence in the quality of my players and of their spirit and desire."

That was more like it. As the man said, there's enough time for crying and victory is still eminently possible against a side which hasn't won outside Munich since November. Yet after Arsenal's worst Champions League effort, it will surely now take their best ever to answer the Bayern fans' farewell taunt of "It's coming home, football's coming home". Who said Germans don't have a sense of humour?