Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain embodies Arséne Wenger's faith in spirit
The Arsenal teenager's performance against Milan would have thrilled whoever is going to be the next England coach
Arsenal's exhausted players left the pitch bathed in warm applause from supporters who sometimes turn their backs on the sight of adversity but this time stayed on after the final whistle,
setting aside their disappointment to salute something that felt like a rebirth.
"Everybody fought together and helped his team-mate," Laurent Koscielny said, summing up the virtues of a performance that seemed more significant than the result. They had gone out the Champions League but the manner of their departure seemed to lift their hopes of hanging on to fourth place in the Premier League and securing qualification for next season's competition.
This was a tie of four halves. Arsenal lost the first one 2-0 and the second by the same score in Italy, won the third 3-0 at home and drew the fourth after Milan's players finally pulled themselves together. No doubt Massimiliano Allegri had used his half-time address to remind them of the humiliation suffered by their predecessors at Liverpool's hands seven years ago – although none of the Italian club's players on the pitch in Istanbul was involved on Tuesday night.
As Arsène Wenger's players fought their way back to the brink of redemption, they gave substance to the Frenchman's frequent expressions of faith in their spirit – a quality long obscured, perhaps, but unearthed as they put the seven-times European champions on the rack. With those three unanswered first-half goals, they took a further giant step in the restoration of their battered pride, making the outcome of the tie seem less significant than the effect of their resilience on the club's morale.
At the heart of their performance was a display by a teenager who will certainly have lodged a few thoughts in the mind of whichever coach is destined to take England to the finals of the European Championship this summer. Injuries to Mikel Arteta, Aaron Ramsey, Abou Diaby, Yossi Benayoun and Francis Coquelin, not to mention the long-term absence of Jack Wilshere, gave Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain a chance to start the match in the centre of midfield, alongside Alex Song and in front of the back four. Not quite the position just behind the front line that he says is the one best suited to his talents, but closer to it than the role on the wing in which he has been nurtured in his early days as a first-team player.
Theo Walcott is still waiting for a similar opportunity to come in from the touchline, where he has been stationed since his arrival six years ago – like Oxlade-Chamberlain, a teenaged prodigy from Southampton. Walcott always believed himself to be better suited to a striker's role, and his goalscoring record with his original club and with England's Under-21s supported his contention, as did his brace of goals in the dramatic 5-2 win in the recent north London derby. He must have been envying the apparent ease with which the 18-year-old Oxlade-Chamberlain, five years his junior, has impressed Wenger with his precocious football intelligence.
Arsenal v Milan in the Champions League: five talking points
1
Dignity more than regained
As ashamed as they felt to be so thoroughly outclassed in Italy, Arsenal earned the right to feel proud of themselves by making the impossible seem eminently possible. This is not the best XI Arsène Wenger has ever put together by any stretch of the imagination but they proved themselves capable of something memorable for the third time in as many games. Again they showed courage, and discipline, to try to haul themselves out of a difficult situation. Even making this tie interesting was an achievement. As Wenger pointed out before the game, they somehow had to strike the right balance between attacking and defending. The only pity was that they did not have the attacking reinforcements from the bench to really crank it up. The out-of-favour Marouane Chamakh and Park Chu-young were the best they could do.
2
Italians stuck in first gear
One of the oddest consequences of being in such command from the first leg is the difficulty for a team to psych themselves up for the task. That does not excuse Milan's extraordinary sluggishness. If Arsenal, as Kieran Gibbs suggested, were guilty of not "turning up" at San Siro, the same accusation could be thrown at Milan here. Their defensive lapses were extremely poor for all the goals that gave Arsenal a 3-0 half-time lead. Inept marking from a corner, uncharacteristic sloppiness from Thiago Silva, and a clumsy Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain sandwich put Milan in a position of anxiety they could barely have imagined having doled out that hammering three weeks ago. Van Bommel's early booking was another advantage for Arsenal, as he could ill afford any more reckless tackles. The question of whether this Milan team could be a contender and trouble the Spanish favourites got a pretty resounding answer here: not this time.
3
The real Rosicky stands up
Wenger confessed before the game that he did not know what he would do if the Czech midfielder Tomas Rosicky did not recover from an injury niggle to make the team. A player who promised so much when he signed from Borussia Dortmund in 2006, his Arsenal career has stuttered, mainly due to some horrendous injury problems. In the past couple of weeks he has shone, regaining the momentum to play with great personality, drive and guile in midfield. Having scored his first Premier League goal in two years to crown an action-packed display against Tottenham, he carried that form over with another performance full of purpose. His opportunist strike, for Arsenal's second goal, was deserved. A word, too, for Alex Song, whose exemplary display anchoring the Arsenal midfield underlines why his contract extension must be priority after Van Persie.
4
'The Ox' is the future
Although he was selected in a more central role than anticipated, contrary to some of the pre-match speculation the teenager Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain was deployed in a defensive midfield role, rather than as a playmaker. It had echoes of the education Wenger wanted Jack Wilshere to experience when he broke through, but was all the same a giant call to make in a game such as this against Mark van Bommel and Antonio Nocerino. Oxlade-Chamberlain was sensible in his positioning, tidy in possession, and able to demonstrate his technique with the beautifully whipped in cross for Laurent Koscielny to head in Arsenal's first goal. But it was hard to escape the feeling he was being reigned in, that he could make more of a difference. Then came the moment when he escaped the leash with a searing run into the box to win the penalty for Robin van Persie to make the score 3-0. The former Southampton player has come a long, long way since making his debut as a substitute 62 minutes into that infamous 8-2 thumping at Old Trafford.
5
Abbiati battered
The Italian keeper Christian Abbiati had been watching from the bench the night Milan surrendered a 4-1 lead at Deportivo La Coruña to suffer the consequences of the most dramatic turnaround in Champions League history. He, above all, deserves a pat on the back from his team-mates. A couple of important saves (added to the two fine efforts to ensure Van Persie did not score an away goal at San Siro) were vital. Milan were surprisingly open. For an Italian team to go away from home and play with an attacking trident hardly known for their capacity to track back in Zlatan Ibrahimovic flanked by Robinho and the youngster Stephan El Shaarawy was brave in a way. But it turned out to be a bad move, as a more conservative approach might have been more frustrating to Arsenal. As it was, there was not much of a barrier. The midfield area – where Wenger's team had no option but to experiment – was afforded far too much time and space to dictate the game. By all accounts the Milan coach was cross that it finished only 4-0 in the opener at San Siro. Now we know why.
