Arsene Wenger believes Arsenal's Champions League campaign would have ended differently if Wojciech Szczesny had not been sent off against Bayern Munich.
The Poland goalkeeper was dismissed for denying Arjen Robben a clear goalscoring opportunity in the first leg of their last-16 tie at Emirates Stadium and, despite a gallant rearguard action, the Gunners went down 2-0 as Bayern made their extra man count.
A 1-1 draw at the Allianz Arena was not enough to turn the tie around and Wenger has regrets over the circumstances of Arsenal's exit - and their failure to top their group.
"As a whole I think we have shown quality and I believe we had the level to go much further in this competition," he told Arsenal Player.
"I regret that we were caught on the break against Dortmund when we [tried] absolutely to win the game"
"I have two regrets, the first one is that we were caught on the break against Dortmund when we [tried] absolutely to win the game. Dortmund scored in Marseille in the last second which [denied us] first place.
"The second regret I have in this competition is having to play with 10 men against a team like Bayern Munich at home. That was my biggest frustration in this competition and I think it was an unfair decision.
"It leaves a lot of regrets open because I said at the time that we could have knocked Bayern out and I'm convinced still of that. If we had knocked out Bayern we would have been of course completely confident to go to the end [of the competition]. But it shows you it's very tight.
"It has shown again that in these kind of games your goalkeeper will have to make saves and be lucky on one or two occasions. Your offensive players, somebody will have to turn up to do something special. That's what these games are down to.
"The goalkeeper and the striker becomes massively important in these games."
Copyright 2024 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.