Arsenal defender Per Mertesacker has said that the club lost its tie against Bayern Munich in the first leg at the Emirates stadium. The Premier league outfit managed a 1-1 draw with Bayern Munich in the second leg of the Champions League last 16 match at the Allianz arena. However, a 2-0 defeat in the first leg meant that they have gone out 3-1 on aggregate. It was a closely fought encounter in the second leg, which was not the separating factor according to Mertesacker. He was returning to Germany to face his international teammates.

However, the first leg result proved more than decisive according to the 29-year-old, who recently extended his contract with Arsenal. Arsenal had a man sent off in the first leg due to Robben going done easily. They also missed a penalty – courtesy of Mesut Ozil – within a few minutes after the start of the match. Mertesacker reckons that had things gone differently in the first leg, Arsenal would have been in the draw for the quarter-finals. Lukas Podolski scored Arsenal’s goal in the second leg, while Schweinsteiger had a given the German outfit the lead a few minutes earlier.

Despite being knocked out of the competition, Mertesacker says that the club can certainly take a lot of positives out of this match.

“It is disappointing but overall we played two good away games in both years against Bayern Munich. It’s obvious that both home games weren’t enough to help us go through. We tried everything [in the second leg], especially in the last 10 minutes. We tried to track them over the whole place, we got some balls in good situations but didn’t manage to score. We had to score twice so we were two goals away from the quarter-finals,” said the German international to Arsenal’s official site.