When you’re having a discussion – mid match – as to whether the skittish birds circling and swooping at the Grove are plovers or wagtails, you can safely assume that the fayre being served up on the pitch does not match the tucker promised on the menu.
Contenders or pretenders? On Wednesday night’s evidence we are frankly none the wiser. Arsenal ambled through the game until Partizan equalised, at which point there was a palpable upping of the ante. We duly scored two good goals and immediately took our foot off the gas again. Either we are the most astute, efficient and confident side you will see or we have a collective inability to see danger when it stares us in the face.
Still, we’re through with seemingly the minimum energy expended (last night at least – we should have sealed it weeks ago), and that can only be good news for Monday night’s match. Are Sky calling it Manic Monday? Magic Monday? Monumental Monday? Have they moved these big games to Mondays purely because they’ve expended their stock of Super Sundays and Battles of Britain?
A week today we will find out whether we face Bayern, Schalke, Real or Barcelona in the last 16 of the European Cup, and I’m all for the hottest potato of them all. I don’t see what all the fuss is about. I have moaned incessantly about the flatness of the Champions League group stages (though we took it upon ourselves to make an easy group hard this year) so it’s a bit rich for me to then pray for the least glamorous of the four options on the table. Arsenal’s accountants will no doubt disagree, as will those who argue (strongly, I concede) that we need all the help we can get if we genuinely harbour hopes of getting to Wembley in May. But me – Arsenal v Barcelona or Arsenal v Real Madrid is what this competition is all about. I’ll have a B please, Bob [that doesn’t really work – Ed].
In fact, the European draw is one of the things I ramble on about with arseblogger on today’s Arsecast. Fire it up when it’s cooked.
That’s about all. I’ll leave you to mull over the most vexing and mentally straining of issues to face gooners today, namely: is it actually possible for both Chelski and the Spuds to lose when they play each other this weekend?
The Champions League draw is next Friday, not today…
Surely we find our next CL rival week from today. Right?
the CL last 16 draw is next week jackass!get the right facts before posting
OK, ok, my bad. It’s next week.
Wow you have a tough crowd here, don’t try any new jokes! Anyways like you I hope for Barca in the draw, why not play (and try and beat) the best
!Ee you are a gent. Yup – agree with your sentiment. Why not pit yourself against the best?
Ho hum a game in the doldrums.
How did you think RVP did in the hole? With Denilson and Song behind him it left a large gap between defensive (yes I still believe we have them) players and the attacking group up top. Neither Song or Denilson seemed to link the balls through to the outright playmakers, and RVP didn’t drop deep enough to receive.
Great finish from Theo.
And just to add unlucky Kieran Gibbs, how many injuries does that lad pick up?
Rest of it was drab and uninspiring fare, job done though I suppose.
Barca? Why not at least they’ll come to play and attack and then we will see how good we are in comparison, Real Madrid, well no thanks Jose will just close the doors at Emirates and Bernabau and the games will probably be less interesting than Wednesday night.
Must all b spuds here this morning he says a week from today wake up
The way I see it, if youre not able to beat them in the next round, why would you be able to later in the comp. the fixtures are really going to pile up come late jan/early feb with CC, FAC, CL and the prem…so if you can beat Real, Farca or Bayern, great, we might go on and win the thing. If not rather go out early and concentrate on domestic prizes.
It really doesnt matter who we get coz we are not in it to win it. We are just there to make the money. We have paticipated for so many years and came only close to winning it once and FACT is- the current team is way off or too far from being able to win it.We failed with the invincibles and I dont think we will succeed with this lot.
Any yeah some believe that we should be greatfull to be in the champs league for so long, but if you as me I wud rather we had participated for half the times and won it once or twice. But yeah, its all about the money and nothing else.
I did get it wrong Sean, then I amended it. But I think we can move on now…
Agree with you Geezypeas – we’ll have to pit ourselves against a whopper sooner or later so why not now.
Let’s get the hardest game done and dusted. If we win, then that’ll give us huge confidence. If we lose, then we can concentrate on winning things domestically without those extra European fixtures taking their toll on our players.
didn’t Liverpool win it with a fairly inconsistent team?
and i always thought they were wagtails…
You mean the European Cup, davethe rave? I guess they did. But also a massive dollop of good luck both in getting to the final and coming back from 3 down.
I’ve set up a new commenting system to see if it’s better than the default WordPress one. Feel free to try and let me know what you think…
Working on Mac/FFox here goat.
Let’s hope it is not going to be a Missed Opportunity Monday.
Seems to be working great
Getting the hang of this. I like the way you can comment via your Twitter site.
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I couldn’t bear losing to a Mourinho team. However I would absolutely relish knocking out a Mourinho team. It’s a real problem.
I think that’s a medical affliction.