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Round 16 Champions League football

February 24th, 2009 | By: Jan | 12 Comments »

At last. The Gladiators are back. The top dogs are at it again. And what a fixtures! Nowhere to hide, anymore. No more calculating. Death or the Gladiola’s .

Tuesday’s action saw me sitting with my tea and banana at 6.30 am watching Van der Star and Co. take on The Special One’s Inter Milan. Maybe he should put on his boots next time. Inter wasn’t Special at all. Playing at home, in the first half they looked like West Bromhich Albion without Zuiverloon. Man United did everything right (Van der Sar should have bought a ticket, he was a mere spectator) apart from scoring a goal. Or four. In the second half, the Annoying One made some changes and Inter stood firm. C Ronaldo was successfully stopped in the second half, although he did get some chances – one in the last minute – to score from a setpiece. The douchebag was also close to scoring with a header.

The big difference between Man United and Inter Milan ( and Arsenal and AS Roma for that matter) is the positioning and pace. With Man United, even van der Star’s first action when he has the ball is to look at his strikers. He immediately wants to play the ball forward and have his team push up. Same with the players. While Inter (and Roma) like to play from stationary positions. It was telling that several Roma players, against Arsenal in London, suffered from cramps.

Man United couldn’t finish Inter off, it stayed 0-0 in an exciting match, with old hand Giggs as one of the key players.

Arsenal showed a similar problem against Italian side AS Roma: not scoring enough. Although Robin van Persie ended up as the matchwinner when he converted his penalty in the first half: 1-0.

The Gunners couldn’t play their signature dominating game, but they did create – and squander – several chances. Personally, I think it’s a waste that Robin needs to play the deepest striker in this team. Wenger needs a lethal finisher – Huntelaar?? – and Robin should play shadow striker, in my book.

Pep Guardiola’s Barca couldn’t win in and against Lyon. Thierry Henry scored the equalizer in France, after Juninho’s opening goal in the first half.

Atletico Madrid and Porto shared the points in Madrid, 2-2.

For Real Madrid – Liverpool, Raf van der Vaart is back with the group, after having had to sit out the Sevilla game last weekend. Sneijder and Robben are part of the selection as well, Drenthe is still out.

Tags: Group C, Hiddink, Man United, Mourinho, Real, Ronaldo, Rooney, Sneijder, Vaart, van der Sar

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Comments

By Carlos | February 25th, 2009 at 2:45 am

Agree about Huntelaar and VP with VP being Shadow striker…would be great to watch at Arsenal with Arshevin, Walcott,Fabregas – Dynamite !!

Posted from Singapore

By Jan | February 25th, 2009 at 2:54 am

Don’t forget Nasri and Vela. The future is Arsenal’s but probably not this season. EPL title next season. CL maybe next season…. Hope Wenger gets to finish it, but two EPL titles in 10 years and runner up in the CL is not the best of records… On the other hand, Benitez isn’t doing too well either.

By tiju | February 25th, 2009 at 5:50 am

benetiz-man of tactics(mostly less attracive tactics)almost same as mourihno,but very result oriented,
hiddink-fergie-wenger—-with longvison and attractive tactics and attractive play.
offcourse wenger coz he can forsee the talents
look at arsenal-
RVP,arshavin,edurado,walcot, are highly skilled ,i mean all of them penetrate any diffence.
with nasri,fabergas,rosicky,future is arsenal but i think some of them will leave the club within one year,coz arsenal crowded with talents,so therr will be no rooms for some great talents.
but they need another solcampbell in the back otherwise next season also they will face same problem

Posted from India

By tiju | February 25th, 2009 at 5:52 am

wenger is expert in analysis of the player,he never made wrong analysis on any player,always his analysis are correct and perfect.

Posted from India

By finnster01 | February 25th, 2009 at 7:14 am

If Wenger just wasn’t French I possibly could have liked him.

…Everytime I think of him I get this vision of him sitting at a Paris cafe with a beret and a scarf, eating a baguette and smoking a gauloise whilst touching the waitresses ass.

By Caleb | February 25th, 2009 at 9:58 am

@Finnster – I can’t say I’ve ever had that mental image, haha!

@Jan – the problem with “the future is Arsenal’s” is that the future has been Arsenals for the last 3 seasons already… when will the future become the present?? That being said, I have to disagree with your match commentary that Arsenal couldn’t play their signature dominating game – I think they completely dominated that game! In the first half Roma barely touched the ball in the first 20 minutes! I think the problem is they lacked the drive/mentality to finish the tie off and once they scored their goal they didn’t push so hard. So we saw them sitting back in the second half and that let Roma actually get a chance to pass the ball more than twice in succession. Arsenal still created chances, but by the look of things they were quite happy with the 1-0 win at home (the players that is, not Wenger judging by his expressions on the bench)… I don’t know why though! With the number of chances they had, they should have put the whole tie beyond doubt already!

I completely agree that Arsenal could use a Huntelaar last night. They do have Eduardo however, and he is a born goal scorer. Hopefully he’ll be back for the second leg. Adebayour can be a good big centre forward player as well (he hasn’t shown it this season, but last season he did very well), which allows VP to play behind him and play his game.

Posted from Canada

By ferenc | February 25th, 2009 at 12:23 pm

@Finn: he’s from alsace

Posted from Hungary

By finnster01 | February 25th, 2009 at 1:35 pm

@Ferenc: Alsace? Hmmmm, I’ll work with that. Although didn’t that area start a couple of wars?

By ferenc | February 25th, 2009 at 4:54 pm

exactly. but the very good news tonight is that liverpool won at santiago bernabeu. i’m really happy (as always when real are beaten). kuijt worked like hell,robben wasn’t too good. unfortunately babel had only 25 minutes.

Posted from Hungary

By Jan | February 25th, 2009 at 11:36 pm

@Caleb, I understand your point, but I did feel Arsenal played under-par…

By kimika | February 26th, 2009 at 12:20 am

@Jan, if yesterday’s Arsenal is under-par, then… I don’t know how to describe the recent months…
Of course Arsenal could play a better game, if they had Fabregas with them… Hope he can play the away game…

@Caleb, yes, we have been saying “the future” thing for at least 3 years. But the problem is, the team has never been built up. If Flamini (or Gilberto or Diarra) and Hleb are with them, the team would have a “now”, not a “future”. They played really well last season, especially the first few months, though they got nothing at the end of season.

Anyway, watching rvp’s first touch is amazing…

Posted from United States