By Myles Palmer
I was walking home from the gym this morning thinking about the Champions League.
It is a pleasant 20-minute stroll which gave me time to consider last night’s shambolic 3-1 defeat by Schalke, which I feared might be a 4-0 defeat.
Not having seen the whole game, and being horrified by the highlights, I’m not gonna discuss that particular carnival of incompetence.
What I will say is this : there are 16 teams left in the Champions League and 12 of them are better than Arsenal.
Three are as good as Arsenal.
The teams who are better are Real Madrid, Barcelona, Deportivo, Roma, Juventus, Liverpool,Manchester United, Nantes, Bayern Munich, Boavista, Galatasaray and, probably, Porto.
The three teams who are as good as Arsenal are Bayer Leverkusen, Panathinaikos and Sparta Prague
So Round Two will be reduced to one good night at Highbury.
The fans probably want to see one great performance against a glamour club, a team who are as good as Valencia, or better. If you expect more than that you will be disappointed
Last year Arsenal beat Valencia 2-1 after being 1-0 down. It was a gutsy display and Ray Parlour’s thunderous goal was one of the highlights of the season.
Losing a 2-0 lead to Bayern was, of course, the lowlight of the season.
The Valencia victory went a long way to assuaging the pain of conceding those goals by Tarnat and Scholl.
But Arsenal could not draw the second leg in Spain.
And they still can’t draw an away game.
Real Madrid have drawn a game, Roma and Nantes have drawn two games.Deportivo have drawn three of their first five games before tonight!
Arsenal played three games in Mallorca, Athens and Gelsenkirchen- three defeats by 1-0 and 1-0 and 3-1.
They were never in control of those games – anything could have happened
LIVERPOOL, however, CAN draw away games.They have the organisation and spirit to draw games.
Liverpool are a defensive team who play six and won three and drawn three
Arsenal are an attacking team who won three and lost three.They scored nine goals but conceded nine.
Liverpool won their Dortmund-Boavista-Kiev group. A huge achievement in their first season.
How did Liverpool do what Arsenal failed to do in THEIR first two seasons in the UCL?
By not playing at Wembley. By being realistic.By defending collectively and intelligently.By not getting full backs sent off ten minutes into a game.
As I was walking home on this gorgeous, sunny, breezy autumn morning, I was also thinking about Friday’s draw for Group Stage Two. I always watch it live on Eurosport.
Sometimes I post the news here straight away. If the draw was today I would not watch it or post anything.
I’m not in the right mood today because today is a day of doubt, disappointment, and,judging from last night’s e-mails from fans who saw the whole game, disgust.
The next three Champions League games will be around November 20th and December 4th and February 19th.
Those three dates are the Tuesdays.
In those two games before Xmas Arsenal will probably have one at home and one away.
They will need to win at home and draw away – whoever they play in those games.
31st October 2001.
P.S. Did you see that former SAS soldier on Sky News last night?
He was talking about the video of Bin Laden aiming his AK47.
He said that a left-hander would NOT fire a right-handed Kalashnikov in that way because the shells would eject ACROSS his face, rather than away from his face.
Good spot !