By Myles Palmer
Since Arsenal ain’t gonna win the Champions League the best they could hope for was a really good Highbury night against a glamour team.
And now they have two games like that.
Juventus are Italy’s biggest club.
Arsenal v Juventus is the second game on Tuesday December 4th.
A big night, a big test, a big atmosphere. Nedved,Buffon, Trezeguet, Del Piero,Thuram, a team of superstars, a huge scalp if you can beat them.
Juventus v Arsenal is the last game on Wednesday March 20th.
Deportivo La Coruna were the best team in Europe in October when they beat Manchester United twice.
Deportivo v Arsenal is the first game on Wednesday November 21st
Arsenal v Deportivo is the fifth game on Tuesday March 12th.
Deportivo played fabulous football in those games against United. But they know that to win the Champions League you have to play like that five or six times at least.
Clearly, it is hard to be as hot in March as you were in October. A week is a long time in football and four months is almost a lifetime.
The fourth club in Group D is Bayer Leverkusen, who have the six foot five centreback Jens Nowotny, whose lack of pace was shown up in the 5-1 defeat by England.
Arsenal play them twice in February, away on the 19th and at hoime on Wednesday 27th.
Can Arsenal raise their game? Can they raise their game by 25% and get through to the quarter-finals again?
Can Thierry Henry score against the club who, he says, used him as a left wingback in a 3-5-2 formation?
Will Vieira be motivated to show Juve what they are missing?
Will Arsenal’s fullbacks get sent off or just go missing on every cross to the far post?
I don’t know. What do you think?
Group B is a tough one for Liverpool.
Roma were not trying in the first leg of the UEFA Cup tie last year. I remember scoffing as Batistuta jumped half-heartedly into a Liverpool defender, rather than trying to head a ball he could have reached.
At Anfield the ref gave Roma a penalty, then changed it to a corner! I have never seen that before or since.Roma will be trying this time around.
Barcelona did not have wonderboy Saviola a year ago.
This kid dances as precisely as a ballerina and strikes as precisely as a cobra.
Saviola is the baby of the team but a baby playing with big, powerful, experienced men like Kluivert and Rivaldo.
If a kid comes over from Argentina and tries to take on the world, he needs to be playing in a team of men. Luis Enrique,Cocu, Patrick Andersson, Puyol – these are real men.
What a fantasy if Barcelona win it and Saviola goes on to win the World Cup as well. What would he do for an encore?
Can Liverpool somehow clog their way through a Roma-Barca-Galatasaray group? I doubt it.
But I admire their ruthlessness in closing a game down. And I admire their ability to keep clean sheets. You get nowhere in this tournament if you can’t keep clean sheets.
And Gerrard and McAllister give them a range of passes that Leeds needed last night as they scrambled to that 6-5 aggregate win over Troyes.
Real Madrid will think they can walk a Panathinaikos-Porto-Sparta Prague group.But believing that might be a big mistake.
Real are only a couple of injuries away from a severe disappointment. Although you could say the same about most teams
Bayern Munich and Man United meet again in Group A, where they will also play Nantes and Boavista.
Fergie’s 4-5-1 formation will get further examinations.
I quite like 4-5-1 but only if the five really know what they are doing. Only if they are organised to rotate in the right way. And United’s five are not especially good at flowing back and forward and across the field in fluent combinations.
But isn’t it really 4-1-4-1, I hear you say?
2nd November 2001.