Cesc Fabregas scored twice in Arsenal’s 4-1 win over AZ Alkmaar – and I fancy him to score again tonight.
Matchday 5 can produce some weird results but I doubt if this will be one of them. Arsenal’s slick-passing moves should ctreate enough chances against Standard Liege tonight. Morale depends on it. A draw will be enough, but only mathematically. For me, a solid win is needed to give Arsenal a chance against Chelsea on Sunday. Every football match contains the previous match. Mostly, it’s a game of sequences.
Wenger was talking at Colney yesterday, prior to this game, as Uefa requires. He was making more sense than he was on Saturday after Sunderland.
Annoyed by talk of the World Cup and Theo Walcott’s chances of being in Capello’s squad, he said, “It is the journalists and people in the street. That’s not the reality. The reality in life is ‘Do your job my friend’. And make sure that never anybody can say: ‘You’re not committed every day in your life for what you’re paid for’.
“Listen, a guy who has a poor season has a poor World Cup. A guy who wins with his club goes to the World Cup and has a good chance to win. The players are not afraid of you if you do nothing all season. You have no respect from the manager if you don’t do anything at your club.
“The only experience I have of players who won the World Cup is Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit. They won the championship, they won the FA Cup, they went to the World Cup and they won it. Some people think that players can play within themselves and then turn up at the World Cup . . . sport at the top level just doesn’t work like that.”
Absolutely right. Vieira and Petit were flying in the spring of ’98, the FA Cup Final against Newcastle was more like a lap of honour than a match, and as Wenger walked round Wembley, and saw thousands of ecstatic Gooners applauding a thrilling Double, he was thinking ahead, saying to himself, “How can I keep all these people happy?” He kept us happy for a long time.
All the interesting Matchday 5 games are tonight, with ITV drawing the short straw on Wednesday. Man United v Besiktas will not send viewing figures rocketing to record levels.
In Budapest, the lively losers of Debrecen host Rafa’s rabble, who are depending on Fiorentina not beating Lyon. If Fiorentina win, Liverpool are out.
The Italians are without Mutu and Jovetic, and their defence isn’t as good as their attack. But Fiorentina might shade it by 2-1 because Lyon have already qualified. And because they don’t want it all to depend on their last game at Anfield.
In a week of absent friends (no RVP, no Bendtner, no Torres, Lyon missing Toulalan and three defenders, Abidal and Yaya Toure out with swine flu), the biggest absentee could be Lionel Messi, who has a thigh strain and might miss Inter and also Real Madrid on Sunday.
Messi was doing amazing things on Saturday night when Barcelona played at Athletic Bilbao. He was playing out of his skin. He is so honest, so humble ! His passion and invention were absolutely electric but without Ibra, the big man, the little maestro couldn’t do it all on his own and Barcelona drew 1-1.
The European Champions could be on the way out if Inter win tonight. Inter are playing well and Barcelona’s final game is in Kiev.
The 5.30 kick off is Rubin Kazan v Dynamo Kiev. Rubin, the most interesting new team in the Champions League, have just retained the Russian league title with a 0-0 draw against Zenit. Rubin won 2-1 in the Nou Camp on Matchday 1 and are the only club from outside Moscow to win the Russian league twice
No love lost because these two countries because Ukraine was brutally repressed by Russian communists. Stalin stole the grain and starved 10 million people to death in 1932-33, German troops razed Kiev in 1941 and murdered 33,00 Jews, and then the Russians recaptured the city in 1943. The people were Sovietized for the next 47 years, forced into collective farms, made to recite Marxist-Leninist dogma in Russian, their language and traditions crushed.
When the Soviet Empire crumbled in 1990, the Ukraine became a republic again, an independent, democratic nation of 52 million people in a country as large as France.
Ancient history? Maybe. Long forgotten? I don’t think so.