Chelsea were impressively professional last night.
But Arsenal were a shambles.
With nine changes, Wenger\’s team was totally disjointed and lost 3-1 to Olympiakos, who had a lot to play for.
Arsenal lost Santos to an ankle injury and keeper Fabianski left the field with a gashed knee.
Sky pundit Glenn Hoddle said Arsenal’s young players will have learned a lot from this defeat. Glenn is Wenger’s mate, so he would say that.
Hoddle is talking crap. Oxlade-Chamberlain will learn nothing from playing in such a meaningless pantomime with clowns like Djourou, Squillaci, Chamakh, Fabianski and Mannone.
Group F was an average group in which three clubs won three games.
Wenger’s remodelled outfit are marginally superior to the other teams and the German champions turned out to be paper tigers. Borussia Dortmund ended a deeply disappointing campaign with the wooden spoon. They were 2-0 up in Marseille but lost 3-2 amid scenes of pandemonium.
Dortmund are very good at winning games in the Bundesliga, having recently beaten Bayern and Schalke by 1-0. But they’ve been rubbish in the Champions League. We expected a lot more from them. Back to the drawing board, Herr Klopp.
In the end, Arsenal won Group F and will avoid Bayern, Barcelona and Real Madrid.
Didier Drogba actually looked interested against Valencia.
He scored goals one and three in a 3-0 victory, with Ramires grabbing the second with a powerful run to beat Victor Ruiz, a wobbly defender.
Villas-Boas, facing a must-win game, decided to defend deep and play a compact game of counter-attack.
Gary Neville said Chelsea had clearly been practicing their old system. A high line and pressing does not suit his elderly stars and David Luiz has been so reckless that I thought Ivanovic might partner Terry at centreback.
Not so. The much-criticised young coach reverted to a Mourinho game-plan but, surprisingly in a pressure match, dropped Lampard for Meireles. For once, David Luiz didn’t do anything silly.
Although Drogba is tidy for a big man, he still plays broadsword football rather than rapier football. He’s piratical and should have a skull & crossbones on his shirt, not a number. He likes to swing on a rope from one ship to another with a cutlass between his teeth.
He’s better in big diagonals, more effective when he has the space to be spectacular. If Chelsea play deep, he has bigger spaces to attack, bigger spaces allow him to barge beyond a defender and produce a killer shot or a booming header.
The Didier Jogba of recent weeks was galvanised by this Champions League challenge into something like the gladiator of old.
He has, I think, 36 goals in 69 Champions League appearances.
Tactical note : Pressing is attacking when you don’t have the ball. Counter-attacking is the opposite : attacking fast after you win the ball back in your rear third.
Counter-attacking is defending deep to attack space with pace and penetration. For pressing, you need a young, hungry team, a sustained collective effort which cannot be supplied when half of your team are old stars.
Defending deep worked beautifully last night: Valencia had 66% of possession but goal-machine Soldado never got a kick.
The other factor is that the Chelsea players have realised they can’t get AVB the sack by playing badly.
He’s in charge for three years and he’s been told : Rip up this team as soon as you like. So Cech, Terry, Drogba and several others are playing for their careers, not for their places. Since they realised that, Chelsea have improved and stopped conceding stupid goals, even though they were lucky at Newcastle.
Leverkusen won half their games to finish second behind Chelsea. Their 1-1 in Genk was their only draw in the group.
ELSEWHERE : Milan led 2-0 in Prague against Viktoria Plzen but conceded two very late goals to draw the game.
Right winger Cuenca was superb for the sparkling Barcelona kids, who beat Bate of Belarus 4-0 in the Nou Camp.
Zenit got a draw in Porto and surprise package Apoel Nicosia lost 2-0 in Donetsk, a result that squeezed out Porto.
TONIGHT : Basel v Manchester United is a game where Sir Alex must avoid defeat. He\’s expected to start Rooney and Ashley Young up front with Jones and Fletcher in midfield.
United have been winning games 1-0 for weeks but I can’t see this one being 1-0. It’s on ITV.
Man City v Bayern is academic, I think, since a very weak Villarreal side will not beat Napoli.
I expect the Germans to play for a draw and then slag City off regarding FFP.
Real Madrid are in Amsterdam tonight.
Their record in Group D, with Ajax, Lyon and Dinamo Zagreb, is 5-5-0-0-16-2 and 15 points.
I strongly fancy Mourinho\’s Real Madrid to win the Champions League and also Saturday’s Clasico.
PS : On Friday, watch out for explosions of fear & loathing at the top of Brazilian football.