Matchday 1 produced scrappy games last night.
Too close to the international break, I think. Not enough preparation time. Every team seemed to play carefully and there were no big shocks.
I’m finding it hard to raise my game for tonight’s Standard Liege v Arsenal encounter.
Why? Because the probable team is : Mannone; Sagna Gallas Vermaelen Clichy ; Eboue Song Fabregas Diaby ; Eduardo Bendtner.
Will that be the team? Will that really be Wenger’s team?
Mannone, like the other two Arsenal goalkeepers, is clueless. Will that matter tonight? Maybe not.
We shall soon see. Standard’s experienced Romanian coach Laszlo Boloni is no mug and Liege could qualify from this group.
Group H contains the champions of Belgium, Holland and Greece. It’s been widely assumed that Arsenal, 4th in the EPL, will win Group H because the Premier League is much stronger than those three.
LIVERPOOL have had a result already this week. They announced an £80m-a-year sponsorship deal with Standard Chartered Bank. A big deal but deserved by a club that’s won five European Cups and 18 league titles.
Their opponents at Anfield are Hungarian minnows Debrenec, who have to play their home games in Budapest because their own stadium only holds 10,000 and does not meet Uefa’s specificatioins. Debrenec are stronger in defence than attack.They have a useful Belgian striker in Adamo Coulibaly and a tricky mdfielder in Luis Ramos, a Honduran.
SAMUEL ETO’O is still the fireball who loved to stick it to Real Madrid when he played against them for Mallorca and Barcelona. Real was his first club but they never rewarded his talent when he was a teenager.
INTER MILAN v Barcelona is the glamour tie of the round and Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola are consummate tacticians. Expect a close, intense contest.
The summer’s biggest deal was between these two big clubs. Inter got 46m euros and Eto’o (valued at 20m euros) for the six foot four inch Zlatan Ibrahimovic, a swap which looks weirder with every month that passes.
In Group B, Rooney didn’t score against Besiktas in Istanbul and was taken off in 64 minutes. Paul Scholes scored the only goal with a header in 77. Rooney was amazing in United’s 3-1 win at Spurs last Sunday. What a player !
Marseilles 1 AC Milan 2 featured a two-footed tackle by Flamini which was both violent and cowardly. M’bia also went in with both feet. They were lucky that nobody was seriously hurt. Flamini got a yellow card. Maybe it was : let’s be lenient on Flamini because he was fired-up against his old club?
Pippo Inzaghi got both goals. When I saw he was playing I checked his odds as first goalscorer. He was 8-1 but I bottled that bet. Haven’t had a bet on a first goalscorer since the Brazilian Ronaldo left Real Madrid.