We are on the summer side of Easter now.
The sun is shining brightly and Arsenal have five more league games.
But the Spurs game is not till Wednesday night.
Five days till the 14th of April. Five days till Spurs v Arsenal at the Lane. Five days of transfer speculation that I won’t be involved in.
Two things to say about the 4-1 defeat in Barcelona.
1. If Wenger has to make a change in his back four, he often makes two changes.
One positional. This time he played two left-footed centrebacks, moving one of them. So one change became two changes. That is why I said Sagna should play centreback, so Vermaelen could play his natural position. We all know that Eboue is not a right back but I still think that would have been a better option.
2. Barcelona have surrounded the ball for a long time.
I remembered a game I saw as a punter, not as a reporter, at White Hart Lane, with Chris Briggs, a friend in the music business. Seen from good seats and a high angle, I noticed that when the ball was on one side of the pitch, Barcelona had seven players within 20 yards of the ball.
They didn’t play at the tempo of the current team but Barcelona outnumbered Spurs near the ball, making it hard for them to keep possession or get tackles in. I had never seen a team do that. It’s Dutch, I think.
I started to think about seeing them at Spurs, when Olmo scored with a lob from 40 yards that Ray Clemence should have saved.
Wanting to know when that game was, I Googled Spurs Barcelona Olmo and got Barcelona will fear Kanu now.