Will Thierry do the business in this big game ?
People wanted more from Thierry Henry on Saturday and maybe they will expect too much from him against CSKA Moscow tonight.
Last year I heard that Arsene Wenger has never once given Henry a bollocking at half-time. But he has, so the story goes, bollocked every other player at some time or another.
Does that sound believable?
Well, Thierry Henry is a diva and you don’t bollock a diva. You don’t scream at Maria Callas in the dressing room after Act One because she might not sing Act Two.She might lose her voice. So you just bite your tongue and hope she hits the high notes.
On Saturday when a reporter suggested that 55,000 fans were disappointed by Henry, Wenger replied with a joke.
“You speak for 55,000 people, do you?” he said. Everybody laughed and the question disappeared. He never answered the question.
Tonight, against a cleverly organised CSKA Moscow team, Arsenal will probably need big games from Henry, Fabregas and Rosicky if they are to win. CSKA are a patient, tactical outfit who work their way into a game, make sure they don’t concede, suss out their opponents.
They make a threat-assessment before the game and then during the game they make a threat-reassessment. I think they are cute enough to fine-tune their game-plan as they go along.
The chances of Arsenal blowing them away are nil.
They can win tonight but they can’t beat them 4-1 because Akinfayev might be the best goalkeeper in this year’s Champions League. We have only seen him three times but Akinfayev looks like one of those keepers who can win big games. He could become a Shilton, a Schmeichel, a Seaman, a Kahn, a Lehmann.
Cesc Fabregas was dog-tired at the end of the Everton game.He had grafted box to box and tried everything he knew and run himself into the ground. But tonight he will be ready to go again tonight. He has stamina, says Arsene, and he recovers quickly.
One of the features of the Moscow game was how swiftly the Russians swarmed round Fabregas and hustled him and cut off his passing options. They are not fools. They know who makes the Arsenal team tick.
And they know that Sporting Lisbon drew 0-0 at Bayern Munich last night.And Olympiacos drew 1-1 at Roma, scoring first.
For the last week I’ve had the feeling that Arsenal will win by one goal but the goal will be a long time coming and might be scored by a defender.
If Vagner Love fails a fitness test, Olic will come in.
THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE is a journey into the unknown.
We think we know who the best teams are but we don’t know who will be in the last four, battling to get to Athens on May 23.
Who can beat Lyon?
I don’t know.
Who can beat Manchester United?
Don’t know
Who could beat Real Madrid and Valencia?
A very good team with a tight defence.
Can Arsenal beat any of those?
Too soon to say.
But they beat Juventus and Real Madrid last year and Villarreal too.
It’s November 1 today and that is far too soon to guess which teams might contest the final.
Let’s see what happens on Matchdays 5 and 6.
In early 2007, as the quarters and semis play out, I think it will be about Brazilians and availabilities. It will be about injuries. It might be, in the final analysis, about absent friends like Samuel Eto’o.
It would not have been Barcelona 2 Chelsea 2 if Eto’o had played last night.
Barca led 1-0 and 2-1 but they don’t defend well enough.Drogba scored in the 92nd minute.
The first half was war, not football, after a thrilling goal by Deco in three minutes.
Essien kicked Ronaldinho again and again and again. You needed shin-pads to watch his assaults.And Maradona shin-pads at that, on the back of your calves.
It was the roughest, scrappiest, nastiest., most spiteful group game I’ve ever seen in the so-called Champions League and the worst part of it was that both teams are champions. If it had been a semi-final I could have excused a lot of the aggro by both teams.
Carvalho and Essien are two of the dirtiest players in Europe.
Frank Lampard scored a fabulous goal for 1-1 very narrow angle after miscontrolling the through-pass.His effort was deliberate, not a chip to the far post.I did not have go see any replays to realise that he knew exactly what he was doing.A clever goal by a smart footballer.Later on he made the best pass of the match but Robben shot over the bar.
Then Lampard spoiled it later by moaning about two “penalties” they should have had.The first was outside the box and the second was a dive- by Lampard.
Then Ronaldinho set up Gudjohnsen for what seemed to be the winner.The cunning Icelander made one little run for the defender, one for himself, and stabbed in from three yards.
Chelsea came back with commendable spirit and Terry headed back an Essien cross for Drogba to score sweetly with his left foot.A superb goal.
Of course, ITV claimed that this game, a spiteful kickfest with 10 yellow cards, “had everything”.
JOSE MOURINHO hasn’t learned from the Anders Frisk affair, let alone apologised. That was one of the most disgraceful episodes in European football history.
And Roman Ambramovich apparently doesn’t care that so many people detest his mean little manager.
You would think that a billionaire who wanted to buy a respectable western identity would be tiring of Mourinho’s antics by now. To see him dive onto his knees at the final whistle, with clenched fists, as if he had just scored the winning goal himself, rather than drawn a group game, showed that Jose Mourinho is not on the same sporting planet as any of the great managers English clubs have employed. His triumphalism was ridiculous.
It’s sad to see somebody so bright, so charismatic, create such a poisonous atmosphere in a game.