march 11th
I only saw the second half of last night’s win and it was all over as a contest by then thanks to two Thierry Henry goals in the first half, his first at home in the Champions League for 2 years. That makes it 28 for the season in all competitions for him now. The second 45 was nice to watch though, without ever being exciting. We played some nice stuff, but didn’t really make too many chances – although Freddie should have done better with a free header. You always got the impression that we were playing well within ourselves, and if we’d really needed a goal we could have got it. Anyway, you can check here for more media fawning than I care to condense for you.
After the game Arsene Wenger was very pleased at making the quarter-finals, especially when you consider our position after the first three games. He said “What is remarkable is bouncing back – from nearly being out now we’re in the last eight. We will enjoy this…we were professional and we did the job.”
After the game bookies William Hill installed Arsenal as 5-2 favourites for the big cup. They must be colluding with Paddy Power, they’re all out to jinx us, and the boss insisted that we were not favourites at all. “Just look at the (trophy) cupboard of Real Madrid and Milan and you become humble again, considering European Cups. Real Madrid have nine, Milan (six)….and us none.”
The draw takes place on Friday, and there’s none of this keeping teams from the same country apart, so it could well be Chelsea. It could also be Real Madrid, Real Sociedad, er..Porto, Lyon, Monaco, Deportivo la Coruna or AC Milan. I wouldn’t be surprised to see us up against the Galacticos, although I’d much prefer Monaco or Lyon, natch.
That said, I don’t think there’ll be too many of that 7 who will fancy taking us on at the moment. For me MIlan are probably the most dangerous – not quite as good as Madrid in terms of attacking, but they can defend like so many foxes. Madrid are obviously the most dangerous up front, with Ronaldo, Raul, Figo, Zidane and Beckham, but suspect at the back. We could probably beat them 8-7.
Anyway, it’s feet back on the ground time now as it’s Blackburn away at the weekend, a game which caused us some problems last season. It’ll be a different looking Arsenal side this time around though , and according to Lauren the boys will be full focussed. “We’re just thinking about the next game against Blackburn Rovers, and that is it. We have to think about Saturday’s game: the Champions League is out of our minds for now. Arsene doesn’t talk about the treble, he just talks about the next match, which is always the most important in our minds.”
And that’s the kind of attitude that could win us things.
