I have to say I do feel a bit detatched from Arsenal over here. Strange, I know, as I’m in Dublin usually but I just feel far away from stuff. The fact that I’ll be watching the game in the morning time is going to be even weirder.
Arsene has been talking, obviously, and he talks about the challenge of facing an English team in the quarter finals. He reckons that it’ll come down to mental strength, a case of who wants it more. He also thinks that the players who can turn a game have to perform. For us you look at Fabregas, maybe Adebayor or Hleb, while for Liverpool Gerrard and Torres are the obvious candidates.
Liverpool will play it tight in the first leg. I suspect they’ll be set up not to concede and try and hit us on the break. An away goal for them would be invaluable. As I said yesterday we could draw 0-0 and do what we did in the second leg at the San Siro but I really would like a goal or to take into the second leg.
Where there is no doubt is that the next 4 games make or break our season. We could find ourselves in the semi-finals and right back in the mix in terms of the league or we could end up out of everything. Of course we could be in the league and out of the Champions League or vice versa so these games are just so important. There’s real pressure on now but the boss has faith in this group of players and their ability to cope with these kind of situations. He says:
When you are two down, with 10 men, and you haven’t won for five games and you ask the team to win the game, they must have some special belief and mental strength to go and do it. What I have learned is that when our backs are to the wall, they have extraordinary resources.
But while the Bolton game and the comeback was remarkable you can’t lose sight of the fact that we allowed our backs to be put to the wall in the first place. Still, every team goes through dodgy spells and February and March certainly was one (Milan apart) so hopefully we can kick on from here.
How we line up is going to be interesting. I hope we keep the back four that started against Bolton. I think that’s our strongest defence and with Torres a real threat we have to be as strong as possible back there. Thinking about it I think it’ll be the same team as Bolton in every area expect up front where Adebayor will come in for Bendtner. Diaby will probably keep his place on the left as we don’t really have any other option. The only other possibility would be to play Hleb there and use Eboue or Theo on the right.
Kolo reckons stopping the supply to Torres will be key and the man mostly responsible for that supply is Steven Gerrard. You have to think that the man to do the job on Gerrard is Flamini. We saw how good he was in the Milan game, how he nullified the threat from Kaka, so we’ll need the same kind of performance from him again.
Speaking of the Flam there were fresh reports yesterday that he’d come to an agreement with Juventus. This was down to selective quoting from an article in L’Equipe and Arsene Wenger claimed that Juventus rang him up and told him they weren’t interested in him at all. Which was very nice of them you have to say.
Anyway, enough of that, let’s just get on with the first part of what promises to be a very interesting and very tense three games. I’ll be in the King’s Head pub in Santa Monica – hopefully we’ll see some Arsenal fans out there. I’ll be the Irish looking bloke with a red Diesel t-shirt on. Do say hello.
Finally for today I’ll be on the World Soccer Daily radio show/podcast at about 10.15am LA time, which I think it’s about 6.15 in the UK. Tune in if you get a chance.
Right then, more tomorrow. Come on you goooooooners…
