Morning all,
let’s see if we can get through this without mention of you know who and you know what. There’s plenty of discussion and opinion about that in today’s Arsecast.
So trying to stick to football there’s the small matter of the Champions League draw this morning. It takes place at 11.30 and in the pot with us are Liverpool, United, Chelsea, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Porto and Villarreal.
I think I’d prefer to avoid an English side, let United and Liverpool kick the crap out of each other, then Chelsea get beaten by someone else leaving us with a more interesting European tie. From a football perspective you’d think Porto and Villarreal are probably the easiest ties, while Barcelona would be an amazing trip and game of football.
Whoever we draw it’s going to be a tough fixture but if you want to win the Champions League you’ve got to beat big teams – and we’ve shown in recent seasons that we’re capable of that. Cesc is confident that no matter who we get we can beat them, saying:
We know it will be tough in the next round but we also know we can beat any one of them. If you want to win this competition you have to beat the best players in the world and now is that time.
While Arsene Wenger says:
At this stage of the competition, I do not think it really matters who you play, so let us see who the draw gives us and knock them out.
And what more can you say?
Ahead of tomorrow’s game against Newcastle the team news is that Manuel Almunia should be fit after Diouf’s tackle damaged his ankle and Sylvester is fit again … wooooo hoooo. Jesus.
Eduardo and Cesc are in training with the first team and given the fact there’s an interlull on the way after tomorrow’s game both of them, and possibly Adebayor, will be fit and available for the game against Man City on April 4th.
More on tomorrow’s game tomorrow.
Now onto the Arsecast. Firstly, if you are subscribed in iTunes via the iTunes store you may find the Arsecast won’t update. I’m looking into this and will try and get it fixed as soon as possible. In the meantime you can re-subscribe to the new RSS feed by going into iTunes, clicking on the Advanced menu, then Subscribe to podcast. When prompted enter the following URL:
http://www.oleole.com/media/main/podcasts/arsecast/newfeed2.xml
That should do the trick. On the show this week I chat to Amy Lawrence about Cesc, Hull, media coverage and some football too, Philippe Auclair from France Football provides evidence that Cesc did not spit at Michael Ballack, plus some ranting, name calling and, sadly, terrible singing.
To download this week’s arsecast directly – click here (25mb MP3) or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.
Right then, that’s your lot. More, including a Newcastle preview, tomorrow.
