march 12th
09.15 – Another disappointing night in the Champions League, as Arsenal could only manage a 1-1 draw against 10 man Roma.
We had chance after chance, especially in the opening part of the second half, and Giggsed them all. When Robert Pires sidestepped two Roma defenders at the end of a beautiful move, made his way into the box and then blasted over you just knew it wasn’t going to be our night.
We had taken the lead through Patrick Vieira early on, but some slack defending allowed the ‘rent boy‘ (way to tempt fate Myles) to nip in and equalise. Arsenal had more chances with Pires, Wiltord, Freddie, Henry and Jeffers all failing to make the most of them, and we can count ourselves lucky Montella managed to head over the bar from 6 yards with just a few minutes of the game left.
Despite our 5th draw in our last 6 European games, Patrick Vieira is confident we can go through to the quarter finals. He says “It’s up to us whether we go through. If we play like we normally do, it won’t be a problem. We know what we have to do now.”
On the plus side though – and after a night’s sleep has taken away some of the frustration – a draw with Roma is not altogether a bad result. It means that Roma can still qualify for the next stage if results go their way. Both games next week mean something. If we beat Valencia, and Roma beat Ajax by more than 2 clear goals, they would progress to the 1/4 finals. It’s a big change from the shambolic situation last season when we were left reliant on the result of Deportivo’s game. It also means that we could lose in Valencia and still go through if Roma beat Ajax. A full guide to the qualification permutations can be found here.
Last night did expose what is for me a fundamental weakness in the Arsenal squad. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, if Sol Campbell or Martin Keown are out (God help us if they’re both out together), our replacements in central defence are not good enough. Cygan once again had a pretty poor game. His lack of communication with Keown was blatantly obvious on a number of occassions, and his inability to run faster than a cripple carrying a hippo is going to cost us. We have quality all over the pitch. We have quality replacements in the squad for almost every position – except centre-half. We need to sort this out, because injuries to Sol and/or Martin, would mean a Stepanovs/Cygan partnership, which would relieve constipation in any Arsenal fan and seriously lessen our chances of winning silverware at the end of the season.
Maybe this Senderos kid has enough to come into the first team straight away, but it’s hard to see AW playing an 18 year old centre half. A top quality defender has to be top of the summer shopping list. Sometimes AW’s gambles pay off, and maybe he saw something in Cygan that most of us can’t, but we have to chalk this one down as more Malz than Ljungberg.
