september 17th
07.35 – When’s the last time you said ‘Good morning’ to somebody and really meant it? Thought so.
Patrick Vieira has been talking ahead of Arsenal’s opening Champions League game against Inter Milan tonight. The skipper says “Sometimes when we are winning, we keep trying to play too much football. We need to have the instinct of killers…when we get one chance, we score and then the game is over.”
It’s not really been the Arsenal way over the past few seasons though. The familiar 1-0 to the Arsenal chant is much more likely to be sung temporarily during a match and rarely in celebration of a result. There’s a lot of pressure on Arsenal to do well in the Champions League now. For a team with this kind of talent, we’ve underachieved a bit. No more learning curves. Time to deliver. We’re now seeded 5th in the Champions League – not quite sure how – and for players like Vieira, Henry and Pires who have won almost everything else in the game, the Champions League remains the holy grail.
I’ve said in the past here I think our players seem to have a mental block in the Champions League, and fail to perform properly in crunch games. Vieira agrees “I think success in Europe is a mental thing more than anything else. We have performed really well in past seasons, but maybe we were not at our best in the big games.”
We’ve done pretty well against Italian teams at Highbury over the last couple of seasons, let’s hope we keep it up tonight. Jaques Cousteau reckons we need to defend better. He says “We are incabable of shutting up shop. We don’t know how to hang on to a result.” But Bob is confident too, “It would be fabulous to win the Champions League because we would go down in legend at this great club. The advantage we have this season, I think, is that although some critics say the club was too prudent in the transfer market I believe that stability in the squad is an undeniable advantage.”
Arsene Wenger says refs should only give ‘obvious penalties’, and give the benefit of the doubt to the defender when it looks dodgy. “I can understand that it is difficult for the referees to see without using slow-motion replays, but the element of doubt should be the other way around.”
Steve Bennett will referee Arsenal’s game with Man United this weekend. Some people seem to have a problem with him after his Charity Community Shield performance, but he managed to get shot of Jeffers for us, so he’s not all bad. Even AW doesn’t mind. He says “I have no suspicion about any referee before a game. Once I start that, I would not be able to sleep well any more.”
hahahahaha – two chances, mate, and slim just left town.
Arsenal v Inter Milan. KO 7.45 (GMT). Come ooooooooon you gooooooooooooners.
