goodfootballerornot

Fairly uninspiring stuff all round. Chelsea for all their money and supposed talent lack any real flair in large parts of the team, the scorer Michael Essien being one of the players with some. Despite the games insipidness Chelsea did at least create some chances, but not that many and wasted a lot of opportunity. Everton look nothing like deserving a Champions League place either. They might argue they held their own and only lost 1-0, but they created at best 2 decent chances in 90 minutes, one of which was a free kick.

To take a note from Keggers book, if you won things for style Man U should win the title this year and Chelsea should get the football golden raspberry for dullness. But football is no respecter of style (or even character, eh Kev.) and if Blackburn have a good home game while United’s thoughts are on the away trip to Barcelona the title could still be stolen if Chelsea can win at home when they meet on the 26th.

So Thaksin Shinawatra is, according to a few reports, unhappy at the results his team have achieved, particularly in the second half of the season. Now I don’t know what footballing experience he has, but I suspect like all rich owners the answer is bugger all. The fact that City did so well at the start of the season took everyone by surprise and as Sven rightly said early on he didn’t expect to stay in the top four. But for Thaksin to even be contemplating sacking him due to a perceived slump shows he has much more money than sense, or knowledge about the game. The City squad isnt that great, still, despite costing him a fair bit of cash. The 50 million or so he spent isn’t actually that much these days, but his teamhas a good core now, Richards, Petrov, Elano, Dunne, Benjani etc. Considering how much dross Sven had to throw out it is really a testament to his ability to do well with a thrown together squad who barely know each other, rather than a longer term failure issue. See his England record, apart from the last bit where frankly I don’t think he gave a shit anymore and I don’t blame him for that. So what does Thaksin expect any manager to do with the current league and only spending a comparatively small amount in one go?

It could of course just be press stirring but the responses coming from the club are all a bit vague. Perhaps slightly better than the dreaded vote of confidence which usually precedes a sacking, but still hardly encouraging for Sven or any successor, should there been one soon.

So Chelsea are refusing to do any interviews with Sky tomorrow as they say they are being forced to play too many games in too few days. Apparently its too much to play a game three days after playing Wigan. What a load of shit. We are talking about top world class athletes here, not a bunch of chubby Sunday leaguers (Fat frank aside) who train once a week with a curry or five. They also were quite happy to play a Spurs side who had played a UEFA cup game some 36 hours before.

The official squad has 26 players. So if you field 11 per game, plus make 3 substitutions you only have 2 players who would have to be in the first team on consecutive games. Ok so they have a few injuries, but even if Lampard isn’t available now, are you trying to tell me they can’t cover for this with their squad? Putting Shevchenko on after 90 minutes hardly seems a good way to rest your more favored, or rather better players. Steve Sidwell aside, who to be fair is something of an anomaly compared to the other players, they should have the players who can, or at least should, physically cope, not to mention that Chelsea’s second string first team should have comfortably done a number on Wigan!

Really Sky should make a stand about this. They pay £50 million for the rights, plus a million or more for a box at Stamford bridge. While financially Chelsea can deal with anything thrown at them there should be some sort of punitive measure, unfortunately points deduction would be a sanction too far for the PL officials, but is the only one that could hurt.

Frankly it smells of panic, something onto which they can blame any failure from a club which doesn’t trust its manager to get them the required results. Not doing interviews is quite frankly a bonus for us watching, as 99% of player and manager interviews are a total waste of time, but this action by the club is rubbish.

Sky managed to not bill the game as Super Duper Trooper Sunday, or some such nonsense and restrained them selves to predicting an exiting game due to its importance. Thank fuck. A surprisingly, amazingly sensible point of view and even more amazingly, an accurate one.

The game itself was in fact rather super duper…oh dear. Well it was a good game. Arsenal came out flying and had some rather outrageous periods of possession and produced their best chances, which as usual they wasted. Defensively Man U were surprisingly solid without Vidic, only conceding a goal thanks to a hint of handball and a Ferdinand lapse which allowed Adebayor to get ahead of him. Its unfortunate that these lapses are what prevent Ferdinand from being a truly great player and for Arsenal its Adebayors profligacy which prevents him, and probably them, from being great.

Then of, all things, four minutes later Arsenal gifted Man U a penalty thanks to a blatant Gallas handball. I suspect Mr Wenger may have been tempted to throw some tea cups and unleash a hairdryer after that one. Their inability to hold a lead is inexplicable and has undoubtedly cost them everything this season. Ronaldo had to score it twice thanks to some silliness and I do hope all English footballers were watching him on how to take a penalty, keep it low, to the side (within the posts!!!) and hit it bloody hard.

The winner was a wonderful Hargreaves free kick, a tighter, more dipping, bending curve ball I have rarely seen.

Arsenal showed an unfortunate streak of petulance, Abedayor and Hleb in particular, the five cards Arsenal received in total perhaps an indication of their frustration of possessing better technical skills and maintaining such possession against a total failure to win, anything. At least so far. Rooney also showed his own brand of petulance with 92 minutes on the clock when a decision went against him and suggesting the referee go make love with himself, amongst other things. Considering that his team was winning, the stage of the game and the fact the ball was at the oppositions end he would do well to shut the fuck up and grow up. I welcome the day when the ref can card him for it, preferably a red one. While you could argue a good ref keeps a sensible hand on the game by not carding for such outbursts and potentially ruining a game for sending offs for just calling the ref a part of the female anatomy, they are inexcusable and for me gives the players the excuse (and lack of fear of punishment) to go on to harass and try to undermine the ref. If they can get away with a bit of verbals, then its got to be worth a go trying to change the refs mind, it certainly seems to be the prevailing attitude with the players. On Rooneys part this was more that just a bit of verbals, can you not just say “come on ref no way?” Does it have to be “fucking, fuck fuck ref, go fuck yourself, cunt, fucking fuck. ” I appreciate he is a mostly illiterate sportsman with an IQ that barely registers, but its the sort of abuse that should be stamped out.

Arsenal lost without really deserving to do so with the football they played, but failed to do things required to win, score and defend. Scholes and Giggs must have played their last seasons now because with Nani and Anderson etc. they have players coming towards the peak of their game, not desperately hanging on. They are a rather good unit with them and a better one without, and are going to take some beating.

Arsenal have bigger problems, one which might be sorted with some cash. Fabregas needs a more reliable partner in midfield, and a rest. I can only assume that Walcott lacks the stamina to do full games as his end product and pace would seem good enough for most teams, although I suspect not good enough for Mr Wenger which could be part of their problem. They need a new Captain as Gallas is clearly not up to the job, Fabregas would seem to the man to build the team around. Bendtner is also a luxury they cannot afford as their sub striker if they expect to win the biggest prizes.

First up its Man U Vs Barcelona and you have to favour United here. Barcelona have been very poor for a while now, Henry and Ronaldinho underachieving or at least failing to impress the most all season. Defensively they have been shambolic at times while defence has been one of Uniteds two great strengths so far. This has been dealt a blow with the injury to Vidic but fortunatly Ferdinand appears to be ok after an injury scare. Uniteds other strength has been going forward and with Rooney and Ronaldo and their backup having great seasons, Barcelona have a lot to worry about.

I dealt with Liverpool and Chelsea in my match report for the Q/F results and my opinion hasn’t changed much since. Ballack looks very impressive, particularly when Lampard shows some discipline or isnt playing at the same time. Chelsea have the squad but there are doubts about the manager. Liverpool have had the luck, so maybe it will run out? I doubt it somehow, but they will need to play better than they have recently, their last league game against Chelsea wasn’t exactly great for Liverpool and despite it being in December Liverpools form since has been fairly poor. I live in hope for a good exiting game, but I’m betting on a dull as shit one goal job by Liverpool on the away leg.

Well Rangers managed to get through and the game wasn’t much better than the first leg.  PSV crashed out with a wimper.  Bayern made very hard work of it, going behind in extra time to a team who were a man down for a lot of the game.

In all its a very open competition and the semis should be good.

LIV 4 -2 ASNL

An interesting game and a totally unflattering and somewhat undeserved scoreline. Arsenals passing, especially in the early stages, was for the most part a display of perfect total football triangles, while Liverpool could barely string more than a couple of passes together. Diaby scored a deserved, rather good first goal. Fortunately for Liverpool, Senderos was playing, who gave Hyypia plenty of room for the equaliser. From then on (30th Minute) until Liverpools stunning second from Torres in the 69th, Arsenal were still in the game but Liverpool were the better team, despite Adebayor missing a total sitter. Needing to catch up, but thanks to the away goals meaning they only needed one more to win, Wenger sent on Van Persie who looked heavily strapped up and Walcott. Walcott soon proved he can be a quality player by running two thirds of the length of the pitch to set up Adebayor for what I’m sure they must have felt would be the winner. However barely two minutes later they were behind again thanks to a penalty. Arsenal fans I’m sure will complain about the Liverpool penalty and to be fair they should feel a bit hard done by as the tug on Babel was pretty mild to the one on Hleb that was turned down in the first leg. Gerrard converted and for the final few minutes Liverpool did their best to run down the clock. In the end Arsenal pushed everything forward a bit too much and Babel was able to make a long run to give the score line its final, rather unbalanced look. As is often the case in football, compared to what had happened on the pitch the score line doesn’t really reflect the evenness of the teams.

CHE 2 – 0 FEN

Chelsea made hard work of beating Fenerbache, an early Ballack goal in the fourth minute seemed to give them the idea it was going to be easy and resulted in them slacking off the pace and were often troubled by Fenerbahce without too much in reply. In the end they were always more likely to win, which they did with little style. An injury for Cudicini could spell trouble for them with Cech out for at least two weeks now.

So tragically we have to suffer another Liverpool/Chelsea semi final in the Champions League. I can’t say either of these teams are great to watch, although Torres gives me hope for something really good to see.  I suspect Liverpool will do for Chelsea again, unfortunately if their previous Champions League semi final meetings are anything to go buy I may well find something more interesting to do than watch it, like giving myself an enema with car battery acid…

Arsene Wenger showed he had given up on the title race for a chance at the Champions League by sending out a team with 5 changes, compared to Rafa “The Shuffler” Benitezs less surprising 8. If he had gone with the same squad as Wednesday they should have won here. At home as well they could have put Liverpool to the sword, setting them up just nicely for a tricky second leg away. As it was they did themselves no favours at all.

Liverpool dominated most of the first half and deservedly went ahead thanks to Peter (he who should not be capped) Crouch. Crouch showing hes not that bad a player at times (Still not international quality) with a goal that wasn’t half bad. The later stages of the first and most of the second half was a much more interesting and level game. However, Arsenal failed to achieve the domination they had in the CL first leg, allowing Liverpool much more possession but were much improved compared to the opening 30 minutes or so. They were also surprisingly quiet during the latter stages of a home game, either unable to get the ball or unwilling to expose themselves on the counter too much, which they did anyway. Arsenal might again feel hard done by due to some poor refereeing, but Bendtner did a really poor shot on goal which was easily saved and other chances were squandered. Arsenal did show a real lack of ambition for playing such an important home game, particularly in the latter stages, I would have expected them to have dominated much more towards the end. Liverpool fluffed the best chances of the second half, the worst of them with Torres failing to get a cross across to a totally unmarked Gerrard and Voronin missing two even better ones, including falling over, he looks a bit useless that one.

As for how this affects the CL QF second leg, Liverpool have to feel themselves to be in the better position. I suspect Liverpool will win it after Arsenal failed to capitalise on their domination of the first leg in this game. A much changed Liverpool team held their own away and dominated for much of the first half and were able to threaten throughout the second. Arsenal can of course win it but will need to play a blinder.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  A touch dull shall we say.  Okay probably wasn’t that bad (for a fan) as there were a few chances….but only a few.  Rangers were expecting an easy game (apparently) due to Sportings league position and obviously being from the weaker Portuguese league.  An apt reminder that they aren’t that good despite old firm domination in the SPL.  Mind you its not that Sporting looked particularly threatening either.

Spurs are probably, rightly, rather cheesed off at having come up against PSV when they did and more importantly not winning.  The remaining teams are all beatable and the results show its a fairly open competition still although Leverkusen look to be going out after being tonked at home.

Well it was certainly more entertaining that the last few Chelsea Vs Liverpool games that’s for sure. The game itself will probably have Arsenal fans complaining about “the penalty” on Hleb. While there was definitely some hand and a pull, did he really pull hard enough for him to execute a perfect 90 degree piroette (with trailing leg?) ? No, he probably didn’t, did he. On other nights he might have got it, but for me it wasn’t the stone wall penalty the Sky commentators were saying. Other than that Arsenal showed they can pass the ball, very well, but really don’t convince in the end. Liverpool are almost the reverse, passing can be suspect but you get a sense in CL games they have what it takes to win, which they have of course proved. The second leg should be worth watching, and Wenger post match whinging isn’t. Oh, why has Sky changed how they display the team names on screen? It makes no sense at all.

Chelsea managed to make a total arse of their game and rather hiliariously find themselves on the back foot after loosing 1-2. I could say they were unlucky, I could say that the referee was biased, but I wont because neither would be true. They scored (well were given an own goal) and assumed job done, sat back and were deservidly punished. The fact remains that Grant is not up to the job and anything that might be won will be down to the quality of the squad. A squad which isn’t actually that good and needs a decent manager to keep Abramoviches plaything alive.