goodfootballerornot

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.

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…

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.

So Man U did a number on Roma who were largely undone by their inability to find someone with the ball in the Man U box. The crossing was so bad I thought Arron Lennon was playing. Ronaldo, love him or loathe him, is a great player and scored a screamer of a header, but his pathetic falling over still grates. He’s six foot and as a professional footballer is going to be extremely strong and yet he still insists on allowing himself to be pushed over easily a lot and then walking away pulling a sulky face. Its like watching kids play, only as hes 23 he deserves a good smack in the mouth for being such a whingy twunt. Its loathsome, pathetic and uncessesary. If he stopped doing it so often I would suggest theres a real chance he would get a lot more free kicks as he does get knocked about a fair bit, but hasnt got the knack (yet) of picking the moment to try for the foul.

The little bits and highlights of the Barcelona game I saw (along with other games this season) has been enough to convince me they are not particularly fearsome. Brilliant individuals, without doubt, and should they ever actually gel then they would roll over any other team in the world, but they are not playing well as a unit now for long enough periods to inspire fear at all and should be beatable.