DARK DAY? GREAT DAYS MORE LIKE

Not only wrong but wrong!

The ridiculous headlines about 'dark days for English football' following the Manchester clubs relegation to Channel 5 do a diservice to Napoli and Basel who progressed to qualification into the knock out stages of the Champions League. City and United now join Stoke, and possibly Fulham, Birmingham and Sp*rs in the Europa League and there will be no tears shed in the red half of North London, that's for sure.

Again, the feeling of entitlement associated with the Premier League has meant that City/United are being touted as favourites; on what basis I don't know. Anderlecht have maximum points in the tournament and PSV, Schalke, Athletic Bilbao, PAOK, Braga and Athletico Madrid are by no means a soft touch, so let's drop the arrogance please UK media.

The remaining teams in the Champions League are (first the group winners)

Apoel Nicosia

Arsenal
Barcelona
Bayern Munchen
Benfica
Chelsea
Inter Milan
Real Madrid

Which means Arsenal can draw one of the following runners up (*not Marseille)

AC Milan

Basle
Bayer Leverkusen
CSKA Moscow
Lyon
Napoli
Zenit St Petersburg
*Marseille

The draw to take place on 16/12/11, which should be interesting. I'm guessing that EUFA's darlings, Barcelona, will get what will probably be percieved as a , shall we say, easier draw, While we will get a long journey East. Whatever the case it's good to be going into the new year still in the mix. Who knows how far we can go in a new year that promises to see some valuable assests, in the shape of Wilshere and Sagna, return, and promising youngsters in Gibbs and Jenkinson coming back.

I could touch on the ludicrous bias exhibited towards the Manchester clubs in the lead up to the game, or Samir Nasri's regular Thursday engagements. I could mention the fact that money can't buy anything and that Arsenal's achievement in qualifying from the toughest group of all the English clubs with a game in hand, but I won't. All of this and more was said last night; the humour that was knocking about was both articulate and childish but was very very funny.

So it's onwards and upwards for The Arsenal. Saturday's special day awaits.

Comments

Reasons to be cheerful?

So November arrives with cold weather and grey skies. Arsenal sit in 2 nd place with a great chance to make progress in the Carling Cup with a home draw against wigan Athletic. Poised to win our Champions league group and with six months of the season left have 3 of our five tougher away fixtures out of the way, having taken a respectable 4 from 9. I say respectable as, the Man City away trip aside the draw at Anfield on the occasion of Hodgson’s first game was a good result and the Chelsea game I don’t think anyone can really speak of any injustice. That leaves away games at Old Trafford and Sp*rs (who as we know raise their game for this fixture). With injured players gradually returning and the Polish goalkeepers showing signs of optimism, we’re in relatively good shape. Or so you’d think. Yesterday at the Emirates West Ham were put to the sword late on after some stout defending, a good performance from Robert Green and a couple of missed opportunities. The level of indign...

There's something rotten in the state of Denmark

A number of blogs are pointing out what was evident to me yesterday; as a season ticket holder and Silver member i like thousands of others made plans to purchase an additional ticket for the Barcelona game using the frustrating and irritating online service, but guess what? no joy, just lots of waiting finger tapping and watching the dreaded 'loading' bar (to make matters worse I had asked my missus to do this as I was doing training). But no one got these additional tickets, that is no supporters judging by the general feedback! It seems to me that the additional seats will have probably gone to customers of a corporate nature. Ultimately for such a marquee (to use an American commercialism term) game I suspect that the club where never going to sell to supporters of the club, there is clearly a undercurrent at the Emirates that the club wants to have the stadium full of customers ie; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ognvWIwjKTQ The Emirates of the future? It will be interesti...

PERSONALITY TEST

Played 23, 10 defeats, 4 draws and 9 victories; that's the factual bit out of the way. What does that tell us? I guess it is a set of statistics that reasonably reflect a mid table team. How we got here is something that countless column inches and hours of debate have gone into. How we move forward is the bigger question. Naturally, learning from past mistakes is a key element to moving forward but have Arsenal Football Club done that? Have Arsenal Football Club realised that a clear vision and plan is needed? When you look at the current squad its relatively easy to see where the strenghts are, and the weaknesses. The manager too, has strengths and weaknesses but one thing that is intangible is the personality of the club. Not so much "where are we" as "what are we?" To know what the club is is to know what the upper echelons think, what their plan and philosophy is and how the manager processes that information. We can assume that the club decision makers wa...

ARSENALISM©

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