Mar
12
Arsenal’s So-so Performance.
Filed Under Champions League | Leave a Comment
If yesterday’s Champions League Round of 16 game had been a 90 minute game Arsenal would have been booed by their fans as they went off at full time and Wenger would have been facing more criticism. Nicolas Bendtner would have been hounded out of North London for having the touch of a donkey and most fans would have slit their wrists after realizing their season was over. That, however, wasn’t the case.
After the game Wenger praised his team’s “mental strength” after battling through the game to win the shootout. This notion of mental strength that Wenger talks about only washes if you believe that a penalty shootout is about skill and not luck. Arsenal were extremely lucky last night, Julio Baptista managed to produce a performance worse than any seen during his brief Arsenal spell and a miss that defied the concept of a £50,000 a week professional striker. He managed to score his penalty though, so it’s not all bad. If he hadn’t I don’t think he would have been with us today. If Roma fans decide to stab someone just because they support the opposing team what do you think they would do to someone that helped the other team win? Incidentally Max Tonetto hasn’t been seen since he punted that shiny piece of leather over the bar.
Other pieces of luck include keeper Manuel Almunia accidentally (in my opinion of course) slipping when going to dive and therefore saving Mirko Vucinic’s spot kick and looking like a cool guy in the process, Kolo Toure deciding not to aim for Roma keeper Doni’s face when he charged out for the 6th Arsenal penalty and instead choosing to score and Denilson managing to scuff his penalty but still score in the process. God knows what “mental strength” was involved in any of that. If you’ve got enough skill about your person you will score from 12 yards, especially if you’ve got the whole goal to aim for and only one player (who for some reason is jumping up and down like a small child after too much sugar) to beat. Just don’t aim for that player (but do make sure you aim for that white, mesh stuff!) and hey presto, you win. Arsenal were better at not aiming for the goal keeper and aiming for the white, mesh stuff so they won. Roma managed to grab defeat from the jaws of victory by finding a way of not scoring another goal in normal time so they lost.
And lastly some tragic news came in from France late, late last night: Unfortunately Michel Platini died from a brain aneurysm after watching Tonetto miss and then realising all 4 English teams had gone through. Luckily his place has been quickly filled by Sepp Blatter, who’s first act as joint head of UEFA/FIFA is to make sure the quarter final draw looks as follows:
Manchester United v Liverpool
Arsenal v Chelsea
Bayern v Villareal
Porto v Barcelona.
We can’t have those pesky English teams dominating now can we!