Tonight is the night that possibly the best 2 footballing teams on the planet go head to head. Arsenal will host the first leg of the tie at the Emirates against the European champions Barcelona. Both teams could be without some key players, none more so than Cesc Fabregas and Andres Ineista both key members of either sides midfiled. Putting this to one side here are the Key battles which will take part on the pitch tongiht
Key Battles
Bendtner v Puyol The sometimes brilliant Bendtner will have to be on top of his game tonight if he is to get the better of the Catalans skipper. Puyol is one of the best center backs in the world at the moment and will relish the taks of playing against the young Dane. If Bedtner plays tot he best of his ability he could give Puyol something to worry about, Puyol isn the quickest and can sometimes be caught out of posistion, i am sure the Danish striker will get a few oppurtunities to score,the only question is will he have his shooting boots on?
Arsenal Defence v Messi
It may seem a bit farfetched to say Messi can take on the whole defence but he has proven more than once this season that he can do it. Unless Arsene decides to try and set one man on the little argentine you can bet he will play against every single one of the back for at one point or another during the game, this is due to the way Barcelona will play, all 3 of their front 3 are interchangable. For Arsenal to have any chance in the tie they must make sure they keep Leo Messi off the ball as much as possible.
Fabregas (if fit) / Denilson v Busquets This is one of the match-ups i think arsenal could have an advatage in espically if Fabregas is passed fit. Busquets is not the complete defensive midfielder yet, he is a tad on the weak side and is certainly not the quickest on the pitch, but he does have agood knoledge of the barcelona game plan as he is a like for like model of their coach Pep Guardiola. If fabregas plays i think Arsenal could really exploite this area of the pitch, Denilson will play in this role if Cesc isnt ft and even the young Brazillian could pose a threat to the Catalan giants. To stop this i personally feel Yaya Toure should be playing but i ma sure Pep will stick to his useuall line-up.
I want Arsenal to do well in this leg to make it an interesting leg in Camp Nou, but i really can’t see much further than a Barcalona win. I will be watching the live football game at livegoals.com
Who will win the race for the fourth and final champions league place, i would say it is currently a four horse race, with Tottenham leading the pack. This is how the table looks after this weekends action:
Played
Goal Difference
Points
4th
Tottenham
31
28
58
5th
Liverpool
32
21
54
6th
Man City
30
16
53
7th
Aston V
31
11
51
As you can see Aston Villa have some catching up to do, as they are 8 points behind spurs, Manchester City have 2 games in hand on liverpool and 1 on the others meaning that they could overhall spurs if they were to win them both.
Liverpool are jsut hitting form at the right time and have the easiest run in to the end of the season, which seems to ahve made them slight favourites with most of the bookies. I think the race could go down to the wire and it is hard to pick a team at the moment.
This is certainly one of the best premiership seasons for a long time!
Last night Celtic were beat 4 – 0 by St Mirren, this is their heaviest defeat by another team other than rangers in 30 years. This result leaves Celtic 10 points behind there old firm rivavls as well as having played 2 games more. Following this defeat Tony Mobawry (Celtic manager) has been sacked, adn seemingly the title race is over for the season.
Here are teh highlights of the enfatic St Mirren victory
I am going to try and predict Fabio Capello’s starting line-up for Englands first World Cup game against USA on June 12th.
I believe Fabio should probably play a 4-4-2, but he will have to fight the temptation to play 4-2-3-1 as Rooney with Gerrard Behind seems a very good prospect.
Barcalona cruised through to the ¼ finals of the Uefa Champions League last night, mainly thanks to their superstar Lionel Messi. All the talk before the game was about how Stuttgart were going to stop possibly the best player in the world, in reply to how do you stop Messi “Don’t Let him get the ball” (Stuttgart Manager).
Clearly his players were not listening to this interview, because just less than 20minutes into the game Messi picked the ball up 50yard away from goal and dribble to the edge of the Stuttgart penalty area before unleashing a thunderous strike into the top corner of the goal. Then just 5 minutes later the defence was cut open again by a wonderful lofted through ball by Messi to Toure who squared the ball to an unmarked Pedro, who slotted home from 6yrds out.
The game was all but over after the second goal, it seemed that Barca could score at will, and that it was upto them whether they wanted to embaress Stuttgart.
After half time the game carried on in the same one way direction, with Barca squandering a few good chances before the little Argentinian collected a neat flick from Dani Alves to slot home from 20 yards out.
Bojan came off of the bench with 3 minutes left and with his first touch slotted the ball past Jens Lehmann after a classy through ball from Ibrahimovic to seal the Victory for the Catalans
Tonight is possibly the biggest night in Jose Mourinho’s career as he returns to Chelsea with Inter, in the second leg of their champions league clash. Inter holld a narrow 2-1 win over the blues after a strong display in the San Siro.
Jose has gone into the clash saying “I have nothing to prove to Chelsea, nothing to prove to Chelsea players, to Chelsea fans or to the Chelsea board”
This is typical mourinho, he has a cocky arrogant swagger about himself, but to be honest he can back it up with his numerous amount of tropheys he has won over his managerial career, with Porto, Chelsea and Inter Milan.
These are the highlights of the live football from the 1st leg Fast Tube by Casper
Newcastle systamatically took apart Barnsley FC and with it opened up an 8 point lead at the top of the championship. They were back to there outstanding best and on this form there is no-one that can stop them on there march straight back into the premier league.
When Eduardo da Silva had his leg smashed to pieces at St. Andrews several years back, one of the lasting images of that day was seeing then captain William Gallas sulk on the Birmingham turf at fulltime in an incident which went on to signify the mental weakness of the Gunners at that time.
On Saturday at the Britannia Stadium, Arsenal were faced with an almost identical situation as Aaron Ramsey has his leg horribly shattered by Ryan Shawcross. But under the captaincy of the fabulous Fabregas, the north Londoners refused to let match slip away from them as the Spaniard lead his troppos to a potential season defining victory.
Cesc had started the match in top form, testing Sorensen after 25 minutes with a neat chest and volley from 20 yards as the number four began to find his range. Fabregas was then involved in the equaliser, sending over a pin-point cross from right wing that picked out Nicklas Bendtner in the box who scored with a fine header into the far corner.
After Ramsey’s injury, Cesc showed his cool temperament from the penalty spot as he kept his nerve and slipped home Arsneal’s vital second goal. And to cap off a man-of-the-match performance, Cesc then reacted quickest to Sorensen’s spill from Rosicky’s shot, to provide assist for Thomas Vermaelen to notch the Gunners’ third.
