Its no secret to the footballing world that Arsenal is a wannabe Barcelona. As bad as it can be made to sound, this in my opinion is a very noble endeavour. I love beautiful football and arsenal comes closest to that in the EPL with shades of the same being shown by the Man U frontline (if not the midfield). Arsene Wenger knew what he wanted to do and he has since been recruiting like minded boys to fulfill his dream. He built the nucleus of his fast counter attacking team on Cesc Fabregas, the barcelona academy product who was destined for stardom with barca and spain. He has since gone ahead and shopped for Fran Mérida and Ignasi Miquel from the barca academy under controversial circumstances. And looks like Wenger has no plans of stopping his poaching. He has not gone ahead and brought the very well spoken off Jon Toral to Arsenal.
In last before weeks CL match, Arsenal has shown that they have improved from last season by actually beating a comfortable looking barcelona. But the real test is going to be at the camp nou. While arsenal can boast of a very powerful midfield of nasri, wilshere and song with fabregas playing in front of them, it will still sound like a let down when you put the likes of xavi, iniesta and busquets being their counterparts. If Wenger goes to camp nou thinking of matching barca for speed, accuracy and efficiency, have no doubt, he will lose! But if he becomes pragmatic, like Mourinho and Inter last season, and plays a little deep, you never know... stranger things have happened. Barca's weakness is defence, Arsenals strength is counter attack. If he keeps this in mind and plays just to this strength, arsenal can beat barcelona. But if he wants to show barcelona that arsenal can also play beautiful football, I am afraid he will realize that he will need to do a lot more shopping before making that claim. :-)
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