Men vs Boys

Man U are going to win their 19th premier league title. Yes, I have said it with 9 or so games yet to be played. The reasoning is solidified with todays superb performance from them. They played some very bad football for the better part of 90 minutes, they go down to 10 men for about 20+ minutes or so and yet score a late time winner against a bolton team that played like a top 7 team. The drive and belief when they went down to 10 men was just amazing to watch. There is a lot of strength in this squad and it is for everyone to see.

On the other hand, the skilled boys from Arsenal come back losing 2 points to West Brom! If this doesnt tell a story I dont know what does. Everytime Arsenal have a chance to put their foot into the title race they take a step back. Its almost as if they are happier to play second fiddle and keep crying on how the world is unfair to them rather than going out there all guns blazing! I am see a sixth season of silverware drought for them...

A whiplash and tears!

So, the much awaited second leg of the CL clash between Barcelona and Arsenal was set to happen at Nou Camp. Last season, it was a resouding 4-0 loss at Nou Camp for Arsenal which was preceded by a relatively decent 2-2 draw at the Emirates. This year at the Emirates they had gone one better and actually beaten the Catalans 2-1 and there were hopes that they may maybe manage a draw if not a win at Nou Camp.

With these high hopes the gunners reached Nou Camp only to be gunned down mercilessly in typical barca fashion. 67% possession, 10+ shots at goal, 5 corners and numerous close shaves at the goal drowned the gunners. They could not muster a single shot at goal, the one goal they did manage also needed to be scored by a barca player! What fabregas, what nasri, what wilshere... the midfield didnt belong to anyone but Xavi and Iniesta. Arsenal was dominated from the start and they never recovered. With this being the truth, the match still was marred by the controversial sending off of Robbie Van Persie. You would of course feel bad for RVP as it was a very very strict call. But that being said, he feigned ignorance to the whistle. Most have agreed to this being a possible reason, but I have a different take on it and its very circumstantial and hear me out.

RVP is one of those players who can do magic with his left leg and do very little with his right. Like Messi, like Mesut Ozil, like Ryan Giggs, like Van der vaart, RVPs left foot is just an awesome weapon, while his right foot is just a pale poor cousin in terms of skill and accuracy. This being the case, at every given chance all of the above players try to get the ball to their left foot to shoot at goal. In the particular attack that led to the sending off of RVP, he has sprung the off side trap. He was under no pressure to shoot as defenders were no where near him and he was possibly outside the D or very close to being outside the D, which meant he had enough space to change his orientation on the ball. He had already controlled the ball beautifully and he had all the time to get the ball to his left foot and then put the ball where he wanted to. But instead he chose to go for goal with his right foot, with no clear vision of the goal or where valdes was. Does that make sense to you? Is that logical having seen RVP all these years? I think he heard the whistle, he was frustrated coz that was possible the first chance he had got of any nature in the entire match and to know he was offside, was frustrated and lashed at the ball.

There you go... my take on the whole episode. :-) And please wenger, please... stop crying, stop depleting the rainforests. In many ways, this could be the best thing that could have happened to the brittle arsenal team. They dont have the Carling Cup to worry about, they dont have the Champions League to worry about, and they possibly wont have the FA cup to worry about. So all they need to do is concentrate on the league. While at the same time Man U has to still worry about many a silverware and mounting injuries.

Believe it or not wenger, you could actually win the league this year! Go for it!!

Too little too late?

It has been quite a week or two in the world of football. To start with we have the Man U vs Chelsea match followed by the Man U vs Liverpool one. Both were much awaited matches as this would signify the way EPL would go in a big way. For all practical purposes the EPL season was Man U's to lose. And Arsenal just following them as they always do to no avail. After the Arsenal draw to Sunderland, these two match wins could have put Man U out of the arsenal range even for the most ardent of arsenal supporters. But as we could see, Man U lost both the matches and I think in quite convincing fashion.

Chelsea defeat of Man U was of special interest to me because I think of the current top 4 or top 5, I think only Chelsea have the heart and legs to take on Man U as the season winds up. But I also do think this has come a little late in the season for chelsea and they still need to win every match they play and also get a couple of matches going their way and they then get to a fighting position this season. I still think Man U will take the season, but they have had a bad spell off late with a draw in CL, 3 losses and a win in EPL and riddled with injuries.

C'mon Arsenal, what if the Carling Cup is gone, what if the CL is gone, what if the FA cup is about to go... there is still the league to be won! Go for it, for once... please! ;-)

Student bettering teacher?

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. :-)

Not surprising

A colleague of mine is a big fan on the pace and speed of EPL. In many ways I am too, but I also am disappointed with the lack of outright creativity. Everything is so anticipated and usual. There is of course the special piece of skill once in a while from the top teams, but not enough in my opinion. On the other hand, La liga teams have sublime skill, its not all physical and that is so different from how most of EPL teams play. Each their own I guess...

But something that doesn't appeal to me from either facet of the game is the Serie A. The quality of football is going down the drain in Italy and it showed in the world cup. The games are played to half filled stadiums and that tells a story in itself. The teams I follow in Serie A are inter, ac milan and juventus and each of them are far below the standards by the other two big leagues i.e. EPL and La liga. There then should be no surprise that the teams that make it to europe and more specifically uefa champions league rarely make it past the knockout stage. And in this edition, ac milan has been taken to the cleaners at home by newbies tottenham while last years champions inter lost at home to bayern. The story is same in europa league where all the italian teams are out of contention with hardly any fight being put up.

These very obvious signs have not gone unnoticed and uefa has decided to reduce the number of teams from serie A getting automatic qualification to the champions league from 4 to 3. All this doesnt auger well for italian football and it wont be long before big players, even italians choose clubs outside of Italy to make their mark. The league making the most of the situation is Bundesliga which gets promoted to Serie A's place. And quite contrary to Italy, Germany was a revelation in the world cup. And after a long time you see german players playing outside of home with Mourinho reading the obvious. He has taken Ozil and Khedira, the stars of the world cup, and they are not doing too bad for themselves.Here is hoping to see more of these kind of german youngsters and their skills in the coming years in europe.

Overall this is the right move for football and will make the UEFA CL and Europa leagues more competitive in the coming year(s).

Innovative!

For all the seasons that I have followed EPL, I have heard the commentators go ga-ga over Rory Delap and his ability to convert throw-ins into corners. And to make this as dramatic as possible Delap makes the most of each such thrown in by running across the field and with an assistant boy to help him with his ball cleaning and everything. An expected attempt at a few extra seconds of prime time tv for a player who can't do anything else of note on the football field.

And then you see this...

When you see videos like the one above, you wonder if some stupid team (right now my guess is chelsea) will pay a few millions to get this guy into their team!

Epitomizing Bad!

Rafa Benitez is my favourite bunny when it comes to manager bashing. If someone has been overrated in the position of a manager in the time that I have seen football, it is this guy! You know how huge world corporations, especially US based ones rejig the management, departments and personnel and think they can get out of a sticky situation, well... benitez is that to football. 

During his time at Liverpool I cannot remember a steady playing 11. For a team sport, he sure did a lot of chopping around. I dont remember his CL win, but that was probably the only reason he was persisted with for all those years! Comparing with english club managers who have had a long run, Unlike Fergie he hasnt made champions at liverpool, unlike wenger he has not got kids coming through the system and playing good football and unlike david moyes he has not made the most of what he had! Other than Martin Kelly, no one from the youth academy has made it to the senior team at liverpool! You can effectively say that benitez not only screwed Liverpools present, he also screwed their future! For a club struggling to make it to the europa rounds, they have had to do a lot of spending to build a team again, post the benitez era. Yes, he was that bad!

When his innings with Liverpool came to an end, he inherited a champion team in Inter Milan, thanks to Mourinho. And what did he do there? He chopped and chipped the team into a team of losers! Sure, he got lucky with the FIFA Club World Cup, but then, he hadnt had enough time to screw things up yet. And when Inter saw that he was again on his path of breaking up a good team, they had to get him out! They brought in Leonardo from AC Milan and the results are here to see, 8 matches, 7 wins and 1 loss! and they had just 6 wins from 15 matches under benitez.

Now that he is out of a job post the Inter sacking, it is no surprise that he has no takers. I wouldn't be surprised if he gets a job with some of the relegation doomed teams in EPL or La Liga or Serie A in the near future, i.e. if he actually manages to get his head out of his ass! With my limited knowledge of football, I am willing to bet on this prediction. Anyone wanna take me on? :-)