Wenger reaps whirlwind for cutting corners
That’s how a long suffering Arsenal fan of my acquaintance — no hints as to identity, but he’s blowing smoke out his ears and sharpening a knife with his teeth as he oversees this column for printing — characterised Arsene Wenger’s corner-cutting in the Champions League group stage, a short-sighted tactic which now looks set to reap the whirlwind in the knock-out round.
It’s hard to argue the point. Arsenal ran riot against SC Braga and Shakhtar Donetsk at the Emirates, racking up an incredible 11 goals in two games back in September and October but, away from home, and apparently in the hubristic belief that the hard work was already done, they contrived to lose against both sides, with the result that they could only finish up second in the group.
Yesterday, they paid the first instalment of the price when drawn against the best team in the world in the last 16. Altogether now: instant karma’s gonna get ya, Arsene, and if it doesn’t, Messi, Villa, Xavi and Iniesta will.
Still, the Arsenal manager has no choice now but to make the best of it. In fact, in a fit of mystic forecasting worthy of the late Paul the Octopus, he had predicted in advance of the draw that his team would come up against Barcelona. And he wasn’t inclined to play down the extent of the challenge either. Barca’s sublime 5-0 demolition of Real Madrid in La Liga, he described as “some of the best football” he’d ever seen.
They had played “outstandingly well”. Their focus had been “spot-on”. Their quality was “unbelievable.” It was “the best performance of the European season”.
Which is hardly overstating the case, you’d have to agree, even if it’s not exactly the kind of stuff his charges will want to see pinned up on the back of the dressing room door just before they go out to stare into the hypnotic eyes of Pep Guardiola’s wonder boys. In fact, Wenger went further. “When you see a performance like that, you are encouraged to get to that level,” he said, an honest if unconventional admission from a gaffer that his own side still have a long way to go to achieve his vision of footballing nirvana and that, by extension, Barca versus Arsenal could just as easily be recast as Barcelona versus Barcelona reserves.
So maybe Guardiola was simply going out of his way yesterday to reply in kind when he declared after the draw: “Arsenal frighten me.” (Not half as much as they frighten their own supporters, Pep, old boy). And, reflecting on his side’s 4-1 thrashing of the Gunners at the Nou Camp last time around, he pointed out: “There’s a difference this time: Cesc (Fábregas) will be on the pitch.”
To which you can’t help but respond: and likely to be seen on that sacred turf many more times in the future should defeat for Arsenal in the last 16 hasten his return to his homeland at the end of the season.
Still, for Gooners above all others in the Premiership elite, hope springs eternal. Given that they are far better at keeping possession of the ball than they are at trying to win it back, it’s impossible to see how Wenger’s team could even dream of doing to Barcelona what Mourinho’s Inter did to the Catalans with such ruthless efficiency last time around. Arsenal will play as Arsenal always play. And Barcelona will be Barcelona. All of which means that here is another little classic in the making, and us grateful neutrals can simply smack our lips at the prospect of two games involving two of European football’s most alluring sides. Barca to win, though, obviously. Actually, there’s part of me which is sorry that Spurs didn’t draw the apparently invincible Catalans. Milan will start as favourites against the other north London team but, if Spurs have to depart the European scene after what has been a hugely entertaining and goal-crazy adventure, it would have been nice to see ‘Arry’s boys going down fighting against Messi and co, perhaps serving up one of those throwback 7-3-type scorelines which would make us all feel like teary-eyed old-timers. As, indeed, sadly, some of us actually are.
And what of the other two English contenders? Even if, poor old Blackburn aside, Manchester United’s performances of late have largely been underwhelming, Alex Ferguson’s men just can’t quite shake off that excellent habit of coming out on top, which is why one would expect them to progress, narrowly, against Marseille.
And while only the foolish or the brave would back FC Copenhagen against Chelsea, these are such strange and uncertain times in west London that probably the last thing Carlo Ancelotti needed was to draw the supposed minnows of the Champions League in the knock-out phase. If the Italian is to find a quick way out of the Bridge, here lies the classic banana skin to speed him on his way. Ah, but first, there’s the small matter of a meeting with Manchester United tomorrow which will be billed, of course, as a massive, massive game in the greatest league in the world.
Europe will have to wait. But not for long.
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