Three the magic number in run-in

COME on, then, ye Red proletarians: “put down your (Bavarian) beer and collect your (duty-free) fags/there’s a row going on, down near…” well, nowhere near Slough, actually: but in any event, Munich must be banished from the mind as soon as we touch down today.

Swanky Southern rich-boys will be arriving in a strange town, and need to be drummed out of it.

That’s Entertainment!

It’s quite a rarity to have a week in which a European knockout match is actually overshadowed by a good old league encounter but Saturday’s importance clearly needs no hyping.

Though let us remind ourselves that this is NOT the title-decider, no matter what Sky Sports’ et al will be blaring at us all week. Given that the bookies’ likeliest outcome is a draw, and that Arsenal would be expected to demolish Wolves, we ought to find ourselves on Sunday morning confronting a league table that, more than ever, will point to a three-way final furlong. (As I have been decrying the media’s massed Arseophobes all season long for their unaccountable compulsion to write off Wenger at fortnightly intervals, this would be most satisfying.)

Most of us are now at the stage of succumbing to Points Calculation Syndrome and can easily recite the six-game run-in schedules of the top three: don’t Arsenal appear to have the easiest task? Certainly, once they get past their derby next week, they have 12 fat points just waiting to be plucked, if they can keep their heads together for once.

For Chelsea, Anfield on May 1 must loom large, given what a make-or-break position Liverpool will likely be in; whilst for us, the Wastelands derby on the April 17 crouches alarmingly like a tank trap.

Whatever: this promises to be a climax fit for a season that, in terms of week-to-week drama and the confounding of expectation, has arguably been the most enjoyable of the decade.

It’s been a tad too 1974/5 for some tastes, perhaps, but give me this flawed rollercoaster over the gruellingly efficient two-handers which have constituted most of the Noughties’ races any day.

In keeping with the madcap season, it’s been a Lewis Carrollian week of ‘believing three impossible things before breakfast’. Take Sunday: I woke to headlines that a Martin O’Neill side had conceded seven goals; that the Glazers were planning to freeze ticket prices; and that Owen ‘Three Week’ Hargreaves really, honestly, might actually be available for the first team in three weeks.

Out-fantasy that, Tim Burton.

That Chelsea were the stunning perps of the assault on MON’s hitherto spotless organisational reputation was obviously a tad disturbing, given whom they face next: but unlike the rest of the fawning media, who have so soon forgotten the Inter debacle, I remain utterly unconvinced by Signor Ancelotti.

I’ve seen him in a head-to-head like this before. Week after week during a 2000/01 season part-spent in Italy, I would closely watch Ancelotti ‘lead’ my Juventus in the epic duel with Capello’s Roma. The comparison was always telling: Capello dominated the touchline, screaming, cajoling, reorganising, inspiring. Ancelotti, in contrast, seemed to diminish everything he touched.

When the tide turned in any match, Capello would wade into the very waves and defy them to drown him; Ancelotti would simply run away, reverse-gear-thrust, 1943-style. I thus chuckled to read the UK Guardian’s verdict after Inter: “The defeat exposes Ancelotti as not up to the job. While Mourinho prowled his area, urging and cajoling his Inter players, five yards away Ancelotti stood helplessly … the image will live long in the memory.”

Snap. It will, and it did.

So, that’s my hostage to fortune duly offered up: should old Pig Face, as his own Juve fans angrily dubbed him, turn over the even older Red Nose on Saturday, I shall nibble a few aperitif crumbs of humble pie here on Wednesday – before feasting on the great European match to come that night.

Carlo’s Chelsea, I believe, will be at home, washing their hair.