Can Gunners do a Liverpool?

AND then there was one. Around this time last year, your correspondent was moved to ponder if Liverpool could turn out to be to the Champions’ League what Greece had been to the European Championships, a team which would confound expectations all the way to the winner’s podium.

To sensitive Merseysiders - are there any other kind? - it might have sounded like a backhanded compliment, but the point was one of attitude rather than style, a simple recognition that Europe’s more inspiring challenges drew from Liverpool a higher level of performance than they were able to deliver in the league. (By the way, I also predicted Liverpool would win the final on penalties after going three behind against AC Milan in the first half but the sports desk killed that column on the grounds it was “just too silly, even for you”).

Now, the question is: are Arsenal set to be this year’s Liverpool? Yesterday’s quarter-finals draw, which pits the Gunners against Juventus, doesn’t change a lot - in the three games it still takes to lift the big prize, you’re going to have to meet and beat the best sooner or later.

And, after their mighty struggle to overcome Werder Bremen, the jury is suddenly out on where in the rankings Juve truly lie.

The point is that if Arsenal are to crown an historic last year at Highbury by handing Arsene Wenger the trophy he craves above all others, the critical issue is less to do with who they play than how they play themselves. This time style, as well as attitude, will count.

And the signs are good. As for Liverpool in 2005, Europe seems to have provided both inspiration and liberation for an Arsenal side underachieving in the Premiership. It’s on the home front the Gunners have most keenly felt the absence of the man with whom they will now renew old acquaintance in the Champions League. With Patrick Vieira’s departure to Juventus, Arsenal lost the kind of midfield warrior crucial to their ability to impose their will on the opposition and provide the solid platform on which their flair players could express themselves. Lacking his dominant presence, they have found themselves outfought by lesser lights, shaken out of their elegant stride by spirited scrappers.

Europe is different. The action is less frenetic, and that suits Arsenal who, on their day, remain the best natural footballing side in the Premiership, a league whose most passionate advocates still tend to confuse excitement with quality. And even though the air at the very top is thin, the cagier brand of European football also provides a fraction more breathing space for the fast-maturing youngsters who are Arsenal’s hope for the future.

And, of course, in Thierry Henry - as a failing Real Madrid discovered - Arsenal possess an extravagant talent and lethal matchwinner every bit as vital to their own success as Ronaldinho is to Barcelona’s.

Whatever else happens for the Gunners, so much will depend on Henry’s ability to rise to the next great challenge in a way he hasn’t always done in the past.

As for the Brazilian, he was man of the week in Europe, no contest. The back-heel flicks and reverse passes were outrageous enough - yet always employed to purposeful effect - but the manner in which he scored his goal in Stamford Bridge revealed the steel fist inside the velvet glove. John Terry may well be the most uncompromising defender in England but the fantastic balance which Ronaldinho showed in riding his challenge before blasting home, recalled nothing so much as George Best treating another Chelsea legend - Ron “Chopper” Harris - with similar contempt, before scoring a memorable goal for Manchester United way back in the day.

And that’s praise enough for the special one. Now, it’s time for a word of sympathy for the man who used to hold the title, even if he did bestow it on himself. I still think Jose Mourinho is a breath of fresh air in English football but, after keeping his face poker-straight and his tongue in his cheek for so long, there’s a danger he’ll develop halitosis. Loyalty to your boys is one thing, but I can’t imagine even his own dressing room believe him when he says he still thinks Chelsea are a better team than Barcelona.

Robben making one direct effort on goal? Duff playing what little football he did facing his own goal? The ball repeatedly played back to Cech to hit long? A last-gasp penalty (that wasn’t a penalty) to even up the game, if only on the scoreboard? And, as for Mourinho’s repeated references to Del Horno’s sending off in the first leg - well, it may have been 11 v 11 second time around, but when the gifted Messi went off early on in Nou Camp there was an argument for saying it was 11 v 10 and a half.

So Mourinho is looking a little shop-soiled but, still, I had to laugh when I read the headlines yesterday, reporting he has “the full backing” of the Chelsea board.

At times like this, there’s nothing else for the befuddled sports hack to do but pick up his well-worn copy of the collected works of the boy Shelley - ‘Shells’ to us - and ponder the enduring wisdom of the great man’s thoughts on hubris.

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings, look on my works ye mighty and despair,” reads the inscription on the ancient plinth in the desert.

“Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Boundless and bare, indeed - apart, obviously, from back-to-back Premierships, won at a canter. So much for bloody poets. I’d say Mick McCarthy’s heart is bleeding for Jose.