From a fan’s perspective, the idea of Chelsea, Man City and Man United not qualifying for the knock-out stages is, let’s face it, pretty hilarious.
Especially in the case of Man City given the money they’ve spent and how they’ve gone about spending it. However, it’s worth remembering that short-term hilarity (coupled with some laughing and pointing and topped off with a bout of jeering and a side of delicious taunting) might have some not very nice long term consequences.
Arsene Wenger was asked at his pre-game press conference yesterday if he wanted the other English teams to qualify and while I’m sure there was part of him which wanted to say ‘Well, yeah. Except Man City because of the way they’ve spent their money. And Chelsea, because they’re a pack of despicable twatfarmers. And United, well, just because”, he was more circumspect and sensible.
“Having only one team left in the Champions League would be a catastrophic scenario for England”, he said. “It would harm our places in Europe for the future. But hopefully that will not happen.”
So, on the one hand while it hopefully will happen, when Arsenal are looking for qualification through (perhaps) a fourth place finish in the Premier League, it might be better for all concerned if they don’t get knocked out until a bit later on.
Meanwhile, tonight’s game against Olympiacos is Wenger’s 200th European game in charge of Arsenal, a record of which the manager is rightly proud.
“It’s a privilege to play 200 games in Europe. Of these 200 games in Europe, there must be about 160 in the Champions League. That is at the highest level and it’s been a fantastic experience.
“We’ve had many highlights because over the years we have won everywhere. Maybe the only place we didn’t win is Barcelona. We have won in Madrid, Milan, Rome, Germany, France.
“We have won everywhere. That means Arsenal is remembered well all over Europe as a strong club.”
Let’s hope the lads can provide Arsene with a well deserved win to celebrate such a landmark.
I hope united and Chelsea go through in second in their group, and then both get knocked out in the last 16 by barcalona and Madrid. City meanwhile, thursday night football for you! And you still probably won’t win that competiion either
And may that knocking out come with a generous helping of zero goals scored home and away topped with at least 3 goals conceded home and away!!!
I hope they get knocked out by APOEL Nicosia and Ajax (or Olympiakos, or some such simliar club). Much more embarrassing that way.
Screw that I want them all playing in the Europa!
Amen to that.
We need them all to keep a full fixture list because if we’re the only team with fixture congestion then we’re going to be at a disadvantage in the league.
EXACTLY. I say they all (except City, who are doomed for Europa) get through to the quarters only to be hammered 6 or 7 to nothing by APOEL and Olympiakos, in bad tempered matches with plenty of injuries, red cards and Carlos Tevez affairs.
Not a problem as if they get knocked out they all have to play in Europa which will mean many more games for them. Plus those games will be at the end of the week, Thursday, Friday so they will have less time to recover for Premier matches on Saturdays and Sundays. I hope they go all the way in Europa and get knocked out in the semis. Serves them right.
They won’t take the Europa “competition” seriously, they’ll just play their youngsters and give them some experience. They will have to play a first team for the CL though.
This is the key point. Our European objective for our english counsins have got to encompass three things.
1st may they be knackering
2nd may their eventual deafeats be humiliaiting
3rd may they not bloody meet us
(anybody who hasn’t strapped a chunk of wood onto their thigh in the hope we don’t get Milan isn’t doing it right)
AC Milan who we’ve beaten a couple of times recently or Inter Milan who we’ve also beaten in recent years?
Frankly fuck ’em
Them being fucked might come back and fuck us a couple of years down the line.
A looooooooooooooooooooooooooooong way down the line if you look at it. English league is currently ranked 1st in europe. Over the past five years the Premeir League increased the gap on the other top three teams consistanly. (cept ze germans once) Prem has also increased the gap consistantly against league’s 4 5 and 6 cept Portugal last year over the last 5 years. That lot being the league’s challenging for a fourth champs league spot. It would take several years of catastrophe for one of the french italian or portugese leagues to jump us. An it doesn’t really matter if… Read more »
I hope ALL go to EUROPA . that way we get to the Cuntley Cole,Shrek Rooney and Nasri play in spursday against teams like FC Alania Vladikavkaz,FC Karpaty Lviv ,FC Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk . and still have games in Saturday
*Na$ri(the cunt)
If no one adds thumbs up or down, you have managed to get the Man U/Arsenal and the Man U/Man City scores. One being a lot better than the other
Exactly as KP says, and as funny as it would be for Utd in particular to crash into the Europa League, they will be rested for the league. Given how tight it is shaping up to be, as all teams are capable of dropping points this season, even City; whom I don’t fear right now. With everyone involved at the top, it is a more even playing field, hell, I even want the Spuds to qualify in their next game, unlikely as it is, to keep them busy into January and beyond . . . it’s a pretty topsy-turvy world… Read more »
But utd’s reserves (as shown against Palace) won’t cut it in the PL right now, so even with just league games the first team will get tired and this leads to injuries and lack of concentration (concede silly goals, get red cards, etc…). Win win for all
We would have won in Barcelona too, had it not been for a hugely biased ref giving plenty of dodgy decisions in favour of a bunch of fouling cheats, and had Bendtner’s first touch not be akin to that of Freddy Krueger.
TWGS has been smashing it at Roker Park, hasn’t he? Or whatever it’s called these days.
bless
I always liked the name “Stadium of Light’, but maybe that’s just me.
I always liked it when it was the name for Benfica’s stadium and therefore unique, but the mackems stealing it was pretty piss poor. bit like if we have called the grove “the Estádio do Maracanã” because it’s just like watching brazil. i mean, that’s better than “Em*rates” of course, but still, you get my general drift. thieving other club’s stadium names is just naughty.
Cocky Arsenal fans, won’t win it so may as well go out now! CTID
blimey, haven’t you got a glazerhawks forum to troll?
unfortunately unlike citeh we cannot exit the tournament at this stage, but apart from that a brilliant point and well trolled, 9.2/10
Is CTID an acronym for “Cunt Trolling Internet Desperately”?
Blogs, I was just wondering where you got the *twatfarm reference from, as the great MC Pitman uses it quite amusingly. Other than that your paragraph 2 is tops especially ‘the side of delicious taunting’, hopefully something I shall be ordering later.Once again your daily blog and the great news stories keep me amused in tough times, thank you!
MC Pitman….legendary….”D’yer get me? I don’ think you do get me at all”…
Too right mate, a rapping genius.What’s it all about, it’s about nothing mate!
Ii think it will take consistently bad performance in CL to lose the 4th place to germany or some other country…
In unrelated news, I watched all of the Arsenal goals for October on the website and was disappointed to see that they didn’t show replies for the goal where Terry bowed before van Persie. To remedy this, I rewound it and re-watched that part about five times. It still makes me laugh out loud.
monday, tuesday, wednesday, spursday, friday, saturday, sunday
one of the most shocking and embarassing displays ive ever seen from an arsenal side….comical at points…useless even…not right..no matter the circumstances