via soccernet.com
im burning in hell as we speak. but i have this urge to briefly go over the battles over the week.
ill go backwards in time.
fa cup: chelsea v. arsenal.
as expected, the smartest way and the only way arsenal can pull this one off is by attacking and they did attack. fast and endless attacks is what is needed. play the balls low and dont hit anything for headers. noone is going to pick it up except for men in blue. do not drop the pace or else all is lost. but ultimately, it did not work as much as wenger played his strengths. talking about the so called ultimate firepower in europe, arsenal and barcelona are the most quoted teams in the past few years. however, theres a big difference between the two teams. barcelona has every attribute which arsenal has and more - they can hold the ball. arsenal like any other offensive oriented teams e.g. porto is haunted by a drop back defensive stance. players have no room to run into, these gunners are too young to pick a good low cross/1-2 pass and not enough skills to hold it under pressure like their catalans counterparts. they are pretty much outplayed by chelsea man for man. a much more experienced and balanced team. a fair result. just look at some of the things diaby does i.e. poor clearances, unecessary dribbling etc. and the poor passes the defenders pick which end up in defensive breaches for man-man opportunities. worst part is when toure and silvestre decided it was a good idea to stand all the way up front with drogba right next to them when theres less than 10 minutes left to extra time. i dont know how wenger can take these heart attacks week after week. how old is he?
fa cup: manchester united v. everton
too boring of a game to be analytical. fair results with this lineup. rio's miss came as a surprise though and more than ever riley sucked. i do know why hes becoming such an important figure in football when his performances are pretty much like american college level football intramural refereeing with american football/baseball interested 18 year olds.
champions league: manchester united v. porto.
these days as much as i hate sir alex, hes improved a lot with styles modifications and substitutions. this is a perfect exmaple. tried to take porto out first leg away by going all out only to see a barca-like fluid porto on the counter. since the first minutes in the second leg, whole team dropped with porto standing there almost looking like arsenal. its true. manchester barely made any moves at all but its only reasonable when the much despised as well as loved cristiano opened the score in the first 5 minutes. well deserved win.
champions league: chelsea v. liverpool.
im not denying hiddinks mastery in any sense but as of now i still see him as a national team manager. chelsea is still playing the jose mourinho style. what hiddink does to his miraculous teams is simply fitness training. thats all i can say. its easily recognizable. especially the fact that ive been in one of these underdog teams and played exactly like that. on the other hand, the fact that a team is already working not much should be changed. maybe thats hiddinks brilliance and he came at the right time with drogba and essien back out. in a way sort of like what guardiola is doing to barcalona. i actually like the additions scolari made to the team. bosingwa and deco made the team much more dynamic. cant really blame him on the injuries. but anelka is definitely a bad buy in my opinion. the game wise, as much as i dont want to blame reina, its pretty much his fault that opened the gap. aurelio's freekicks seem to be picking up and that was one smart switch in the very end. cech, as always after hunt, is a little eccentric at times. after that one concession, liverpool was forced to play up too much and it opened up all the spaces for drogba, lampard and ballack alike. from this game alone, no wonder lampard thrived under a 433 formation back in the chelsea early days. the quick immaculate early crosses and the runs into the box... deadly. its weird to remember drogba picked up form since chelsea slowly switched to a slower 442. i guess it can only be attributed to form and improvements rather than formations.
anyways. thats all for now. will be back on soon.
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