Champions League group stage is concluding today after 8 game-weeks. Every team will be in action at 8 PM UK time, and we are visiting Girona today. Though a draw is sufficient to qualify for the knockout stage and avoid 2 additional games in a play-off, we would love to win and keep the confidence high. Girona aren’t having a great season, having lost 6 of their 7 CL games and we should be beating them easily.
Mikel Merino and Odegaard missed out against Wolves but are back in contention for the game. Saka will be missed but Nwaneri is back and I am hoping he won’t let us miss the starboy. We have a game against City on Sunday, so I won’t be surprised if Mikel pull out the likes of Jorginho and Sterling to rest some of the main team players.
Liverpool and Barcelona has qualified already, we are sitting on 16 points. Lets see how it can go if we lose today!
Inter, Atletico, Milan and Atlanta are between 14-16 points, a win would take them above us bringing us to 7th position. There are 6 clubs (Leverkusen, Aston Villa, Monaco, Feyenoord, LOSC, Brest) with 13 points that will level with us. But we have got a very healthy goal difference of 12 and only Atlanta (14) with their win will surpass us. It will bring us down to 8th position. No other teams with 13 points has more than 7 goal difference and for us to not qualify to round of 16 directly, we would be losing badly and one of the 6 teams would be winning with some margin. That’s a lot of permutations and combinations and it still favor us.
So, lets just sit comfortably, enjoy the game and lets hope Mikel do some rotation to keep the players fit for the game against Man City. Again, we should win against Girona with our bench players and I won’t mind if Nwaneri keeps his place in the team ahead of Odegaard, Jorgi starts ahead of Partey/Rice and Sterling gives some rests to Martinelli.
I never got time to write about MLS red card but what a shite decision that was. FA has rescinded the card and has deemed it to be a wrong decision. Michael Oliver (as usual) gave a RED against us for challenge that didn’t deserve it, VAR looked it in slow motion for a handful of seconds and agreed with Oliver. If we remove the bias-angle from that decision, what in the hell was VAR doing? A referee can have bad day or bad view but VAR was put in place for exactly the same reason to fix this. There’s incompetence at all level and PGMOL should be held accountable. With such small margins, you can’t forget to draw the lines at VAR, you can’t give two yellow to a player in the same passage of play, you can’t have two rules for two different teams for kicking the ball away, you can’t be handing straight red cards for challenges that deserve a max yellow. It’s a shite show and it needs to stop.
Right, that was all for the game and all thing Arsenal. But I have something more to talk about.
I read an interesting take from Goal.com regarding the new Champions League format :
I have been a supporter of the new Champions League format and though I agree with some of the things they have written, they have missed to touch the some important points for the sake of criticizing new format. Hear me out!
I agree with the sentiments here – more matches means more injuries and almost every big club in Europe is playing twice a week where both the games are considered important. They talk about players welfare but lets be honest here, no team would play another big club in all of those 8 group stages games. If a manager is fixated in playing his best XI every game, it’s on him. With high profile signings and money spent, clubs like City, Arsenal, Chelsea have got two XIs of 40-100m players. If you are hell bent on achieving success only via ‘100m’ players, it’s on you. If players are getting injured (excluding impact injuries) because they are playing more than they can sustain, it’s poor from the manager and the club who can’t decide when to rest a player even with multi-million health experts on their payroll.
Their next argument is money over meritocracy. UEFA wanted to make more money out of it – agreed but that’s not helping only the big clubs. Even the likes of Girona are getting 8 games, some of them happens to be big enough to generate excitement among their fans. There’s a trickle down effect here. For every Read Madrid making more money, there are Young Boys, who are trying to sustain in this market and remain competitive.
Regarding the extra safety net they are talking about, giving example of City, who after losing to Sporting, Juventus and PSG can still qualify by beating Club Brugge today – I’m not sure how that’s a bad thing. With the earlier format, it was more of a luck where you could land in a group of death, or lose a game on a bad day and you are out. How often we had seen a very non-competitive round of 16 earlier – very! Group stages may give you some boring games, but it would also filter out the elites for the next stage and it’s going to be more competitive as we go. I don’t want the likes of Madrid, City, Arsenal or PSG to go out of the tournament because of a bad day.
Right, that’s my take on this. Goal has certainly made their case and I am just on the opposite side of it. I am stirring the pot here, because I would love to hear your say – some of you have seen the changes in the past and would have better, valid points for and against it.
Hi Tony
County playing away in Penybont (known as Bridgend in Ingerlish or sasenag) today at 12.30. They’re second and a toughish proposition but if the boys win, they’ll be knocking on the door for an automatic euro spot. I’m doing something with the nippers otherwise I’d have gone. I’ll post some highlights (uchafbyntiau) ….if we win.
Cardiff are playing up at Elland Road today so may struggle. But ever the optimist, if by Sunday evening the two sets of Bluebirds and the Arsenal have all won, I’ll be partying like it’s 1999!
Kroenke
A genuine question and then I’ll leave it (for now least!) – we have a pretty left wing Government who have managed to take the fastest growing economy in the G7 when they were elected and push it into recession through their own actions.
With that in mind how do you come to the conclusion that the solution to the massive damage socialism has done to the economy in such a short amount of time is even more socialism?
Marc
Wrong, wrong, wrong. We don’t have a left wing government (thus rendering the rest of your commentary as utterly meaningless). Mate, stop thinking lazily about labels from the Daily Mail editorials and delve into the actual detail.
You know I’m a lefty and that I’m happy to admit it. Ask yourself this: what possible motive could I have for describing Starmer as a right wing turncoat who has sold out the labour movement?
Starmer might seem to you to be to the left because your thinking borders on reform/extreme right wing of British politics but by any objective yardstick of his current political thinking, he’s one of yours I’m afraid. You’ll have to get used to it because he’s got years left. Remember that thing I copied to you a few weeks ago about him being on the right of all MPs in the HoC. Well like it or not, that’s evidence.
Marc
Time for some personal truth. You’re not sitting in the centre politically are you? If you allow yourself think you’re rather to the right, then it ought to be easy enough to see Starmer is not that far to the left of you. It’s overly simplistic because policies and life generally change all the time. But if you stood Starmer next to old skool Tories like Heseltine, Geoffrey Howe, Douglas Herd, Major and even possibly the arch bastard Thatcher you’d conclude his thinking was more pro-capitalist, anti equality, authoritarian and anti Europe than those Cunty old relics. See? Your thinking is too simplistic because of those agenda driven hate rags you read.
Forest v Brighton should be an interesting match up
Never thought I’d see Forest putting pressure on MA but they are cruising against a decent Brighton side.
Level with us in points now but only +8 GD.
Forest are not going away and deserve CL football. Gibbs-White would fit for us and better than White.
Interesting stat Chris Wood for Forest has 15 goals this season.
Wood now 16 PL goals to Kai’s 6.
Says it all. Really
Kroenke
You’ve got the centre ground wrong – the current Tories are just left of centre and Starmer is far left – Corbyn is then even further left.
Forest 7 nil what the fuck.
Ayden Heaven can go to hell! Lol. Fuck him.
Marc – as the great bard said, ‘to thine ownself be true’. You’re talking bollocks and you know it.
Current Tories left of centre…..are you on LSD or just mushrooms? Let me draw you a diagram to demonstrate what I think about your political insight…🐂🐂🐂💩💩💩
That kind of thinking might resonate at your local reform party reach-arounds, but to those of us in the real world, it’s just unadulterated cack.
Kemi Bad Enoch
Jenrick
Liz Cunty Truss
Yeah mate, all these loons are left of centre.
You’re going to have to up your game. You’re like the Southampton of politics on here…
Tough game for Pool away to B’mouth who are capable of taking scalps playing fast counter, football hitting Forest for 5 last week who just beat Brighton 7:0.
Fancy Pool to get all 3 points making tomorrow a must beat City game.
Should be a cracker.
Pool 1:0 up after Semenyo hit Allison’s upright.
Semenyo another player we should be looking at.
KP—you’re so right about Starmer and it’s certainly not revelatory, as talk of his transition from that of a soft-left Labour politician to the right of the party has been bandied about for quite some time now…when you speak of twisted media narratives that get mistakenly lapped up, it reminds me of all the slurpy Trumpian cunts claiming that Biden was a far-lefter, when he was the personification of a centrist politician
Forest don’t appear to be going anywhere, as they boat-raced Brighton today with a scoreline that no one could have ever predicted…we couldn’t score that many against BHA if half their squad was sent off
it’s radio silence today for our little club when it comes to transfers, at least from any credible source…it could mean nothing, but with only a couple days left, it’s certainly not a comforting situation…maybe we’re just hiding in the weeds in the hopes that Villa bring another forward, like Rashford, so we can pounce…what a loser’s mentality by a manager who would probably struggle to convince his son to join on…even if Watkins were to come, it would have nothing to do with MA, as everyone’s well-aware of his longtime affections for our club
Salah’s potted 16 in 16…based on Villa’s Ollie valuation, Pool could ask for 200+M
now 17 in 16, and right after Kluivert’s open goal miss…2-0 Pool
We has 17th Viera. Pool are not going anywhere. Tomorrows is a cracker. By the end of tomorrow for all city’s problems they can be only 3 points behind us. Unbelievable