YOU WANNA MESSI WITH ME?

“Football is never boring.”

How right Arsene was again. Football rarely ever gives you reason to change channels. Even losses come in a variety of packages. There’s the one in which you have a million gazillion chances, somehow contrive to miss them and the opposition scores in the last minute through a relay of deflections. Not quite nice, that. Then there’s the one in which you can’t string two passes together if your life depended on it, Danny Murphy bosses you in midfield and the twats take the points, more because you had an absolute stinker than anything else. That doesn’t evoke sterling memories either. Finally there’s the one in which you don’t exactly play horribly but the opposition is on another planet. You do the best you can but, at the end of 90 minutes, you have to put your hands up and acknowledge that the better team won. I find this type of defeat relatively easy to stomach.

I don’t think there’s any need to relive the important moments of the match. In a nutshell, we took the lead and then Messi tore us a new one. Barcelona were magnificent again. We played better than we did at the Emirates (it was hard not to) but still came up short by quite some distance. The most important thing now is to put this defeat on the back burner and focus on the North London Derby. There are five matches left, we’re hanging in there and need to hang in there as long as we can.

Our Champions League run has ended and I think we can go out with our heads held high. Barcelona have dismantled better teams than the one we put out by bigger margins, so there’s no need to be ashamed by this loss. The chief emotion I’m going through right now is one of regret. Not at the missed chances or the cheap goals. Regret that we didn’t get a fair chance. A full strength Arsenal would have pretty slim odds as it is, but Silvestre against Messi says it all really. This is not whining or sour grapes or anything and if you think it is, well, up yours.

I wanted Cesc to lead us out at Nou Camp, Van Persie to battle against their CB’s, Arshavin to mesmerize Abidal and Song and Gallas to pit their wits against Messi. Or at least one of them. They played with two second choice CB’s, we played with one first choice and one fifth choice CB. Every April it seems like I’m watching the same season all over again. Gallas gets injured along with three or four vital players and Silvestre always seems to end up playing CL quarters and semis. I hope that isn’t the case next time round, but I’ve come to learn that hope’s a bitch.

So what did we learn today? We learned that Barcelona are better than us. Well, it’s not like we didn’t know that already.

BARCA GRACE 2-2 ARSENAL GUMPTION

“You can never see a dull game between two teams like this.”

Arch pessimist that I am, I thought that these fateful words had surely jinxed the game and had paved the way for a mind numbingly dull 0-0 draw. But like he has done so many times before, Arsene proved that he knew. Contrary to being dull, the match between Arsenal and Barcelona was one of the most incredible encounters I have seen in my brief stint as a gooner. Nervousness, embarrassment, relief, frustration, hope and finally joy were doled out in huge dollops as I witnessed a tame capitulation and a stirring comeback from the same team in the space of 90 minutes.

The two men who were arguably talked about most in the frenzied media-induced build up were Cesc Fabregas and Thierry Henry. The news involving them was contrasting, with Cesc ‘passing’ a fitness test to start and Henry taking his place on the Barca bench. It is with mixed emotions that he would have watched his current employers give his first love a comprehensive footballing lesson. Barcelona were rampant in the opening half, running rings around the Arsenal midfield and leaving them breathless with their deceptively simple yet extremely complex passing patterns. The scoreline was somehow 0-0 at half time courtesy of some shoddy finishing and Almunia heroics. The relief was palpable, prayers were said and all sorts of wood touched.

The trouble is, we have too many enigmas in the team. Players who’ll play out of their skins in one game and like one footed mules the next. And sometimes in the same game. Almunia, who had kept us in the game, came miles off his area for some reason and then went back to pick the ball out of the net. A more deserved goal I’ll not see this season. It was soon 2-0, from a similar pass and a similarly slick finish. Arsenal seemed done and dusted. But we’ve heard that before, haven’t we? Arsenal have been pronounced ‘done and dusted’ this year more times than I care to count, yet they’ve always managed to pull themselves back.

Wenger brought on Theo Walcott, another enigma who didn’t elicit much expectation, if truth be told. But as soon as he came on, Barca were dealing with something they had seldom dealt with before- raw, Usain Bolt-ish pace. He latched on to a Nick pass and slipped it under Valdes. The home side were suddenly imposing themselves on the game more and when Nick cutely headed the ball into Cesc’s path, the next few moments were a collection of disoriented images. A tangle of legs, ref pointing to the spot, pulling out a crimson card, Cesc getting injured and then lashing home the penalty with a broken leg. And then hobbling through the rest of the game to maintain Arsenal’s one man advantage. He may be 22, but our Captain’s got guts.

So we go into the next leg with all to play for. We will mostly end up winning nothing this season too (and getting several more of our players injured) but one thing’s for sure- we’ll give it a fucking good go.