Arcelona the Sequel

Tonight’s game has never been too far away in every gooner’s minds eye since the draw was made last December in Nyon, Switzerland.

There is no point in making far reaching rally calls….. my take is to sit back and hopefully enjoy a festival of Total Football, played out by the two purest footballing sides on earth.

Thankfully each side have their best players fit and raring to go – minus a top-notch centre-half from both sides, namely Carlos Puyol and Thomas Vermalen.

We got butchered, as we all know, in the opening 25 minutes of last year’s tie, and the hope is we turn the tables and give the Catalans a taste of their own medicine… lets impose our game on them is shout from Le Gaffer.  Quite right too.  On our day, we could feasibly rip Barcelona a new arsehole…. they don’t have a decent back line, and rely on the rest of the team to defend from the front and keep the pressure off the defenders.

Good luck with that one Spaniards.

I like the way we enter this game, as last year we came into the match following a disastrous 1-1 at Birmingham which more or less killed our title hopes… having led 1 nil thanks to a late strike from Nasri… Almunia made a gaff and allowed Kevin Phillips to equalise deep in injury time.  Bollocks to that… as this time we come storming into the match after “slapping” Wolves in the words of their own manager.

Nasri may even return to the starting line-up, although I would prefer a start on the bench, the cup final is only a dozen or so days away and his presence there will be essential in order we finally lift silverware again.  The return to form of Arshavin should be enough to sway Wenger into doing just that.

All in all, a fabulous day of anticipation is in order, days like today are what being a gooner is all about… I love it, the whole build up.. waiting to get the team news around an hour before kick-off… the day spent wasted on Twitter chatting endless shit, just to kill the time… just love it.

I’m loathed to make a prediction, but if I was pushed I would favour a repeat of last year or even a step further with 3-3.

ENJOY!