Arsenal 0 – 0 Blackburn: “That was not Barcelona football”
138 comments February 18th, 2007
As Cesc walked off the pitch at the end of a drab 0-0 draw, the following conversation broke out between he and Mark Hughes:
Cesc: Did you use to play for Barcelona?
Hughes: Yes
Cesc: That was not Barcelona football from you today.
Genius from the little man. Hughes’ apparent retort was that he doesn’t have the players to play “Barcelona football”. This seems fair enough. His squad was without the attacking flair of Pedersen and McCarthy, and he knew that their best chance of progressing was to try and take us back to Ewood Park. But if Mark Hughes is lying awake tonight thinking of the line he should’ve thrown back at Fabregas, I’m sure the words reverberating around his mind are something along the lines of, “Well it wasn’t from you either”.
For although Blackburn did defend well, with behemoth Christopher Samba particularly impressive, we never really tested them. Kolo Toure was the only outfield player who began the tie at Bolton to start, and Wednesday night’s fluency was missing from a poor performance. The difference in our two sides was best summed up by the wide players: the invention and drive of Hleb and Rosicky was replaced by the erraticism of Ljungberg and Walcott.
It would be wrong to pick out individuals though. This was just a terrible game, full of sub-standard performances. Fingers will be pointed, but I don’t think you can make nine changes and expect fluency. Wenger likes to mix it up, but he would never normally play a midfield that didn’t feature either of Hleb or Rosicky.
There were three noteworthy events in the game: the return of William Gallas, who started at left-back; a decent lob from Matt Derbyshire that Manuel Almunia turned over the bar; and a Brad Friedel double-save to deny Henry and Hoyte. Everything else is probably best forgotten.
The problem is that it creates yet more fixture congestion. One has to wonder what sort of side we’ll be forced to field in the replay.
Here’s some stuff Arsene said. And here’s something more interesting than the game itself was:
Yes, that’s right. It’s paint. Drying.
