BENNY AND TOMI PUT PEN TO PAPER
What are you doing Friday? That’s right. CHAMPIONS LEAGUE QUARTER FINAL DRAW.
Feels sexy, right?
That is a very nice collection of top tier clubs. No Qarabag for us. Just pure heritage clubs that’ll have American gooners crying off sick for sure.
For me, the who do we want and who do we NOT want lists are very simple.
DO NOT WANT:
Manchester City: They are the strongest team in the world and we do not have a particularly great record against them over the last 10 years. Though cup games are not that bad – league games are bad. Very bad.
The counter-point to the fear here is that the one team Pep doesn’t want is Arsenal. We have had their number this season. Arteta puts extra on City games, and they will know the jeopardy involved in losing to Arsenal. Weirdly, I think it would be far worse for City to lose in the QF than for Arsenal. We have nothing to lose because we’ve never won anything major… they carry the bigger rep and when you are the king, you cannot lose a public power struggle to a young princeling because all your power dissipates.
Atleti: No. No. No. No. This is not a peak Atleti side, but it is a technically gifted shit-bag iteration that can turn anyone over with the darkest of dark arts. Inter Milan has been on fire, they defend like monsters, and they were easily beaten by the Spaniards. I want a nice quarter final, not one I’ll need therapy to get over.
DO WANT:
All the teams that will come to play football against us. Bayern, Madrid, and Barca are all weaker teams than Arsenal, but they aren’t going to shut up shop against us. Their fans wouldn’t allow it. Dortmund are decent but 4th in the Bundesliga. If we lose to them, it’s two very, very bad days.
So who will we get? City or Atleti. You just know it.
Still, the Champions League is like Pokemon… you gotta beat em’ all. Right?
Josh Kroenke was in town for the BIG game. No one gets on a PJ for 14 hours to watch 120 minutes of excruciating football in the Champions League. So what was the reason? It would seem like he might have wanted to be around for the BIG re-signing of Benny Blanco and Tomiyasu.
MAYBE MIKEL AS WELL? Who knows. That’s just irresponsible speculation by me.
Back to the full-backs.
Two extraordinary talents that people didn’t quite get when they landed… now we do. Ben White arrived as a centre back and now he dominates the right side of defence with outrageous performances every week. Tomi arrived as a right back and now he plays wherever he’s needed.
Two top talents, though I would put a lot of pennies on one of them not being here in two seasons’ time.
Once again, I find myself saluting the sporting execs who have signed player after player to new deals with minimal fuss. Tim Lewis, Edu and the MIGHTY Richard Garlick find a way every time. If you’re a young person thinking this is normal, please review the history books from 2015 onwards. It wasn’t pretty. We’d lose big players on free transfers (Aaron Ramsey) or we’d panic and sign declining players to deals they couldn’t get anywhere else (Ozil). It was a mess. We live in a much more sensible world these days.
Ok, short post today. We’ll be dropping a lovely Thursday Therapy session a little later this afternoon. So keep your ears PRICKED for that.