What made the Cesc thing worse was before the game is he was hugging and high fiving the Barca players.
Meh. He’s known those guys for a long time. He played with some of them on the Barca youth team. He played with many of them at the World Cup. They are his friends, and he’d never played at Camp Nou before.
I don’t question his effort or his commitment. Just the wisdom of starting him on a balky hamstring.
I spent much of the drive to work thinking “what ifs” about the Bendtner chance at the death. Flashbacks to Hornby’s discussion in Fever Pitch about what makes a perfect match - come from behind victory, lousy decisions against you (either a sending off or a penalty). A goal there to knock Barca out of the Champions League with 10 men… ah, it is to dream.
I’m not either. But it looks bad especially considering the “will he or won’t he drama” about him getting a Barca transfer from before the season start.
Oh, he will. There is almost no doubt about that. It’s just a matter of when - and the most likely answer to that is after this season. The next question is how much - and hopefully the answer is “a lot”.
I also don’t doubt Fabregas will wind up going to Barcelona at some point, possibly in the near future. He clearly loves the club and wants to go there. I hope Arsenal have the sense to get big cash for him.
I also hope that Fabregas himself realises that it would be a massively retrograde step in his career. He’s not better than Xavi. He’s not better than Iniesta. He’s not the same type of player as Mascherano and Busquets so can’t play in the holding role. He is certainly not better than Messi (and that role is arguably too advanced for Fabregas anyway). So where would he play? Answer is: on the bench.
Nothing wrong with that, if that is what he wants. But this reeks of Scott Parker going to Chelsea (albeit on a much bigger scale) in that both were good players, both would be recompensed handsomely for their services and both would net their clubs large amounts of cash. But neither are good enough to get in the starting XI for their new clubs.
This is not a knock on Fabregas - I think he’s a very fine player indeed. But if I was him, I’d want to be playing for another club (in this case Arsenal) rather than not playing for my boyhood club. It;s obviously up to him.
I agree with all of that, Cumbrian. He doesn’t have too look too far back into Arsenal’s past to find a top-flight player that found himself a bit out of place at Barca (Henry).
The one caveat would be that Cesc is 3 years younger than Iniesta and 7 years younger than Xavi. He’s actually only a month older than Messi.
Didn’t quite realise the age disparity there. He’s the long term replacement for Xavi I would say. Given Xavi is 31, I would say that Fabregas probably wants to be over there in 18 months time when he can probably pick the baton up from Xavi. It wouldn’t surprise me if Barcelona are already thinking like this in fact.
Champions League draw:
Chelsea vs United
Inter vs Schalke
Barca vs Shaktar Donetsk
Real Madrid vs Spurs
I didn’t check Chelsea’s schedule around the quarters, but United have matches against West Ham, Newcastle, and City in the FA Cup on either side. I’m glad United are away first. With Antonio Valencia back, I like United’s attack against Chelsea. The defenders need to heal up quickly, though.
If Spurs are to make the Final in North London, they’ll have to go through, in all likelihood, Real Madrid and then Barca! Screw that, though. I want to see RM-Barca in the semis.
Well, it’s really too early to call it, but I’m going to stick my neck out and say that yesterday’s results have decided the destination of the Premier League trophy - just can’t see anyone else turning their season around sufficiently, and United slipping up sufficiently, for them to be caught. “Commentator’s curse” isn’t an actual law of the universe, right? 
#19 is a point away. Sir Alex Ferguson is the greatest.
Right of their )$&@
perch!!!
Great result. Would finish it off at Blackburn next week…hopefully.
The only real question is, is there any chance of the double? I think the chance of an upset against Barcelona is far greater than last time round, but it will require either a poor display by the Catalonians or a brilliant one from the Reds - here’s hoping!
I realize this is a minor point, but is there a reason that the commentators keep pronouncing Chicharito’s first name as if he’s French?
Javier is usually rendered in English as HAH-vee-air, not HAV-ee-yay. I wouldn’t expect them to say it just like a native Spanish-speaker (xaˈβjer), but as it is they aren’t even close.
It just strikes me as odd, since they seem to take some effort to pronounce other Spanish names.
If you are referring to British commentators, then my observation is that British people are quite good with French words, and lousy with Spanish. Americans are the opposite. In Britain the default for a foreign-looking word is likely to be to pronounce it in a French way.
A little late posting this, but it’s all over at the top, as predicted by such football luminaries as Alan Shearer and yours truly (more sarcastic than boasting, in case anyone is wondering). It turned out that the defensive frailties that cost United points were not capitalised on due to Arsenal and Chelsea having weaknesses everywhere else. Bring on Barcelona!
Quite interesting down at the bottom, though, because due to Wolves and Blackburn playing each other, thereby ensuring that one or both of them will finish with less than 42 points, a win for any of the five teams in danger will save them, with a probability ranging from “certain” (Blackburn and Wolves) down to “still a very good chance” (Wigan).
What a glorious final day!
The Villa end up in the top half, despite only securing themselves from relegation last week. Ending the season beating Arsenal (at the Emirates) and Liverpool at home is pretty damn good.
And, way more importantly, the Blue Scum get relegated.
Happy, happy. Joy, joy.
Blimey O’Reilly. By my count, there were five different combinations of clubs in the bottom three at various times. Shame about Blackpool, not sorry to see the back of Birmingham. Glad Wolves and Wigan survived.
I too have a soft spot for the Wolves. It was kind of a retirement home for ex-Villa players for a while. Watching them play at Villa Park was like having your grandparents come to visit, except they didn’t give you a tobacco stained fiver at the end of the game.
What a final day, surely one of the most dramatic in the league’s 123 year history - Wolves became the first Premier League team since the 1993-1994 season to stay up despite having more losses than anybody else
Next season’s going to be exhausting for Birmingham - not only will they have to play in the Championship with its 46 game league season, but they have Europa league matches on top of that
Here is the final league table:
** P W D L GF GA +/- Pts**
Manchester Utd. 38 23 11 4 78 37 +41 80 CL
Chelsea 38 21 8 9 69 33 +36 71 CL
Manchester City 38 21 8 9 60 33 +27 71 CL
Arsenal 38 19 11 8 72 43 +29 68 CL
Tottenham 38 16 14 8 55 46 + 9 62 EL
Liverpool 38 17 7 14 59 44 +15 58
Everton 38 13 15 10 51 45 + 6 54
Fulham 38 11 16 11 49 43 + 6 49 EL
Aston Villa 38 12 12 14 48 59 -11 48
Sunderland 38 12 11 15 45 56 -11 47
West Brom. 38 12 11 15 56 71 -15 47
Newcastle 38 11 13 14 56 57 - 1 46
Stoke 38 13 7 18 46 48 - 2 46 EL
Bolton 38 12 10 16 52 56 - 4 46
Blackburn 38 11 10 17 46 59 -13 43
Wigan 38 9 15 14 40 61 -21 42
Wolves 38 11 7 20 46 66 -20 40
-------------------------------------------------
Birmingham 38 10 9 19 54 76 -22 39 EL
Blackpool 38 8 15 15 41 65 -24 39
West Ham 38 7 12 19 43 70 -27 33
CL = Qualified for Champions League
EL = Qualified for Europa League