First Tottenham, now Arsenal. North London looks like it's been a fun place to be the past few nights...
I thought Arsenal was dead in the water. Nice comeback! Makes for a great 2nd leg match up in a few weeks
Damnit, messed up and thought the game was at 4 Central. Hopefully might try to catch a replay somewhere, sounds like it was a good game.
Bayern beat Inter 1-0 on a Gomez goal in the final minute tonight. I was there. Had fun. Now we just need to remain focused for the return leg.
Congrats, I was really happy The goal came. It is a shame how cowardly Inter plays. Sneijder really should go to another team, one why actually tries to play football.
It's going to be an awesome game, I just wish both teams were completely healthy. Looks like Arsenal will go for the kill, they just need to score one goal to force Barcelona to score 3. Given that Puyol and Pique are both out, this is going to be a good game. While I'm sure Barcelona would love to dominate posession and come out with a 1-0 scoreline, I think that has become very difficult with the absence of their top two center backs. I think Liverpool's demolition job on Man Utd has injected hope back into the Arsenal team that they can lift the EPL and CL trophies. Not specifically a fan of either team, but I love the way both teams play and think we'll see some excellent football tonight. My prediction on the night: 2-2, Arsenal goes through 4-3 on aggregate.
So SJC what is your take on the dismissal of Van Gaal. So the season after he brought Bayern one of th emost successful season in the history of the club, they want him gone. It really is a "what have you done for me lately" world there. I hope he wins the Champions league and then leaves the club.
I'm from Germany and a born Bayern-fan. Van Gaal started good last season but much of the success was due to Robben's incredible performances and teams not defending that wing-strategy well. This season teams realized Bayern is relying on Robben and Ribery only, so they double/triple these two guys forcing them to commit turnovers or pass back. Bayern shows absolutely no creativity, no passes through the middle. Van Gaal also missed the chance of getting new defenders past summer, leaving a hole in the team and one heavy weakness. His main error is rotating the defense and defensive-middlefield too much, therefore no way the guys are able to work together or position well. You have to trust your lineup in order to be successful, van Gaal changes the rotation every game. He's also too stubborn to change the strategy when it's not working on certain days, guys often had to play at positions they couldn't execute at. All that ball-possession doesn't win you games at all. As a fan I'm perfectly fine with him leaving, Bayern has to buy more stars and needs a coach that works better with the management.
I agree with this analysis. I travel with the team to the CL away matches, so I can add from my own experience that van Gaal is a pretty arrogant prick personally. His ego is just too much, which is a problem, because the ego of the president of the club (Hoeness) is at least as big. Van Gaal is also too unflexible. What was a strength in his first season (teaching players how to play structured football, keeping ball possession high) has become a weakness because the team is too predictable. Even Robben and Ribery are not allowed to leave their "quadrant" of the field, which makes it easy to defend them. Van Gaal should do things like making them switch sides suddenly, to give defenders a different look. He never ever did that. He actually made his biggest mistake before he even arrived, by running Lucio out of town. With Lucio, everything would be different, we would have won the Champions League last year. He now repeated this mistake by running van Bommel out of town. These two guys were leaders, fighters, people the rest of the team could look up to. But because van Gaal is such an egomaniac, he does not want to have players the rest of the team looks up to, because he wants to be the only one anyone is allowed to look up to. There is a pattern if you look at his career, he was usually extremely successful when he first got to a team, because he brought structure. He also discovered gems like Thomas Mueller or, at his time at Barcelona, Xavi and Iniesta, and trusted them to play over more established veterans. But in his 2nd or 3rd year, he usually had less success, because opponents would see through his unflexible strategy and he would have alienated a lot of people in the respective club in the meantime because of his abrasive personality. I want him gone NOW. He is a really good football teacher, but too stubborn and unflexible, and can't work well with top stars. I want Bayern to get Hiddink. He seems as good a football teacher as van Gaal, minus the abrasive personality and massive ego.
You're kidding me...Arsenal held their own for the first half only to give up a goal to Messi in the last minute. What happens if the aggregate is tied?
