Arsenal vs Barcelona Wed, 16 Feb 2011 19:45pm(ITV 1)

[silent_shadow]

After reading the epic post by Carlos in the Lobby, I have to say that inviting some random gooners to the game was a really cool thing to do mrsrvp, so kudos to you!

I have a feeling she might be more careful about doing this in the future...

 

[Gonner_88]

Hmm...I always thought it was much bigger than that.

If we play our best available XI except for TV of course then I can see us going through. Rival fans keep bringing up the 4-1 loss last season. The forget to mention that Fabregas, RVP, Arshavin, Song,and Gallas were all missing. If you remove five key players from Barcelona they will struggle as badly.

 

[Spork]

Hmm...I always thought it was much bigger than that.

If we play our best available XI except for TV of course then I can see us going through. Rival fans keep bringing up the 4-1 loss last season. The forget to mention that Fabregas, RVP, Arshavin, Song,and Gallas were all missing. If you remove five key players from Barcelona they will struggle as badly.

Barca are quite confident, perhaps we can convince them to leave out 5 of their best? I'd be more than happy to take a cheap win.

 

[IBL]

Pat Rice's celebration is epic

It's like one of those hare-krishna people on crack, hilarious!

 

[Shue]

Carlos should post the pic, who cares about being tactful or people's privacy!

 

[Gonner_88]

Nah Shue that's disrespectful. People's privacy should be respected at all times.

 

[Gonner_88]

Hmm...I always thought it was much bigger than that.

If we play our best available XI except for TV of course then I can see us going through. Rival fans keep bringing up the 4-1 loss last season. The forget to mention that Fabregas, RVP, Arshavin, Song,and Gallas were all missing. If you remove five key players from Barcelona they will struggle as badly.

Barca are quite confident, perhaps we can convince them to leave out 5 of their best? I'd be more than happy to take a cheap win.

Forget the cheap win...I'd take a draw right here right now

 

[Shue]

Nah Shue that's disrespectful. People's privacy should be respected at all times.

whoosh

 

[AshburtonGhost]

MrsRvP better watch out for Dula, he loves an attractive woman! Lol!

 

[Jury]

I thought it was a WUM doing one on mrsvanpersie for a short lived laugh...

Turns out it's the ****ing truth, and now feel violently sick at the thought of someone being so lucky.

What a touch.

 

[Spork]

Hmm...I always thought it was much bigger than that.

If we play our best available XI except for TV of course then I can see us going through. Rival fans keep bringing up the 4-1 loss last season. The forget to mention that Fabregas, RVP, Arshavin, Song,and Gallas were all missing. If you remove five key players from Barcelona they will struggle as badly.

Barca are quite confident, perhaps we can convince them to leave out 5 of their best? I'd be more than happy to take a cheap win.

Forget the cheap win...I'd take a draw right here right now

Nah bugger that mate, i've got $50 on us winning it with odds paying $8.50 for every dollar!

 

[The Escaped Ape]

This match really sucked. Well, at least in the sense that I was in Bangkok, with no access to coverage live, or even recorded, so all I saw was the scoreline on a tickertape across the bottom of a news bulletin. I then had to wait through an interminable day of meetings, followed by an overnight flight home before I could watch it. The only place it was screened in Japan was on Barca TV, so I had to watch it in Japanese, as I don't speak Catalan and I wouldn't have wanted to listen to Barca TV's commentators anyway. No replays at the end of the match and they cut right off the scenes at the end with RVP and Szczesny applauding the fans etc.

Despite all that, I'm currently one of the happiest men on the planet and wondering if it's really that wrong for someone my age (35) to love a group of other men quite so much.

Bangkok doesn't have cable? impossible....

Ya not sure about that too....when I was in Bangkok I was constantly coming across bars playing all the games. They have a United Bar, Barcelona bar and more so I'm sure it was on somewhere :roll:

You'll notice that I didn't say it wasn't on live in Bangkok - only that I didn't have access to it. Stuck in a business hotel, with long hours of work on both Wednesday and Thursday, I couldn't get out from 0245 in the morning until what would have likely ended up being 0600 after celebrations, with meetings starting at 0730. If it had been on one of the hotel channels, I might have stayed up to watch it. If I knew Bangkok in the slightest, or had mates living there I might even have gone out - as it was all I did was ask my wife to record it at home, only to find out that it wasn't being shown in Japan until Friday, and then only on Barca TV, not in HD. :x

Rather than trying to do a Columbo on me ([Columbo]you see, what I don't understand Mr Ape is that you said you were in Bangkok, but I've been there on holiday and...[/Columbo]), just pity my plight!

 

[Y va marquer]

Lee Dixon's comments on the game:

"at half-time I must admit I was worried because I thought a 5-1 scoreline to Barcelona would have been a fair reflection on the game so far. It was men against boys and I was trying to work out how Arsène Wenger could change things around.

But they did just that. They got to grips with it and stopped Barcelona's midfield playing nice little triangles in the middle of the pitch by putting more pressure on the ball. Also the wide players Samir Nasri and Theo Walcott stopped getting sucked into the centre and were able to prevent their full-backs moving forward so much. Then the Barcelona back four started to drop deeper and Arsenal were able to start trading blows with their visitors.

Suddenly the likes of Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Sergio Busquets saw a bit less of the ball, and the full-backs Dani Alves and Maxwell were less in the game going forward.

In the first half Lionel Messi dropped deep and the Arsenal back four stood off, leaving the midfield outnumbered. But after the interval Laurent Koscielny started going with Messi and the little genius found it much harder to play."

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/lee-dixon-arsenal-were-chasing-shadows-before-a-wenger-masterstroke-changed-the-game-2219138.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/foot ... 19138.html</a>

 

[Rain Dance]

Rather than trying to do a Columbo on me ([Columbo]you see, what I don't understand Mr Ape is that you said you were in Bangkok, but I've been there on holiday and...[/Columbo]), just pity my plight!

My bad Mr. Bekantan

It's just since I live in South East Asia, I find it hard to believe the game wasn't on cable.

Cause in my country Indonesia (and quite sure Malaysia too), it's shown on cable AND on national TV

 

[The Escaped Ape]

Rather than trying to do a Columbo on me ([Columbo]you see, what I don't understand Mr Ape is that you said you were in Bangkok, but I've been there on holiday and...[/Columbo]), just pity my plight!

My bad Mr. Bekantan

It's just since I live in South East Asia, I find it hard to believe the game wasn't on cable.

Cause in my country Indonesia (and quite sure Malaysia too), it's shown on cable AND on national TV

No worries. It was my first time in Bangkok and I saw nothing beyond the hotel and the office. Turning up to meetings (the internal ones in the morning where I didn't have to be in a suit) on Thursday wearing an Arsenal t-shirt, in the vain hope that someone would turn out to be a closet fan and I'd have someone to talk about the match with, was about as close as I got to being able to enjoy the victory at first. ops:

To cap it all, I was leading on a lot of the work, so couldn't turn up half-dead from lack of sleep. :x

I hope to get back to Bangkok at some point and actually get to enjoy the place.

 

[entropy13]

MrsRvP better watch out for Dula, he loves an attractive woman! Lol!

The Dulester most probably grinding his teeth after someone "got ahead" of him.

 

[redanddread]

Hmm...I always thought it was much bigger than that.

If we play our best available XI except for TV of course then I can see us going through. Rival fans keep bringing up the 4-1 loss last season. The forget to mention that Fabregas, RVP, Arshavin, Song,and Gallas were all missing. If you remove five key players from Barcelona they will struggle as badly.

Having watched the game a few times since on replay, we will have to improve to beat them (or draw with them) in their back yard. The wider spaces of the Camp Now will make life even more difficult for our defenders and even harder to get the damn ball off them. However, the team has matured to the point where it has no problem with Barca having more possession, they are just intent on ensuring they limit the scoring chances and ensuring that when we have possession we take some of our chances created. We had more shots on goal than Barca-that says something.

It will require a monumental effort to beat Barca in Barcelona, a monumnetal effort! Thank God Sagna will be back and Nasri should be more match fit. Wenger has got to get his defensive tactics spot on and hope and pray for a little luck. However, the big plus is we know we can beat them and they now know we can beat them!

The experience and knowledge gained form playing them this time will hopefully stand us in good stead on March 8.

Game on.

Cheeky bookies - 3-1 against @ home!! I hope some Gooners amde some do$h!

 

[There is light]

It was a good performance but we were nowhere near our best, Cesc and RVP surely weren't at their best, and even nasri wasn't match fit. We are in with a chance and we can take the positives from this game, improve, keep our mind and destroy them. Just have a feeling this will be an even better football match than the one at the emirates! Just stay fit, bloody stoke are coming to the emirates.

 

[Humble Rex]

Having rewatched the game I realized that Messi didn´t miss a single pass throughout the whole game. Quite amazing!

 

[Lord Dula]

He's a top player although koscielny handled him superbly