Liverpool fans have been grumpy this season, but today there is reason to be cheerful. The clubs decision to part ways with Benitez in the summer has been vindicated following his demonstration of complete ineptitude during his short term management stint at Inter. Last season Mourinho lead Inter to the Italian title, cup and Champions League… Rafa came in and, taking over much the same team, and has left them 13 points adrift of top spot already. So for all Roy Hodgsons mistakes this season, at least he’s better than Rafa, and he really is. Rafa left Roy with a huge huge task at Liverpool, a poor squad which was made weaker after Roy joined by the forced sale of Mascherano, and Roy is really not doing too bad a job. Fortunately for Liverpool the title challengers (Utd, Arsenal, City and Chelsea) have all been pretty patchy this season and as such they just need a decent run of form to be back in CL contention, not beyond the realms of possibility now that they are much better off financially.
Chelsea no doubt took inspiration from Baldrick when they postponed the game against Utd
Chelsea meanwhile had the snow to thank for not having to face Utd without a fully fit Lampard and in the midst of their worst run of form since before all the money. Following an hours worth of snow in SW London last Saturday the club hastily called the game off, very cunning and any idiot can see it has worked out nicely for the boys in blue. United, meanwhile, are probably pissed off that they will undoubtedly face a better Chelsea later in the season.
This brings me nicely to Arsenal who will now face a Chelsea side who have had a nice break and have had time to get Lampard into much better condition. With it being Arsenal-Chelsea, Drogba will probably remember how to score too and put them to the sword. Wenger has called on his team to show everyone they’re ready, I can’t help but feel he needs to stop doing that – each and every time he challenges them they seem to bottle it, stop heaping the pressure on Mr Wenger, they appear to perform better when you talk about something else. Arsenal will, in theory, have also benefited with the prolonged break as it will have given captain Cesc Fabregas more time to recover form injury and star patient striker, Robin van Persie, time to find fitness. Wenger will be hoping that a squad missing just one key player (Vermaelen) will be able to put up a better fight than they did at Old Trafford a fortnight before – I believe the recovery of Fabianski will in fact be a bad thing, I’m not convinced by that keeper at all. The huge number of mistakes he has made in his short time as Arsenal #1 just demonstrate to me he is always capable of bottling it at any moment, it’d be better for Arsenal to move on without him to the much more promising W. Chesney.
I think that’s it, all the other ties on Boxing day are run of the mill style matches, nothing stands out as particularly exciting and that remains the case throughout the Christmas period until Arsenal face another huge task when they host Man City on 5th January. Hopefully the snow will stay away though so we can all enjoy the football properly again.
