by bigmick » Wed Feb 27, 2008 10:47 pm
It's thoroughly depressing that it has come to this, but I guess it's a sign of the times and something we are going to have to get used to. Anyway, our main rivals (Everton, Aston Villa, Man City, Portsmouth) have some tricky fixtures this weekend so we should be able to at the very least begin to narrow down the field realistically competing for the Holy Grail of fourth place during the next seven days.
While we are away at Bolton, two of our rivals (Pompey and Everton) fight it out at Fratton Park. While I'm hopeful that Portsmouth will take points off Everton my suspicion is that the bitters are on something of a roll at the moment and they will follow up their comfortable win at Man City with another three points at another ground which we didn't win at. I hope they'll decide to leave their best two players on the bench for their visit to the South Coast, but they probably won't things being as they are. A win for Everton while confirming that they are going to be determined opponents for fourth, would just about put Pompey out of it IMHO.
Man City have a Home game with Wigan, and Wigan don't get many points away from Home these days (I know). My suspicion is that Citeh will probably win and keep their dream alive for another week at least. Villa meanwhile travel to Arsenal. I've almost got to the point where I've given up waiting for the "fatigue" and "lack of sharpness" to kick in for Wengers men. Despite his reluctance to give them "rest" and "recouperation" time, they stubbornly keep running around a lot and even more infuriatingly passing the ball to each other with alarming regularity. Like the Fenchmans' seemingly anomolous ability to build a decent team without building a corresponding third World debt, we are going to hve to put his young teams ability to confound modern "Rafaist" rotational theory as just one of those things I guess. All that said, Villa too are a decent team under the guidance of their much underrated (on here anyway) manager and this will be close. My guess though is that Arsenal will continue to press for the title with a narrow win, and in so doing put Villa back into a "competing for a UEFA slot" mode.
Which brings it back to us. Well we've won our last two games, with somewhat stop-start performances. It's probably too much to ask at this late stage that we go with some selectorial consistency but needless to say I'll do it anyway. If the team which took the field against Inter is the strongest in the eyes of the manager, I'd play the same team and formation again. That's prety unlikely I know, particularly given that a few days later we have to play another match, this time against west Ham. Hopefully against Bolton and West Ham we should be goofd enough to win both even if we do go for a few "options" and "possibilities". I hope so, because it is getting down to as someone once said "squeeky bum time". I know he wasn't talking about a scrap for fourth when he said it, but no matter it applies now anyway.
"se e in una bottigla ed e bianco, e latte".
cause i hope you are talking about Riise assisting here
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