Asim wrote:
Messi was brilliant, Barcelona just did what they needed to do.
Wenger cost Arsenal any chance of winning the tie by risking three of his best players in the first game, a fit Gallas, Arshavin and Fabregas in the team tonight and it might have been a different story. As it was Arsenal handed the initiative to Barcelona in the first match carrying too many passengers (look how they improved when the injured players limped off and players who could actually move came on) and the result of them aggravating their injuries was a thrashing tonight, and any chance of winning the PL going.
Wenger didn't cost Arsenal the game. They would have been hammered whatever their personnel.
If you watch La Liga, exactly *how good* Messi is will come as no shock. He's with Maradona and Zidane a level ahead of everyone else in memory. But it will also be no surprise how good Xavi is, head and shoulders above any midfielder in the world (except Iniesta, who was on Barcelona's bench tonight, who may be even better than him). Far better than Fabregas (who I rate, and may get to that level), and he makes Gerrard and Lampard look like Geoff Thomas and Carlton Palmer. Arsenal couldn't get the ball off him with ten midfielders, and when he can pass it to Messi, so much the better. To have three of the top five players in the world in tandem is pretty special, and it's only the Little-Englander mentality that gave such a flawed team as Arsenal even a puncher's chance. Inter might have a puncher's chance, because they're punchers. Arsenal aren't.
