Oh dear. Is there anyone out there who actually thought we would win last nights game? I know that I was trying to talk them up in yesterday’s blog but as soon as the team was announced defeat became a matter of when and not if. The manager stated that he put out a team which he thought was capable of winning the game, but that was just more of the Wengerian rhetoric that we can all recognise so easily now. The power of positive thinking will only take you so far. Eventually, quality, or the lack of it, will be exposed. We surrendered top spot in our group without so much as a whimper of protest. That’s the Arsenal that I don’t like to see. As I have said before, I don’t mind losing as long as we go down fighting.  

Ultimately though, despite the disappointment of this performance I agree with Wenger’s selection last night. It is vital that players are saved for the league, we are just coming out of a dip in the Premiership and need to keep the improvement going at all costs and build some momentum. Somehow we aren’t completely eliminated from the title hunt, I don’t know how that has happened but we must stay within touching distance of the league leaders. This game once again demonstrates the weakness of our squad, this was very much a squad defeat. But this is old ground that doesn’t need to be repeated.

Will last nights game adversely affect the unstable form of the side? In the past it has and we aren’t in possession of a particularly stout constitution at the moment. The key player for us against Middlesbrough will be Fabregas. He seems to infect the rest of the team with his own confidence and we are yet lose or draw when he has captained the side.

The easiest draw we can get in the next round is probably Panathinaikos, which is never an easy game, particularly away. The other teams that we may be potentially drawn against are AS Roma, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid. The team I would most like to avoid there are Bayern, who I really think that we would have trouble with. It’s a silly situation really  considering that we topped the group for the whole of the group stage, but the fact that we qualified at all is slightly miraculous considering the dubious quality of our squad, our total lack of maturity, injuries and not least the atrocious quality of our play this season. We will find out soon who our next opponents will be, hopefully by then we will have players back after injury, certainly Eduardo should be available and who knows, maybe we will even have strengthened the squad in the January transfer window. If there are any decent players available who aren’t cup-tied. It feels scripted to me that we will face Barcelona and Thierry Henry. I hope not though, I don’t want to see Henry play against us. I still operate in a world of denial that he isn’t our player anymore.

I saw that we were linked with Xabi Alonso again earlier this week. I would have to ask, why would he want to leave Liverpool at the moment? They are top of the Premiership, qualified in the Champions League and on a real high. You have to ask why a player would leave that for a club that are clearly struggling. A club that have been in transition for four years!  Why would Liverpool sell him to us as well? The whole story doesn’t make any sense and I don’t believe a word of it. If we were to buy him I think my first reaction would be annoyance that we hadn’t splashed out an extra couple of hundred thousand to pick him up in the summer, which may have improved our early season form. It’s all conjecture and completely pointless anyway.