Bob - You Secretly Want to Score an o.g. Tonight....look into my eyes....

After the weekend's game which I managed to make it back for in England we now have a "proper" football game tonight. What I mean by that is that on Saturday it was one of those games where, aside from a couple of first half minutes, both sides almost knew what the result would be. We played well in patches without really getting out of 2nd or 3rd gear and Manchester City looked like a side that had only won one game away all season. Tonight is going to be very different and, I believe, very hard to call.

Sid Lowe on the Guardian podcast (their Spanish correspondent) says that  he thinks Arsenal are just favourites and that may well be entirely due to the injury at the weekend to Santi Cazorla, a man who even the renowned Senna says is the heartbeat of the Villarreal side. I've seen a little of Villarreal this season in La Liga and they have played superbly well at times but have also conceded a lot of goals (mainly when Cygan plays it has to be said) and have a set of forwards that don't always score the goals they should. Doesn't that sound incredibly familiar, perhaps we should at least rejoice in the fact that we know we're playing our Spanish equivalents. The other thing I've noted is the effect Robert Pires ("we're not worthy" - thanks RocktheCasbah) has on this team. He rarely manages much more than 60-70 minutes (even managing to get sent off at the weekend!) but they never seem to play so fluently when he's not on the pitch for them.

The other side to the coin is, of course, which Arsenal will turn up on this away trip. For all the great games away in the Champions League (San Siro x 2, Bernabeu x 1, Rome x 1) we have a history of being bloody awful in strange surroundings. In Rome this year we were lucky enough to find a side who thinks Baptista is a goal scorer, our group stage away games are often indifferent and we rarely seem to impose our own game on the opposition. Let's hope the return of Cesc and Adebayor will inspire a similar approach to Milan last year and the same result, though a score draw will be perfectly acceptable.

Late news - Bob on the bench and no sign of Pascal (boooooo) for them and no surprise that we are playing 4-5-1/4-3-3/4-2-3-1 or whatever.