Well that's the rest of my season nearly planned out... all that remains to be seen is whether we make a little final or two. Last night was as easy as it could possibly have been, the Villarreal of the first half last week were nowhere to be seen, we played with pace and intensity allied to our technical ability and the big players pretty much all turned up. An honourable mention to Song, who played the midfield role next to Cesc to perfection. Maybe he was helped by the absence of Senna but that can't decry too much from his excellent performance. Thankfully flights back for the United home leg were pretty cheap (the return leg was £8!!!) and let's hope it's a tense and memorable occasion. That means that unless we reach the cup finals that will be my last game of 2008/9 - a season of lows followed by a resurgent amount of ups... we can only prey that it continues on the upward path. Meanwhile for Saturday the planning goes on for a place to drink and the wonderful experience of 1000s of fans crammed in a sweaty tube!

After (well nearly after) the Easter break it's good to know that I'm coming back to the UK for both games this week...and what a couple of games we have to come. I would love to say I'm confident of winning both but that's not true, however, it's not that I'm overly pessimistic either. These are two games which I would suggest we can win but are also going to prove very difficult. I think the injuries to our defence and Villarreal's midfield combined with their away form (one win in ten) gives us a decent chance so long as we start with the sort of intensity that we often see from the scousers in Liverpool (one of the reasons they have a good record, I believe, in the CL). The Chelsea game could prove very hard - I think Drogba versus Silvestre isn't likely to be a fair battle!

Never mind I'm feeling positive and am, as always, looking forward to the trip home, seeing friends, drinking beer and watching a couple of games - certainly beats more hard work at the allotment.

I'll start with a quick few thoughts on last night's result/game but I'm not and never will give a "match report", you all saw it or can read one of 100s of reports in the media. At the end of the game against Villarreal I think I had, in the space of about 30 seconds, three different reactions to the result. I can't quite remember the exact order in which they came but I did certainly feel all three sensations.

Disappointment - summed up by thoughts such as "we could have gone on and won that game in the second half",  "oh no, 1-1, that just makes me think of Wayne Bridge in 2004 and Isaias in 1991", "they look like they will score at our place" and my favourite, "when will we learn how to defend set pieces"

Relief - "Blimey at half-time I'd have taken a 2-1 or even a 1-0 defeat with our performance and injuries", "I'm glad they tired in the second half"

Pride - "Finally we actually started to show grit away from home, got an away goal and will easily beat them at home", "Can't see their strikers scoring, I mean, they didn't test Fabianski after his first two saves"

So despite the obvious contradictions between these feelings and after a little more reflection I came to the conclusion it was a little bit of all three and the second leg is going to be one of those incredibly tense evenings that we've missed out on for the last couple of seasons. Is it me or has the whole philosophy of European football done a 180 degree turn in the last 10 years. Commentators still talk about the "advantage" of having the second leg at home but is it still the case. We've had better results playing the first leg at home (though it's not an open and shut argument on which is best for us) and playing the second leg away gives you that advantage (if the first leg is tight) of scaring the opposition by the sheer thought of conceding an away goal. Never mind I can't wait till next week to see it all unfold.

Meanwhile, here in Central Europe, it seems the whole region has expressed complete disinterest in the Liverpool/Chelsea game as French, Swiss, German (fair enough), Austrian (?) and Italian TV are all showing the Barcelona game. People may say it's the glamour of the Spanish side or the more intriguing fixture - I say they've seen enough boring shite over the last five years to want to watch another episode.

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.

Yes after 2 weeks of fairly mediocre football, lack of real stories and a shed load of bleeding injuries, the weekend is here and I get to see the Arse again. It's a real dash over the weekend with a flight to and from Zurich (Basel is too expensive this weekend due to a mad event called Basel World - a really exciting watch and jewellery fair apparently, I'm sure you're glad to hear that!). I'm just pleased that connections to Zurich airport are both easy and cheap!

So will we retain the form and momentum of the games prior to the Interlull or will the travelling and playing the qualifiers rendered all our pre-Interlull capability useless. It seems that most of the injuries cancel themselves out with the return of other players but there are still some doubts. It's impossible to judge and with the CL game against Villarreal to consider as well, I'm not even going to hazard a guess at our potential lineup. Manchester City, if the press are to be believed, are set to drop Robinho and may play a more defensive formation but, again, who knows. They were, of course, the last team to beat us in the league and though many things have changed in the interim, they remain a dangerous side.

Meanwhile, silently in the background, our good old mad scientist, Sepp Blatter, is secretly gaining support for his fiendish plan or, as we call it, the 6+5 rule. It seems that even MPs in Europe may be coming round to his idea of treating Sport as a special case with regard to EU labour regulation. It may or may not happen but I don't think it's quite as dead an idea as many seem to think. We need to be prepared (and I'm sure we have some contigency plans) for the unthinkable but I'm guessing that even if he succeeds there will be the inevitable appeal and court cases to go through afterwards.

Oh and I like JamRockRover's blog so much I've nicked his music idea (based on the title) - hope you don't mind mate..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJgSDjNJCk0&feature=related

I've just been researching the possibility of getting back to the UK for the Villarreal home leg and the Chelsea Semi Final the following weekend. It looks like it's possible and have fingers crossed that I (or, in this case, my friend Ian) is successful in getting tickets from the club and am hoping the credit crunch will put enough STHs off! I remember when I first got a Season Ticket it was all about having a guaranteed chance of tickets for Cup Finals - not anymore. I can't believe we only get 32,000 seats for the semi, since it holds 90,000!

The other thing about the FA Cup Semi-Finals is the ridiculous arrangement of them. Arsenal and Chelsea fans get all day on a Saturday to drink before a 5.15pm KO, sure the police are happy with that. Meanwhile half of Liverpool, 1/10 of Manchester (and the rest from Essex and the Home Counties) have to travel on a Sunday for the game!!! It doesn't make any sense at all and whilst it's fine for us there doesn't seem to have been much of a fuss kicked up about it. Football fans are so used to TV dictating the schedule that we would probably turn up for a Tuesday morning game at 05.00AM if it suited Shanghai TV or whoever!

I've just seen the highlights of the last round of La Liga games and as it seems to be a hot bed of ex-Arsenal players at the moment and I have to blog about anything other than Eboué here are some thoughts on what I saw/heard.

At Villereal there are two old gooners, one we all know about and wish he was still at Arsenal (or had at least stayed on a while longer) and there's Pascal Cygan too. Our long lost friend Robert Pires scored an extremely strange goal (after 0.45) in a 3-3 draw after being 0-3 down. Our old and not so  missed French centre half wasn't playing and after his two mistakes last week I'm not too surprised.

Meanwhile over at the Camp Nou our top goal scorer seems to have finally made a real impact with a hat trick against Valencia for Barcelona. Henry was, of course, helped by that ex-gooner who divided (and still does) opinion whilst at Arsenal, Hleb. He did manage to show glimpses of his Arsenal form by finding himself one on one and never looking like scoring!

Oh and one other strange North London to Spain bombshell, Ramos to Real Madrid - blimey I didn't realise that they rewarded such incompetence so highly.