Pretty nice football weekend coming up with Chelsea-Spurs on Saturday late afternoon and then a massive clash Milan-Bologna and Arsenal-Man Utd on Sunday afternoon. Milan is a must see if they can secure the scudetto, if not it could be one of those nervous games that are pretty painful to watch. And then AIK-ÖSK on Monday, live in Stockholm hopefully.
We need a good weekend after a pretty disappointing Champions League week. Just like in the quarter finals, the second legs now feel like they belong to an old tired dog. This year's Champions League has been pretty underwhelming for the most part. Without any intention of being objective I rank Bale's three last halves against Inter as the top moment of the tournament. Together with watching the inevitable draw for the last 16 from the Maldives, the runner-up is Arsenal-Barca. Otherwise the the drama has been missing, in the group stage as well as in the knock-out phase. And with the wrong sides winning. A Neuer (I did not come up with Manu Knighted, so I should not use it) clean sheet and a Mourinho-20%-possession-1-0-win would have felt so much better, in particular as Barca have a team of pretending-to-be-good-boys that are really a bunch of cheaters and whiners. Although they can pass the ball. And run with it (too lazy to insert hyperlinks, I assumed you watched and know what I'm talking about).
The coaches of my teams have interesting selection problems for this weekend.
Even if I have ruled out Spurs' chances of making it to the Champions League, we must go for a win against Chelsea. We should therefore afford to try something new now when the uninspired Assou-Ekotto finally has picked up an injury. So how do we fill the gap?
I would like to see Bale playing left back, but basically assigning the entire left corridor to him. This will allow us not to be outnumbered by the Chelsea midfiled, playing Tom Huddle, Sandro (I'm still to watch him play well but they say he has been decent lately) and Modric centrally.
Lennon comes back in on the right, vdV gets a starting position to the left but with freedom to move into the box, and Crouchie dominates Terry in the air. Little bit of a 4-2-3-1: Gomes - Corluka, Dawson, Gallas, Bale - Sandro, Huddlestone - Lennon, Modric, van der Vaart - Crouch.
In the case of Milan, they need to adjust to having Ibrahimovic back. I would like to see him besides Cassano with Boateng behind.
Örebro needs to survive yet another game without the prolific Haddad. I would really like to see Atashkadeh get a chance to run the crap out of the AIK defenders for as long as his fuel lasts. Then Paulinho comes on and Rama moves in centrally. I don't believe in Lushtaku as a centre-forward, I really don't. Centrally, the phasing out of Kihlberg is overdue. I would like to give Nilsson another chance from the start.
Thus Alvbåge - Haginge (lets wait one more game before we start with Anttonen), Almebäck, Wikström, Wowoah - Bedoya, Nilsson, Gerzic - Astvald, Atashkadeh, Rama. On the bench Nurme, Anttonen, Wirtanen, Nordback, Kihlberg, Lushtaku, Paulinho.
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