Sneak Peak

Sitting on my hands, fearing the worst for tonight's game, and you know, what better way to get over it than to just look ahead.

First, it's become rather simple. If we get through, and barring any freak result in the Shakhtar-Donetsk tie, we'll finish 2nd and we'll have only four possible teams to choose from: Schalke, Barca, Real Madrid and Bayern.

I'm rather non-plussed. If it's Barca, fine. If you look at all the second places teams, and the obvious weaknesses there, we can only screw and blame ourselves for not finishing top of the group. We're going to have to face Barca at some point, so why not now.

As for the others. No biggie. Toss-ups wth Bayern and Madrid, and Schalke should be the plum tie.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We may just be looking ahead to a Europa League draw as well, so I'd better just stop here.

As we sit on top of the league with that rather Nasri-licious victory over Fulham, there's been much talk about whether we deserve to be there, whether we will be there, and ultimately, about our defence. No defence is possible as it relates to our entire defensive mentality, so it's one big mea culpa. It's all here in black and white. I'll only say this though: everyone's getting leaky, and what we'll just need to do is tighten up mentally when it matters most. And that's a couple of goals every handful of games. It's as much as matter of mental fragility, and god knows, mental problems are enduring, but easily solved with a good run of games.

If we're going to be be traumatised by that Spurs defeat, by god, we should. Never forget, but move on, we must. (Speaking of fragile, wonder how fragile Madrid is now, actually).

Alright. Ta ta. Partizan'll probably score at least one goal, so let's just hope it comes when we're leading 9-0 with 10 seconds remaining. I think we should be able to get through that. Has anyone seen the current odds though??? 1/12 Arse win, 10/1 for the draw, and 25/1 for a Partizan win.

Huh. Who knows. Good money there for the neutral on a draw!

(Update: after some further thought, I'm now ultra-confident for tonight. For the simple reason: Cesc is out, Nasri and Arshavin will be on fire as a direct consequence, and RVP should be a damn solid starting captain. More on my Cesc Theory later).