Footballbits and pieces

Q: Why don’t Arsenal score from corners A: Because Van Persie takes them! Q: What’s the most popular item in the Arsenal club shop? A: The Van Persie tea tray, because it carries 10 mugs! Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera… Unless you’re of a distinctly Arsenal persuasion, you’re probably sick to the back teeth of these stats [...]

All of UEFA’s perspex balls of destiny have been drawn from their respective goldfish bowls of fate and, as a result, the groups for the 2011/12 Champions League look like this… Group A: Bayern Munich, Villarreal, Manchester City, Napoli Group B: Inter Milan, CSKA Moscow, Lille, Trabzonspor Group C: Manchester United, Benfica, Basel, Otelul Galati [...]

Despite being paid handsomely (the irony is not lost!) to talk about things, Iain Dowie is a man that cannot actually talk – and, by the looks of things, neither can he think that good about stuff like numbers either. Schalke whupped Inter 5-2 in Milan last night meaning that, by Dowie’s calculations, the Nerazzurri [...]

Maybe he’s mellowing in his old age, or merely becoming a little more scrambled, but neither fits, really, as a plausible reason for Sir Alex Ferguson’s compulsion to tinker with his team. Last night’s Champions League game against Valencia was the 150th successive game in which he has made changes to the starting line up, [...]

Two games, two wins and nine goals, this season’s Champions League has so far seen Arsenal at their best. Arsene Wenger has doggedly stuck to his pure footballing philosophy in recent years despite the lack of silverware leading to ever more vocal criticisms of his methods. On their day they are beautiful to watch, their [...]