Morning:
8°c
Groundhog Night fell over the Champions League with a semi-final so eerily similar to the previous evening's in Spain that, but for John O'Shea's impertinence in scoring the only goal, I could have refiled my piece from yesterday with nothing changed but a few names.
That Irishman turns 28 today, so the chaps on Sky kindly kept reminding us, and for costing me time that might have been spent watching the snooker may the Lord Almighty make him choke on his cake.
At Old Trafford, as at the Nou Camp, anticlimax was king as an anticipated classic fizzled out after a frantic opening. Once again, in a Manichean struggle between high-octane attack and crude oil defence, a determinedly negative away side playing a lone striker avoided the mauling the balance of play and attempts on goal deserved. Once again the outstanding player was the away team's goalkeeper, as the celebated wingers (Theo Walcott and Cristiano Ronaldo last night; Lionel Messi on Tuesday) failed to electrify. And once again a lively first-half gave way to a second by and large sterilised by both sides' nervy contentment to take their chances in the rematch next week.
It could have been much worse for Arsenal. Like Chelsea, they were fortunate not to concede within two minutes, Manuel Almunia tipping away a deflected header in the opening seconds, and might have been buried within half an hour.
Once the birthday boy had shinned the ball home, a pandemic of United goals seemed inevitable because the flaw in Arsene Wenger's strategy had already been brutally exposed.
It is a myth that Wenger is an ultra-purist who snootily disdains negativity at all times. When circumstances demand, he is pragmatic enough to do to others what he loathes being done unto him by sending his lads out to stifle superior opposition and kill the game.
He did it in the 2005 FA Cup Final against United, when Arsenal played for penalties from the first whistle, and that day it worked like a dream (or nightmare for us neutrals). Last night it didn't, or only partially, because this strategy relies primarily on the concept - alien to Arsenal for so long - of a rigidy disciplined central defence. Leaving three opposition players unmarked a few yards from goal will tend to undermine this masterplan and when O'Shea scored he had the time to write an achingly poignant novella and the space to open a golfing hotel with heliport attached.
At that early stage, with United rampant and Arsenal clueless, Wenger would have sold Cesc Fabregas into Bedouin slavery to leave Manchester trailing by a single goal. That United failed to render this tie stone dead was due in part to Ronaldo heading a ridiculously easy chance straight at Almunia, that was uncannily similar to one blown by Barca's Bojan Krkic on Tuesday, and later seeing a gorgeously swerving 30-yarder hit the bar.
But to Wenger's credit, it was also down to an improved second-half performance that suggested he may have issued a dressing-room reminder that denying United oodles of time and space isn't an imprisonable offence.
Despite the odd, half-hearted sortie on the break, as an attacking presence Arsenal were as negligible as Chelsea 24 hours earlier, and had Nicklas Bendtner equalised with another facile header, Shami Chakrabarti would now be petitioning the Home Office about a miscarriage of justice.
They did not, however, escape unharmed. A single defensive slip at Emirates on Tuesday will be fatal because, hard as it is to believe they will beat United by two goals, on this form it is impossible to imagine them scoring at least three.
If they must go down, let them go down fighting. What we want from these encounters is the viciousness of old - the scything tackles, the 20-man shoving contests and all the pizza-flinging contempt and psychotic hatred at which Roy Keane and Patrick Vieira excelled.
A United v Arsenal game as devoid of malice as this one, and yielding nothing more contentious than a mildly disputed offside decision, is an inexcusable betrayal of tradition.
Sad to say, the tradition more likely to be upheld on Tuesday is that United never lose European semi-finals. Barring the gatecrashing of O'Shea's birthday bash by a feverish Mexican pig farmer, Wenger's long wait for another trophy is not about to end.
