Champions League – All the Reaction

Manchester Utd 3-0 Celtic – Men against Bhoys

Wee Gordon Strachan said after this game that Utd were the best team he had ever played as a manager – the best of a group including Inter, Juve, and Barcelona. They were dominant throughout against Celtic, who had little or nothing to offer. Admittedly, Berbatov’s two goals were both (one marginally) offside, but Utd had a perfectly legitimate Rooney goal erroneously ruled out, and anyway, could and would have stepped up a gear if it was tight. Its unarguable that the linesman had a shocker.

One person who had quite the opposite is Wayne Rooney. He now has nine goals in his last seven matches (and it should really be ten), and is in perhaps the form of his life. Who would bet against him improving this record against his boyhood club (Everton) at the weekend.

In his post-match interview, John O’Shea made an interesting point – though lauding the performance on the pitch, he emphasised how well prepared United were – that they knew exactly how Celtic were going to be set up and how they would play, with the one man upfront, how they would defend, and counter attack, the strengths and weaknesses of all of their players… it is this side of football that often goes unnoticed – and on such attention to detail, such painstaking research and observation of the minutae, are behmoths like Manchester United built.

Fenerbahce 2-5 Arsenal – Boys become Men

Arsenal produced a thrilling performance to inflict Fenerbahce’s first home defeat in 15 Champions League matches. Forgetting the somewhat shakey defence (Almunia was excellent as captain, and David Guiza could have scored five) there were positives everywhere for Arsenal. Abu Diaby was outstanding in a support-striker role, Walcott was direct and penetrative down the right – and scored again – Adebayor looked back to his confident best, Fabregas was a magician in centre midfield, Aaron Ramsey came on and scored… it was an immensely satisfying night for Arsene Wenger.

Arsenal now only need one win from their remaining three games to be assured a place in the knockout phase. Wenger’s dilemma is how to reproduce their excellent Champions League form (remember they beat Porto 4-0 in their last game) in the Premiership – starting away to West Ham on Saturday.

Round Up

It was a record equalling night of Champions League football as 36 goals were scored. Arsenal’s was not even the highest scoring game – or even the second – as Villareal beat Aalborg 6-3, and Lyon won 5-3 in Bucharest. There were wins also for Bayern Munich – relieving some of the pressure on an under fire Klinsmann (Bayern currently reside in the bottom half of the Bundesliga), Juventus (relieving some of the pressure on an under fire Ranieri) and Dynamo Kiev (relieving none of the Champions League pressure on Porto). Juventus beat Real Madrid 2-1 in the nights battle of the titans, and Bate grabbed a 1-1 draw against Zenit St Petersburg in the battle of the minnows.

Results and scorers in full:

Bayern Munich	3-0 (HT 2-0)	Fiorentina
Klose 4 Schweinsteiger 25 Ze Roberto 90
Bookings: Oddo 59 Ribery 82		Bookings: Kuzmanovic 29 Dainelli 64 Gobbi 79

FC Porto	0-1 (HT 0-1)	Dynamo Kiev
		Aliev 27
Bookings: Rolando 65		Bookings: Nesmachniy 33

Fenerbahce	2-5 (HT 1-3)	Arsenal
Silvestre o.g. 19 Guiza 78		Adebayor 10 Walcott 11 Diaby 21 Song Billong 49 Ramsey 90+4
Bookings: Sahin 29 Lugano 48 Senturk 88		Bookings: Song Billong 19 Diaby 22

Juventus	2-1 (HT 1-0)	Real Madrid
Del Piero 5 Amauri 49		van Nistelrooy 66
Bookings: Amauri 50

Man Utd	3-0 (HT 1-0)	Celtic
Berbatov 30 Berbatov 51 Rooney 76
		Bookings: Hartley 74 Loovens 83

Steaua Bucharest	3-5 (HT 3-2)	Lyon
Arthuro 8 Goian 11 Petre 45		Keita 23 Benzema 33 Fred 69 Benzema 72 Fred 90+2
Bookings: Nicolita 19		Bookings: Toulalan 28

Villarreal	6-3 (HT 2-2)	AaB Aalborg
Rossi 28 Capdevila 33 Llorente 67 Llorente 70 Pires 79 Llorente 84		Saganowski 20 Enevoldsen 36 Johansson 77
Bookings: Pires 90+3		Bookings: Pedersen 70 Enevoldsen 90+2

Finally…

And click here to see all the goals from all the matches on the ever excellent 101greatgoals.

And we’re done.