UCL Qualifying: Celtic vs. Arsenal

After watching the game, several key points jumped out at me (Highlights here):

1)Arsenal is clearly, player to player, a level above Celtic (Seriously?).

-Cesc Fabregas ran the Celtic midfield of Landry N’guemo and Massimo Donati off the pitch.  Everytime Fabregas seemed to touch the ball a Celtic player would turn into Terry Tate Office Linebacker and crunch Fab.  However, Fabregas being the word class player he is, still dictated most of the midfield play.

-Thomas Vermaelen is well worth the 10 million transfer.  Vermaelen provides a strong presence at the back and on set pieces,  his solid defending will be a valuable asset to Arsenal.  My early predictionof Vermaelen being a better looking Senderos is now an embarrassing claim.

2)  Celtic’s bright spot comes in the form of Aiden McGeady.  This attacking midfielder demands special attention everytime he steps on the field.  Fresh off two goals on the weekend against Aberdeen, McGeady pushed the envelope  and annoyed the Aresenal back four for the entire game.

3)  In my opinion the game came down to two second half plays.

The first (about 2:50 into the highlight video above), Marc-Antoine Fortune’s low early cross behind the Arsenal defense was inviting Scott McDonald to become Glasgow’s hero and equalize the match at 1. However, William Gallas’s lunging slide towards his own goal deflected the ball over the endline for a corner.  A great piece of defending by Gallas.

The second sequence occurred shortly after in the 71st minute.  A great piece of skill by Diaby released Clichy deep in the left corner of Celtic’s half.  Clichy let loose a speedy, low cross behind the Celtic defense very similar to Fortune’s earlier ball.  However, in this situation an out of position Gary Caldwell provided a tidy finish past his own keeper, Boruc.  The second away goal virtually clinched the tie for Arsenal.

Some are saying, two lucky goals have put Arsenal in the driver’s seat of the tie.  I do not believe in luck.  Almost the exact same situation occured in each end, with Gallas putting the ball out for a corner and Caldwell scoring for the wrong team.  If Caldwell had also put the ball out for a corner, Celtic would have a much greater chance of qualifying for the group stage.  But as I like to say, Caldwell pulled a “Hoover”and sucked.