Manchester United and Arsenal play the beautiful game but like Liverpool and Chelsea, they don’t win

Yesterday I wrote this editorial about the fact that the English teams, Chelsea and Liverpool had come unstuck in their Champions League matches and asked the question whether this was a one-off or whether the English teams have been ‘found out’.

Win their games

In all honesty, I wrote the article in the belief that both Arsenal and Manchester United would win their games last night against Fenerbahce and Celtic respectively.

So how did those two English teams get on last night?

One sided

I’m really not sure I have ever watched a more one sided game than the one between Celtic and Manchester United at Celtic Park last night. United had nearly 74% of the possession. They had thirty shots to Celtic’s six. They had thirteen corners to Celtic’s four and they totally dominated the game from start to finish.

United gave Celtic a lesson in passing, moving, ball retention and football generally. In truth it looked like United had at least one more player than Celtic and I’m really not sure how they didn’t win the game.

Desire

If nothing else, this game showed that a team with considerably less ability can match a team in a one-off game if they show the necessary amount of organisation, fight, desire and determination. If effort is enough to deserve a point then Celtic definitely deserved theirs.

Apart from putting the ball in the net, Manchester United were absolutely magnificent all over the pitch. They were on a different planet from Celtic yet the home side came away with a point and very nearly took all three.

Series of chances

An excellent finish by Scott McDonald in the thirteenth minute put Celtic ahead and that was pretty much the last time Celtic attacked in the whole game. A series of chances came and went for United and it took until the eighty-fourth minute for Ryan Giggs to nick an equaliser when he followed up a Boruc parry from a Ronaldo strike.

So in the end, United escaped with a draw despite being totally dominant and Berbatov missing a glorious chance with the last kick of the game. Another English team that failed to get a result on match day four in the Champions League. At least the English had Arsenal who would undoubtedly beat Fenerbahce who they had thrashed 5-2 in Turkey a couple of weeks ago.

Dominated

Well, no, actually. Arsenal failed to beat Fenerbahce. It finished 0-0 at The Emirates. This was another game dominated by the English side. Arsenal had 68% of the possession, sixteen shots to Fenerbahce’s seven and six corners to Fenerbahce’s two. However, as in the Manchester United game, those figures count for nothing if the game is not won.

Fenerbahce did a great defensive job against Arsenal in much the same way that Celtic did against Manchester United.

No wins

So, match day four is over and none of the English teams have won. When was the last time that none of the four English teams won in a round of Champions League matches?

So much for the much vaunted English teams, which of the other tournament favourites did well last night?

Evergreen

Juventus had an excellent 2-0 win at Real Madrid with the evergreen Alessandro Del Piero scoring both goals.

Fiorentina and Bayern Munich played out a draw and Villarreal only managed a draw at Aalborg. In fact, Juventus are probably the only team who could remotely be described as having half a chance of success in the tournament who had a victory over the past two evenings.

Fantastic football

Is this an unusual blip, or have the lesser teams worked out how to play against and frustrate the top teams? I think it is a blip but it could be a worrying sign that the fantastic football of Manchester United and Arsenal has been found out.

It is still very possible that the qualifiers for the knockout stages will be Chelsea, Roma, Inter, Werder Bremen, Barcelona, Sporting, Atletico Madrid, Liverpool, Manchester United, Villarreal, Lyon, Bayern Munich, Arsenal, Porto, Juventus and Real Madrid.

Real trouble

We could all have predicted those qualifiers more or less and Werder Bremen are the only team in real trouble who could miss out.

If all of those teams go through you still have to fancy the four English teams, the three Spanish teams and maybe one of the Italian teams. So in reality, nothing has changed. In fact, the only thing that may possibly have changed is the attitude of the English teams who may have been beginning to think that Europe was a walk in the park. All four of them now know that it is far more difficult than that.