Down to Ten Men

It may be early days in La Liga but having secured three wins on the bounce – two of which came on the road – Valencia sit atop their domestic division two points clear of Sevilla and Real Madrid.

Despite the £60,000,000.00 paid to the banks to avoid a wind up of the team in June, money provided by the sale of their star players David Villa and, to a lesser extent, David Silva, Unai Emery’s Valencia have come out on top of their game.

Having chosen not to attend the first two home games of the season due to conflicting events I decided to make my season bow at The Emirates for the Champions League tie against Braga. After enduring a long day at work I hopped on the train to Marylebone and partook in the ritual of a couple of pints in the Allsop Arms in between Marylebone and Baker St where I can be regularly found before home games. I never felt any sort of nerves towards the fixture and to be honest I expected a comfortable victory.

As you may have noticed, Down to Ten Men have recently been going down to Court Place Farm in Oxford to cast an eye on the fortunes of Zamaretto Premiership side Oxford City. Although the results have not been going in the right direction much enjoyment has been had by going to watch the semi-professional echelons of the game.

And what do you see?

Today at work I had the pleasure of sitting on a table opposite another Arsenal ‘fan’. During the standard Monday morning football chat with his friends, he managed to assassinate Arsenal’s title chances/hopes of finishing within the top half within the time it took me to finish my apple.

I would have been impressed, had he not been so far wide of the mark as to make Emile Heskey look like a prolific striker.

Anyone else bored of the Cesc Fabregas transfer saga yet? To me it seems that Arsenal are firmly closing the door in Barcelona’s face, yet they still persist with their petty PR stunts to discourage all Arsenal fans and promote the idea that Fabregas is destined to return to his home town club sooner rather than later.

Arsenal have stood their ground as they own Fabregas and have the right to refuse any advances towards their talisman, so why do Barcelona continue to ruffle feathers in North London when they have been firmly told “No”?

So we are down to the final eight, with South American nations providing 50% of the remaining teams (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay), Europe supplying three (Netherlands, Spain and Germany) and finally the sole African team of Ghana. This is just going to be a quick preview of the quarter finals of the World Cup of 2010.