Pires & Henry to czechmate Prague

Pires & Henry to czechmate Prague

By Myles Palmer

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DOMESTIC FORM is no guide to these Champions League groups.

Instead, predictions would be more sensibly based on the mini-leagues themselves and how they are panning out after three or four games.

Arsenal fans will expect Thierry Henry and Robert Pires to slice the Czechs open with swift, subtle runs and passes.

A 4-0 win for Arsenal would not surprise me, but 1-0 would do the job.

With Ljungberg still out, Pires may play on the right and Reyes on the left.

Arsenal will not be as complacent as Chelski were in Seville, where they lost 1-0 in a game Mourinho dubbed their worst performance since he took charge 80 games ago.

IT LOOKED as if Jose was thinking about Sunday at Old Trafford, where a win might cripple United.

Chelsea had been scoring four goals a game, but always with Drogba in the team.

He rests Drogba, who scored the first in the 4-2 win against Blackburn on Saturday, switches Gallas from right back to left back, dropping Del Horno.

Then he wonders why the team didn't perform and didn't score and why Gallas didn't clear that low cross from the left wing.

Jose Mourinho is a very good manager and an astute tactician, but I think he Ranieried himself out of three points in Seville last night.

He did it against Betis, who were fighting for their lives to stay in a tough group.

Matchday 4 can kill you, but Betis decided not to die.

I reckoned Mourinho tinkered with Man United in mind.

Chelsea were really unconvincing. But, as Mourinho says, he has four days to sort that out.

I'm not gonna talk about the Wenger-Mourinho "war of words", except to predict that Arsene will continue to talk about other clubs.

MAN UNITED have burned the offended MUTV videotape in which Roy Keane says five players are not good enough.

The five are believed to be Darren Fletcher, John O'Shea, Alan Smith, Liam Miller and Keiran Richardson.

There's a very good piece on the Keane Mutiny by Rob Smyth in Guardian Online.

It cannot be said often enough : Roy Keane is Roy Keane.

He is a one-off.

There is nobody like him and there is not likely to be anybody like him in the future.

THIS MUTV CONTROVERSY reminds me of a girl I met at a rugby match.

It was Wasps at Loftus Road and we were in a box with food and drink and a waitress.

I was there with a lawyer pal and his former girlfriend, who lives in Cheshire and knows Keane socially.

I can't remember her name or when this was, only that a drunken public schoolboy from the neighbouring box kept invading our box and trying to chat her up, which we thought was rude.

We naturally wanted to know what Roy thought of Beckham, Scholes and the other players in his team.

She said, "He quite likes Ryan Giggs."

November 2nd 2005