Europe's most premier league returned today with the draw for the group stages. I will break down the groups and give my predictions later, but for now I would like to talk EPL.
This weekend saw host to Andre Villas-Boas' first home game as manager of Chelsea. He must have been feeling great. 4 minutes later though, he most surely was not. After an aggressive play by Shane Long to steal the ball from Alex, and a defensive mishap by the latter mentioned, the ball was in the back of the net and AVB was in the dog house. In fact, the first 35 minutes played host in a statistically off game, where Chelsea had 70% of the possession, but West Brom was dominating the game. WBA could have scored again, in the 24th minute. If Shane Long had played the ball back a few feet to Tchoyi, then the ball would be in familiar territory and AVB might as well have bought his ticket home on the spot. But, the ball was over-hit, and Chelsea fans could breathe easy. An unusual first half substitution brought Florent Malouda on and West Brom's dominance off. For the rest of the game, 55 minutes, Chelsea set the tempo. Nicholas Anelka scored the goal that had only been a question of when, not if. Bosingwa then made a beautiful play to split 2 defenders then crossed the ball to Malouda, who put Chelsea on top for good. 3 points won.
The Champions League Groups have been decided, and I shall give my best group, worst, and predictions.
The Best: Group A, the "group of death" has Man City, Bayern Munich and Villareal and Napoli, making it easily the toughest group.
The Worst: Group G, with Porto, Shakhtar, Zenit and Apoel, is easily the worst of this year.
Predictions: Man City and Bayern, Lille and Inter, Man U and Benfica, Real Madrid and Ajax, Chelsea and Valencia, Arsenal and Marsellie, Porto and Zenit, Barca and Milan have my predictions to get out of the group stages. I also believe the Bayern and Barca will play in the final, with Barca winning their 2nd in a row and 3rd in 4 years. That just about wraps it up for pitch view this week.
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