Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Can spring be far away? Despite snow on the ground, leafless trees and the distinct absence of birdsong one can sense a seasonal change. The evidence? Tomorrow night the second phase of the Champions League kicks off. Thanks to good friend Xtian, Rainy Day has scored a ticket for the long-awaited Arsenal-Bayern Munich clash featuring the duel of the two keepers, Jens Lehmann and Oliver Kahn. The eve of a great battle is always a time for reflection here. Huh? Well, as in life, so in football. Meaning? It's not how you begin; it's how you finish.

Anyway, to the week ahead. Think Chelsea vs. Barcelona. Talk of the luck of the draw! Here we have two of the great form sides of the European game offering two very different recipes for success. Jose Mourinho knows he's facing a team that can create 20 chances on a good night and unless he goes into total attack mode, Chelsea's hopes are slim. Speaking of a capricious draw, it's AC Milan vs. Manchester United also on Wednesday night, with the English side the deserved underdog. Still, with Ruud back and Rooney in form, Sir Alex will not surrender without a fight. And what about Arsenal vs. Bayern Munich? Certainly, the London side has played some of the most exquisite stuff in the Premiership these past years, but what goes down well in England doesn't guarantee success on the Continent.

The Premiership is hallmarked by fast and fierce football and one-to-one marking. On the other side of the English Channel, however, spaces are tightly closed down and the ball is not given away so frequently. Remarkably, Arsenal seem incapable of grasping these simple facts with the result that their European runs tend to end far in advance of the finals they dream of winning. With Roy Makaay in top form, scoring a hat-trick for Bayern on Saturday in a Bundesliga rout of Dortmund, and Arsenal just managing a 1-1 draw with Sheffield United in the FA Cup, albeit with a depleted side, the scene is set for an intriguing evening. And, who knows, if Owen Hargreaves lines out for Bayern, it might happen that the Bavarian club fields more English players than the English one. In "A league of their own", John O'Farrell has great fun with last week's all-non-England Gunners' squad story. Pull quote: "There is no doubt that there's a crisis in English football — it isn't English anymore." Arseblog, however, speaking from sunny Spain by the looks of it, demolishes the the old nationalism argument:

"Anyway, the bottom line is that Arsenal don't have the money, at the moment, to spend on English players when they can get a player of the same quality abroad for much less. It's like people who get cheap flights to Spain to buy cheap cigarettes — it's cheaper for them to fly here, buy as many cartons of fags as they're allowed, then fly back home to England than it is to buy the same amount of cigarettes in the shops."

Excellent! Feckin' excellent.