Nothing wrong with that. If you're looking for comedy, try Arsene Wenger's post-match comments.
As one of the posters on 606 astutely pointed out, it's a lose-lose situation when you play Arsenal in the Carling Cup. If you lose, you got beat by their 'kids'; if you win, you only beat their second-string anyway. The only answer to that is to put as many past them as possible, which is exactly what Spurs did. In the end, it had a demoralising effect on Arsenal; just reward, perhaps, for their pomposity.
I don't think I'd sniff at the Carling Cup if I were an Arsenal fan. Wenger might have higher priorities, but it's not as though Arsenal are winning everything in sight. And if their fans are so apathetic about the Carling Cup, why did 53,000 of them turn up at the Emirates for the first leg of the semi-final?
At least Chelsea have the good grace to take the competition seriously, if only to get their players used to winning things. If Arsenal had adopted the same approach, they might not have choked against Barcelona.
Haha, you're saying if we had won the Carling Cup, we wouldn't have lost the Champions League final? It does figure that the FA Cups we had won in recent years before that night in Paris, and the league campaigns, did nothing to help our players - but the Carling Cup would have given them the preparation to take on Eto'o, Ronaldinho et al. Anyway.. this is rather beside the point, as we didn't "bottle" the Champions League final. You may remember we were leading with 10 men for 70 minutes, and I was, and still am very proud of the way we played against a team like Barcelona, with a man less. Everyone gave it everything, but at the end of the day, largely because of the early sending off of Lehmann, which could possibly have been dealt with in a better way by the referee, it wasn't to be. We played very well that night.
I should also point out that Chelsea, having adopted your brilliant taking the Carling Cup seriously idea, haven't ever reached a Champions League final.
53,000 turned up - that says quite a lot. That's the first first-team game at the Emirates we haven't totally sold out.. which I think proves my point, rather than yours. Earlier in the competition, Arsenal offered cut price tickets, £10 for an adult, £5 for a child, in order to sell out the stadium. We tried to do the same again for our home leg against Tottenham, but as they are allowed 45% of the profits, they insisted we didn't do that. Perhaps it was the more expensive prices, on a par with an average Premiership game against say Reading, that meant we didn't sell out. Last season 38,000 turned up to see an FA Youth cup match at the Emirates - the highest ever attendance for that, and you can't tell me that matters?
Nothing wrong with it.. no, I guess not. You can't blame the club for trying to squeeze every last penny out of a win against Arsenal. They have to take their opportunities when the come around. It's very small time, you wouldn't see any of the real big clubs in England, or anywhere else in the world for that matter, coming out with something like that. Our DVDs include the invincible season, Liverpool's the road to Istanbul. On a par?
