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Arsenal can help Chelsea to the top
Written by JR Walker | 4th March 2008 | 0 Comment(s)
Chelsea's hierarchy will have good reason to cheer on Arsenal during their Champions League tie with AC Milan as a Victory for the Gunners could easily see the West London club claim the number one position in the European Uefa Rankings.
Arsenal may well be up against it at the San Siro on Tuesday evening, but if they can forget the fact that Milan is presently the European Champions and have a marvellous history in the competition there is no reason why Arsene Wenger's young team can't progress.
The tie has been billed as ‘The Old' against ‘The Young' and it will be interesting to see if Arsenal can push Milan back into defence as well as at The Emirates. Many may have looked at the scoreline and assumed the Italians came to defend, but Milan is not a typical Italian club and will generally go out to score goals and they would have approached the Arsenal match in that vein.
The clean sheet Arsenal kept at home may well prove more vital than the one Milan managed a little more fortuitously, but that said Wenger will be disappointed not to have more players to choose from for such a vital match.
As turns out Carlo Ancelotti also has injury concerns of his own so the encounter may prove more a test of squad strength than normal.
As AC Milan continued their remarkably poor home form last Saturday with a 1-1 draw against mid-table Lazio, and the fact won't be lost on Arsene Wenger that a similar scoreline, or better, will do very nicely for The Gunners.
Presently Milan sits just over seven points ahead of the Uefa Rankings, but should they be eliminated this week and Chelsea overcomes Olympiakos as expected then that lead will be cut to either four or five points.
With three recent semi-final appearances Chelsea has amassed a good points total without having played in a European Final during that time (the last five seasons including this one) and they are the only team in the present top six not to have done so.
Milan didn't really look catch-able at the start of the season, but defeat to The Gunners could see Chelsea usurp them over the next couple of rounds.
Below is the present top 10 before this week's matches:-
1. AC Milan 119.439
2. Chelsea 112.305
3. Liverpool 109.305
4. Barcelona 109.095
5. Arsenal 105.305
6. Sevilla 100.095
7. Lyon 99.286
8. Inter Milan 96.439
9. Manchester United 93.305
10. Real Madrid 93.095
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