Early Doors - Your morning briefing blog
And Arsenal have less than 72 hours to gather themselves for a very different challenge, as Barcelona's trip to North London is followed up by a visit from Wolves.
They could go from being played off the park to kicked off it in the space of three days.After 20 minutes last night, ED received a text suggesting Arsenal were playing rope-a-dope, and it turned out to be precisely the case as they somehow came back off the ropes to nab an improbable 2-2 draw.
Nonetheless,
it was painful viewing for Arsene Wenger, who can rarely have seen his side technically exposed so ruthlessly.
The game lived up to its billing as a feast of football - the problem was that only one team were playing it.
Manuel Almunia, much-maligned for a very good reason (he's rubbish), caught up on three seasons worth of world-class saves in half an hour
Then, having apparently come through the worst, Arsenal gave away two cheap goals - possibly having spent too much time listening to pundits writing Zlatan Ibrahimovic off.
As the author of a blog post entitled 'Why Ibrahimovic is ace', it is clear where ED's sympathies lie, and it had hoped English people might come to the realisation that he is brilliant without him having to score twice against a Premier League side.
That never happened, but at least his brace at the Emirates will shut up the critics who call him a big-game bottler.
Well, it might have done were it not for that implausible missed open goal in the first few minutes. ED says he knew he was offside and is sticking to its story.
Even without Andres Iniesta, Barcelona launched attack after attack, slicing, dicing and lacerating the Arsenal back line.
It could have been death by a thousand cuts, but
Arsenal wrapped themselves in Elastoplast and reverted to their equivalent of long ball football - knocking passes down the line for Theo Walcott to chase.
Considering the punishment they withstood, two-all is not just a good result for Arsenal, it is borderline miraculous.
It was a bit like watching a hurricane come tearing towards your house and battening down the hatches, then emerging from your storm bunker afterwards to discover a couple of roof tiles are loose.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Come again?" The Eurosport-Yahoo! office's collective reaction to the news that Quincy Owusu-Abeyie will earn £80,000-a-week with his new club, Al Sadd of Qatar.
FOREIGN VIEW: 'It could have been 6-2' - Catalan daily Sport reckons Barcelona should have won by a tennis score at the Emirates,
COMING UP: More European football tonight with live coverage of
Fulham v Wolfsburg and Benfica v Liverpool both kicking off at 20.05 UK time.