Arsenal Move On To The Group Stage of the CL

Arsenal joined fellow EPL teams Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United in the Champions League group stages following a 5-0 aggregate win over Sparta Prague.

Thomas Rosicky opened up the scoring with a nice pass across from little Theo Walcott to slam it home against his former club. Arsenal would hold onto the 1-0 lead and in the 82nd minute would add a second on a pass from Eduardo into Cesc Fabregas who came on late in the 2nd half. Eduardo himself then put one away in the 89th minute to seal the deal with a 3-0 win at Emerites and a 5-0 win on aggregate.

Arsenal now will face 3 sides they have never played before in the group stage. Slavia Prague, Steaua Bucharest and either Seville or AEK are their opponents. Seville and AEK's match was postponed due to the death of Seville's 22 year old player Antonio Puerta. Seville played a well fought match today in their 3-1 loss to AC Milan. The players all wore Puerta's name on their jersey's including the AC Milan players.

So we should have a good group stage with Seville probably being our toughest opponent of the 3. I think they will beat AEK and move on. The hardest part for us will be winning on the road as those are some tough plces to play.

This weekend we will face Portsmouth who just aquired "Papa" Diof and Glen Johnson in the last hours of the transfer window.

Arsenal made a last minute purchase picking up Chelsea's Lassana Diarra right before the end of the window. This will certainly help Arsenal out as he is a great utility player and will help us with all the injuries we currently have. Cheers to Arsene for getting a top quality player.

On another note, David Dein sold his 14.5% stake in the club to Russian Billionare Alisher Usmanov. He's making his move to get back into the club and probably looking to work with the lokes of Kronke or someone else to help them gain control of the club. We will see what happens.

Arsene has yet to sign an extended contract.