Especially a game where we need a strong defense. Say against a pumped up Napoli who will be out to beat us.
Here are the parameters: 1. Head to head points, 2. Head to head goal difference, 3. Away goals between tied teams, 4. Goal difference, 5. Goals scored, 6. UEFA co-effecient points So if Napoli win 2-0 the teams are head to head on points, even on goal difference, both teams with 0 away goals, but then Arsenal would still have a better goal difference since right now it is 5 and -1
at one stage the commentators said something like "as long as arsenal don't lose 3 nil or more they are through" (next game), but i missed if there were any other conditions to that.
That's not what wikipedia says, but it leads to the same conclusion you have, Napoli would have to win by 3 or more goals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013–14_UEFA_Champions_League_group_stage#Tiebreakers
Win the group with a draw or win. Advance with a 0-1 and maybe even 0-2 loss. Only a heavy loss pushes us to 3rd. An unlikely Dortmund loss or draw would also seal our qualification. Not quite in the bag yet, but we really should be able to get through. Hopefully we can just win the group outright because as things stand now there will be a lot of soft teams going through to the round of 16 as the 2nd place finisher in their group. Leverkusen, Olympiacos, Schalke, Zenit, Milan, etc. I have absolutely no fear of any of those teams.
And Chelsea qualify after losing to Basel and only on 9 points. That's a borderline Ferguson-like result.
Good game overall, not much to do though. I was again concerned by the looseness of Rosicky's passing, that one shocker that SZCZ had to clear was a symptom of the rest of his passing tonight, at least IMO. In every other way he's perfect for our team but he really needs to stop pushing it on weird passes at weird points in the game. Monreal had a great game and is a demonstration of how a little bit of squad depth is so huge. Apart from that I thought Jack and Flam were great, Rambo and Ozil were good, the rest of the back five were up to their usual excellent standards, and Giroud battled as always. It's nice that it seems like we're getting more and more depth across the pitch now that Theo's back. The only part of this team that continues to concern me is striker. Giroud's doing a good job but he's not going to keep up this level of physicality and work rate for the whole season, and if he does we might wreck his career long-term. We need another striker, and Theo doesn't yet convince me there. Perhaps Lukas?