For UEFA Ref, Tom Øvrebø, his performance on the night was John-Arne-Riise-esque: Norwegian & vaquely one-sided. Mr Ø, indeed, had a poor match but it was not that bad under the difficult circumstances.

On account of the beauty of Barça’s footballing, a favoritism for them was installed in the Zeitgeist. That feeling was is amplified by the ugliness of Chelsea’s footballing in general and by the negative approach Chelsea took last week to the semifinal 1st Leg at Camp Nou in particular.

Mr Ø probably had this very intuition clanking about his subconscious (Barça = Beautiful) and was loath to give Chelsea a significant decision unless clearly, visibly earned. Refs, after all, are people.

I felt the worst decisions on the evening were the Pique handball, which was clearly a loss of an earned-advantage by Chelsea (despite being ball-to-hand) — a deserved penalty for Chelsea to take, if seen. The other was the sending-off of Barça’s Abidal which, in my opinion, was pure simulation by Anelka — a frame-job. If the rest are just gray calls, these two mistakes largely offset as well. However, in the final calculus an unwarranted dismissal for Barça is the heavier burden to carry. It is Barça who should have been howling like a petulant child who has missed his dose of Ritalin, rather than Chelsea.

When we saw Ballack’s & Drogba’s anger spill over on the telly, you can be sure this was their own anger at themselves for not taking earlier and obvious chances. Champions win football matches through goals, and do not passively await decisions on points.

The important point I haven’t seen made — which favors Mr Øbrevø — is that by diving all over Christendom (and Asia too), Drogba & Anelka make a technically difficult job by the Referee EVEN MORE DIFFICULT. These players — and Drogba in particular — cannot be trusted NOT to simulate, so a ref’s bias to reward them sparingly is assured & reinforced.

Which of a thousand falli fatti is CLEAR, I ask you? The disadvantage is self-imposed in the arrogant habit of begging-the-decision.

The weaker parts of Drogba’s character have boomeranged upon him (as they do, and should, for us all) and upon the Chelsea Football Club. Consequently, I am glad to see this truth acknowledged in the Club’s murmuring without hesitation about Drogba’s transition out, although I wonder if their firm price doesn’t reflect a lack of sincerity. Sort of takes QPR & Sheffield Wednesday out of the running. It’s good & necessary for Chelsea to cut right to the chase, remove the cancer and move on to next year. Ballack should go too, but only because his footballing contributions are so conspicuously prosaic. Let’s be clear that Ballack is not a simulator. Drogba & Anelka — in the mood — get goals, but the net effect of having these two head-cases is more than a club of Chelsea’s ambitions can tolerate.

Roll the tape. I feel Lampard was disgusted by his colleagues’ performances and believe he will agree that all disadvantage & misfortune Chelsea experienced on the day was self-inflicted.

The main inspiration for his inclusion is that while many footballers, who on the face of it would seem unavaliable are being stalked for months (Kaka’, Ronaldo, Lampard, Even Gareth Barry) Eto’o, who is being kicked out the door at Barca doesn’t appear to be wanted by anyone. Except for in Uzbekistan

A free scoring centre forward, Eto’o is widely considered the best African footballer of his generation. All time top scorer in the African Cup of Nations, Three time winner of African Footballer of The Year, first African footballer to make the final three of the World Footballer of the Year. At Barca, he’s won a number of honours too – including the Pichichi (La Liga top scorer) two La Liga’s and a Champions League trophy. He won the Copa Del Ray with Mallorca.

His goalscoring record is also mightily impressive. According to Wiki he has 168 goals in 334 appearences throughout his carrer. As any striker will tell you, one in two is the target at the top level, and Eto’o has better than that. More impressive is perhaps he record in Catalonia – 77 goals in 108 appearences for Barcelona.

So, with Barca trying to build a new team, why does nobody want to take a chance on him? At 27, he should be at his peak.

It could have something, of course, to do with his attitude off the pitch. He has the tendancy to say, and do incredibly stupid things. His mood swings back and forth, going from gracious to selfish. He seems to want to leave every 20 minutes, and then change his mind every 10.

He allegedly headbutted a journalist while on international duty. He famously divided the Barca dressing room with his fued with then-teamate Ronaldinho. There have supposedly been occasions where he didn’t want to come off the bench to play. His famous outburst after Barca won the title from Madrid caused a massive fine. He supposedly threatend to kill his agent, and in a seperate incident a Mallorca journo.

This mean streak is tempered a little, not only by his ability, but by the fact that he can on occasion be quite nice. When at Mallorca he bought fans travelling to the Copa Del Ray final a meal, to the tune of 30,000 Euros. After becoming top scorer in La Liga he dedicated the award to his teammates.

So Eto’o. He’s a pain, but he’s also a damn good striker. He needs a manager who can get the best out of him, and settle him off the pitch. Fergie once did with Cantona, if he can’t get Berbatov, then maybe he might want to rise to the challenge with Eto’o.

I leave you with a moment of individual brilliance – and I ask you, is Eto’o worth the off the field stuff, for his on the field ability?

“Look, he can’t play football at all, he just knows how to get in the right place” – Johan Cruyff

Filippo (as he still is to his mum) Inzaghi was born August 9th 1973. He loved his hometown club Piancenzo Calcio, who were the first to take a chance on him. He proved himself an exciting enough talent – 15 goals in 37 appearances – to warrent a move to Serie A in 1995 at Parma. The team didn’t work with Inzaghi, and he only managed two goals in his soliatry season there. He quickly moved on to Atalanta. Incredibly, he was Serie A’s top scorer at Atlanta, getting an impressive 24 goals. Already it was clear that in the right system, Pippo would get goals.

He was quickly grabbed by Juventus, who built thier attacking threat around him. With Zidane in attacking midfield and Alex Del Piero playing the trequartista the attacking trio bagged alot of goals on the way to Inzaghi’s first scudetto. They also made it to the Champions League final, losing to Zidane’s future employers, Real Madrid, 1-0.

Despite the sucsess of this attacking trimverate, Juve bought in David Trezeguet to challenge for places in 2000. Despite practically a 1 in 2 goalscoring record, Juve felt that Trezegol offered more to the side, and thus, Inzaghi was benched. He soon moved onto AC Milan.

At Milan, injuries hampered him. Almost immediately upon his return though, he clicked into a frightning strike partnership with Shevchencko, a partnership that would bring the side Inzaghi’s first Champions League medal in 2003.

Apparently upset that he (or anybody else) hadn’t managed to score in the Champions League final, Inzaghi managed to set the record straight with two goals against Liverpool in Athens in the 2007 final. A rematch of the famous 2005 night, Inzaghi described the goals as “the most important of my life”

He is of course, the record goalscorer in European competetion, this season overtaking Gerd Muller’s longstanding record. He also has an impressive 25 goals in 57 appearances for his country, and a world cup medal to boot – scoring in his only appearance in the 2006 finals.

Another record he may be less proud of, is the fact that he has been flagged offside more than any other player in Serie A history. Alluding to this, Sir Alex Ferguson once quipped “Pippo was born in an offside position”

So where do you guys stand on Inzaghi. One one hand he is a goalscorer. HIs record is good (if not astonishing) and he has been an integral part of teams that have won sackfuls of medals down the years. He has won pretty much all there has been for him to win, Scudetto’s, Champions Leagues, Coppa Italias and World Cups.

On the other hand, he is just a goalscorer. If the team isn’t preforming around him, or even is designed around him, he struggles. He’s not the sort of player to score spectacular goals, or even take his man on. He plays on the last shoulder of the defence and is constantly offside. Give him the ball in the six yard box – much like Gerd Muller, or even Gary Lineker – and he is likely to score. He still has aspirations for his country – he is currently talking up the idea that he could be one of the experienced faces at the Olympics – and was used in a recent friendly when Luca Toni was injured.

Is he a great player? A world class player? Does he have the right to go down in history? Or has he been merely lucky to play in sides with great players like Del Piero, Zidane and Sheva?

Over to you.

Assuming this is a popular idea, keep your eyes peeled, for Steven Gerrard, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Totti, Rio Ferdinand, David Beckham and any other player who you might have heard called World Class who you disagreed with. I’m open to suggestions; the only pre-requisite is that they do, or have, played in the Champions League – that is why we’re here after all.

Frank Lampard really is one of those players, you just like or not. His sucsess can’t be argued with – he’s been nominated several times for European and World Footballer of the Year, won 60 England caps to date and has a massive haul of trophies. But, he isn’t as respected as those stats might suggest. Labelled ‘Fat Frank’ by (harsh – the fella isn’t fat whatever his faults) non-Chelsea supporters, Lampard is often mocked for his shooting. He is however the only midfield player to get 4 goals in a Premier League game(this was against Derby however), and has hit double figures in goals from midfield in every one of the last 4 seasons. He has also been practically ever-present in a Chelsea side that has moved to dominate the EPL, as well as being one of the only survining members of the pre-Roman era.

Lampard started his carrer at West Ham, captaining thier youth side in the 1995/6 season, and began to knock on the door of the first team a year later, untill a broken leg put an end to that season for him. He came back strongly however, and was a part of the superemly talented West Ham side that climbed to 5th in the Premier League along with Micheal Carrick, Joe Cole and Lampard’s close friend, Rio Ferdinand. Guided by his uncle Harry Redknapp, Lampard became the focal point of the team, ever present in that sucsessful season. Redknapp however soon left the club, Rio followed him out of the Upton Park door, and Lampard would be next – presumably feeling he would have to move to loose the ‘Junior’ tag that was always attached to his name while he was at a club where his dad was (and still is) such a legend.

He signed for Chelsea, for £11m and was in his first two seasons, pretty much ever-present, though the young midfielder often failed to live up to his pricetag and was outshone in a side built around Chelsea legend Gianfranco Zola. His second season was more of a sucsess, he netted 8 goals from midfield and Chelsea siezed an impressive fourth (on the last day of the season) and a Champions League spot.

He was moved into the attacking midfield spot when Zola retired and despite the threat of Roman’s millions meaning that seemingly anyone could be bought in to replace anyone else, Lampard kept his place, and in fact the team was built entirely around him (some will argue of course, this is exactly what Lampard needs). He seemed to thrive, Chelsea, reached the Semi-Final of that seasons Champions League, and Lampard notched double figures in the goal steaks. They lost to French Side Monaco in the CL semi. Chelsea finished second in the Premier League, behind Arsenal.

The 2004-5 season was massive for Chelsea. They made it to another Champions League semi-final, and won the Premier League by 12 points. Lampard played every single one of the league games for the club, and scored 13 goals from midfield. Dutch Legend Johan Cruyff called him “The best midfield player in Europe”, and Brazil legend Carlos Alberto agreed. He came second in the World Footballer of the Year stakes, behind Ronaldinho. This was also the case in the European Footballer of the Year contest. He also won fans player of the year.
He has also been labeled by Mattius Sammer and Jose Mourinho as The Best Player in the World.

Lampard scored 21 goals in all competetions last season including a wonderful chipped goal against Barca. But doubts began to creep in around the 2006 World Cup, where despite infinate efforts on goal, Lampard failed to find the net once. In fact, this is the main critisim of Lampard, that though he does get 20 goals a season, he only finds the net with a small percentage of the shots his has on goal. He has also been booed in an England shirt frequently, seemingly taking the blame for the percieved lack of cohesion between himself and Liverpool midfielder Steven Gerrard.

He has also been accused of scoring from deflections, although I remember a report in the Guardian awhile ago that showed that only Six of his goals have come this way.
He is Seventh on Chelsea’s all time goalscorer’s list, incredible for a midfield player. He also holds the record for consecutive premiership appearences, showing his importance to the Chelsea team.

He currently has 14 England goals to his name, in over 60 appearences, which is less impressive, but not bad. That equates to roughly 1 goal in every 4 appearances, which for a midfield player is not bad at all.

So Lampard. Love him? Loathe him. Lets debate him. And suggest some more for me to mull over.