Barnstorming Bellamy

In a situation like this it would be easy to say I told you so. I'm not going to do that.

I was wrong.

In my last post I predicted that Bellemy would score a hat trick. He didn't. He only got two goals. A gross oversight on my part. I'll endevour to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

I listened to the match on Today FM premiership live and watched the RTE and BBC tv highlights later on. Pretty good performance. What a difference an early goal can make. Some away matches we've played terribly badly this year. Sometimes we've played fairly well but got nothng like at Everton away and Chelsea away. On Sat we played as well as those matches but we took all of our chances. And when the first one went in we grew in confidence. Xabi being back helped. The third goal in particular was a thing of beauty. I'm sure that Rafa was happy with that one, for sure.

I'm hoping that Bellamy can go from strength to strength from here. He has a great workrate and never hid or stopped trying when things weren't working for him earlier in the season. I amn't his biggest fan especially off the pitch but I will back him while he's at the club. I think that he can go on to have an big impact for us.

Galatasary next on Tue night. Not a very important game given that we're through and top of the group no matter what. I would expect to see some of the youngsters like Guthrie, El Zahr and paletta get a start. No injuries should be the priority. It'll be good to go back to the ataturk, for nostalgias sake.

The FA cup draw was today and we drew Arsenal at home. That is exactly the same draw as we got in the carling cup. I think that we should be able to beat them in both competitions as they've been poor on the road and we're great at home. Hopefully Henry is still scraping with Wenger by then and doesn't play.

Until next time.