Champions League Recap and Arsenal's Injury Worries

The supposed strength of the Spanish League was shown up again last night as Spanish league leaders Real Madrid could only manage a 1-1 draw at home to Lyon and failed to make the Champions League quarterfinals for the sixth season in a row.

Meanwhile "Manure" showed up the Italian league yet again as they thumped AC Milan 4-0 to progress to the last eight.

This means that Inter are the only Italian team with a chance of making the quarterfinals after Fiorentina lost to a Robben-inspired Bayern Munich on Tuesday night. Personally I don't fancy Inter's chances as I thought they were very lucky to win 2-1 at home against Chelsea.

I am assuming that Barcelona will progress, which will again leave three English teams in the last eight but no Italian teams. If Sevilla can win through against CSKA Moscow, there will be a second Spanish team as well but it looks like there will also be two French teams, which is a bit of a turn up for the books.

With Lyon not running away with their domestic league this season it looks like French club football could be making a comeback. I wonder if it has to do with the lack of transfer activity by Europe's bigger clubs, allowing the French clubs to hold on to their star players for just a little longer. Whatever the cause, I'm happy to see a more diverse range of clubs in the last eight, and long may it continue.

As for Arsenal, it would appear that our injury problems are mounting again as Cesc now looks very doubtful for the trip to Hull on Saturday and Rosicky, Campbell, and Sagna are also doubtful. With Gallas still injured it gives us very few options in defense and it looks like everybody's favourite player, Silvestre, will be playing again.

Speaking of Gallas—there were a lot of stories around yesterday about Roma having someone over in London to discuss his proposed move to them this summer. With his contract up and no new deal agreed upon it does look like this season will be the last we see of William Gallas in an Arsenal shirt. 

In all this injury talk there is no mention of Vela so I can only assume that he is available for selection, but the boss is choosing not to include him in the match day squad at the moment. He certainly wasn't in the squad on Tuesday night but hopefully he will be on the bench on Saturday.

With Hull struggling for survival and our player pool seemingly shrinking by the hour we are going to need every player we have available to fight for the three points we desire.

It's a game where we could (as I said on Twitter yesterday) score our 100th goal of the season in all competitions. At the moment we stand on 99 and Hull's defense isn't exactly solid, so I think goal number 100 is imminent.

Personally, after Tuesday's hat trick I'm backing Bendtner to score it.

That's it for today as I have a busy day at work and it's taken me five hours in bursts of a minute or two to do this.

Here's a little bit of what Gallas can do.

See You Tomorrow.