European Blues

Treats all round next week if the second-leg matches in football’s Champions League are as compelling as the first. Chelsea and Rangers, each playing in Spain, are at serious risk of elimination, but Liverpool and Arsenal should be in the hat for the quarterfinals. Liverpool, a goal down, may lack a front-line scorer but a coherent, fluent midfield and the importance of being earnest should ensure another heady night at Anfield and satisfactory progress in defence of the title they won so seismically last summer. Arsenal’s glistening win against pallid Real in Madrid might well have revived their entire winter. They simply can’t blow it now, surely. Chelsea and Rangers are in desperate need of more than press-conference optimism next week. Glasgow’s Blues have done royally to get so far; London’s Blues are not only up against a Barcelona side packed with assertion, style and swank, but themselves seem suddenly peaky and browned-off for all their out-of-sight lead in the Premiership.