Wenger wrestles with testing equation

So this is it then. After 11 matches, dragging on so interminably for more than seven months that we haven't even reached the knock-out stages yet for heaven's sake, the whole thing's as clear as mud.

"If Leverkusen draw next week against Deportivo and we draw against Juventus, we're through. If we both lose, we're through. But if Leverkusen win and we win, they go through," pondered Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger. "And so we could win the game and go out and we could lose the game and go through. Can you believe that? I can't believe that."

He sounded as if his head was about to explode. Being called the Professor never equipped dear old Arsene for this, never mind the great minds of her majesty's press who were left on deadline tussling with the possible outcomes of Group D of the Champions League as if trying to work out Fermat's Last Theorem.

As Wenger said, it's unbelievable but, actually, the tie-breaking system used by the UEFA boffins to decide final group tables only reflects the whole bloated competition, It is too long, over-complicated and utterly convoluted.

It also happens to be quite unfair, based on the theory that when separating teams on the same number of points, only matches between those teams, not every single group result, should actually count. Er, why, exactly?

Call me old-fashioned, but what's wrong with the time-honoured but simple method of using goal difference from all games as the determining factor. Under UEFA's method, Juventus are already out. Yet, say they'd beaten Arsenal by two goals next week and Leverkusen had lost, they would actually have qualified for the quarter-finals on goal difference.

Instead, we now have the situation where, rather than all four teams in the group still having everything to play for as they would if goal difference was used as the first tie-breaker, two of the teams - Deportivo, who have qualified, and Juventus, who are history - will now entertain the two teams who still have a chance.

And it doesn't take Einstein to figure that, as both hosts are embroiled in exhausting assaults on a domestic League and Cup Double, they'll hardly be pulling out all the stops next week.

Arsenal will be hoping to rely on Deportivo's eagerness to stop Leverkusen stealing the top group position - they should be eager when you remember that winning offers the prospect of, say, drawing Panathinaikos rather than Real Madrid in the last eight - and, frankly, if the Germans do prevail in La Coruna's Riazor fortress, they'd feel like calling in the fraud squad at Highbury.

Because on last night's evidence, just as at Old Trafford in October, Deportivo are genuine contenders for the trophy. They play football as you want to see it played - with style, speed, invention and technical mastery.

The move which saw them mug Sylvain Wiltord in his own half, counter-attack with bewildering pace and finish, through the marvellous Juan Carlos Valeron, with clinical precision was, as their coach Javier Irureta enthused, a "beautiful creation".

The great thing about them is that, though they may not have a much-hyped La Liga superstar like a Figo or a Raul, they have players from one to 11 who seem so comfortable and accomplished on the ball that the whole unit radiates star quality.

"If we meet them again, I think we can beat them," said Wenger. You wouldn't bet on it, though, even should Pythagoras eventually decree that Arsenal advance to the quarter-finals.