”If Milan are what we saw tonight, then it’s total darkness, as we were awful.” Congratulations to AC Milan coach Carlo Ancelotti for the most frank assessment of any of the Champions League teams in Friday’s draw for the knockout stage. It sums up their season.

The famous back four, all in their thirties when Wenger arrived, gave each other an old-fashioned look. Lee Dixon thought the new manager looked like a geography teacher. Tony Adams wondered: ”What does this Frenchman know about football? He’s not going to be as good as George [Graham]. Does he even speak English properly?” Ray Parlour did impressions of Inspector Clouseau.

The beauty of having a billionaire benefactor is not so much the money available to spend, but the money available to lose. Look beyond this summer’s acquisition of Andriy Schevchenko and the relentless pursuit of Ashley Cole and consider instead what happened within the space of two unheralded days in July.

Less than two months have passed since AC Milan’s defender Kakha Kaladze returned to his homeland to bury his brother. It was a moment of closure of sorts. The end of an ordeal that lasted almost five years. Kaladze’s brother Levan, a medical student, was kidnapped in Tbilisi in May 2001, just as Kakha joined the San Siro club. Levan’s remains were discovered only in January.

The who’s who of international football has been on a European tour. With the World Cup looming, the Champions League quarterfinals proved essential viewing for a host of coaches looking to hone their squads. Italy’s Marcello Lippi played the host in Milan, popping into Sir Alex Ferguson’s hotel to pass on a couple of bottles of wine.

Tickets for Juventus’s Champions League quarterfinal against Arsenal went on sale in Italy last Friday, and they were hardly flying out of the box office. Well, they never are nowadays. Juventus might be the defending Serie A champions and the self-styled most popular club in Italy backed by an estimated 11-million fans, but their crowds are an absolute abomination.

Enforced absence from the game is torture to any footballer. For Fabien Barthez, the past few months have been, in his own words, ”useless”. Strange months they have been, too. The French goalkeeper has been serving a six-month suspension for spitting at a Moroccan referee, Abdellah El-Achiri.

A year from today, those obsessives who feel bereft during this football-free European summer (guilty as charged) will be able to watch their umpteenth consecutive game of the World Cup. The action will be coming thick and fast from Germany as the group stage ends.

Andriy Shevchenko missed Milan’s Champions League victory at Old Trafford through injury, and Manchester United will be hoping Europe’s footballer of the year is absent from Tuesday’s return at the San Siro. By the age of 28, ”Sheva” has amassed an outstanding hoard of personal and team honours, but he is desperate not to become pigeon-holed.

Midfielder Claude Makelele made a controversial exit from Real Madrid 18 months ago — now he is the key man in a Chelsea team threatening to become the best in Europe. It has taken many months for Florentino Perez, the Real president, even to hint that taking the oil out of his magnificent machine might not have been his wisest decision.