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December 2000 2.12.00 Arsenal 1 Southampton 0 26.12.00 Arsenal 6 Leicester 1 30.12.00 Arsenal 2 Sunderland 2
Arsenal 1 Southampton 0 Bacon sandwiches are wonderful things. One of the few things God created that actually have no downside. Unless the bacon is as old and wrinkled as time itself and the bread a furry green breeding ground for life threatening cultures. Then you have a problem. Well, then I have a problem, seeing as I was the one who ate the fucking thing on Friday morning. By Friday afternoon I was hurling torrents of what looked like Campbells thick vegetable soup but smelt uncannily like warm spew. Thus, unable to move from the vicinity of a porcelain receptacle for at least 48 hours, I had to endure the pain of missing the Southampton game. Which, apparently, was nothing like the pain endured by the people at the game. I missed, according to my mates, who all went and then phoned in the evening, a game so poor that all of them to a man suggested that they were totally envious of my lumpy sick face-mask, my gallons of burning diarrhoerheal discharge and my sorry arse that had been firmly stapled to the bog during the Gunners woeful afternoon outing. A stultifying game culminating in a goal that appeared to come off of Vieira’s face was the one small lift in a match that redefined drudgery. There you have it. Everybody, it appears, just going through the motions. Man of the Match: Vieira. So they tell me.
Arsenal 5 Newcastle 0 I suppose in the current climate you could say, ‘it never rains but it pours.’ Funny enough there was a break in the current sodden manifestation of global warming and the sun, a cold, thin stranger was making a valiant attempt to warm up Highbury. As we made our way down the hill, huddled into winter coats, marvelling at the short sleeved barely dressed Geordies, wondering if anyone north of Manchester has any nerve endings at all, we were talking about anything except football. Highbury loomed up looking more like a slaughterhouse than a stadium. The smart money was on a spirited draw. Several people muttered darker things about the current run of form whilst others wistfully wished they had stayed at home to paper that ceiling, assemble that incomprehensible mess of flat pack furniture or even horror of horrors accompany the missus in a bout of Christmas shopping. And so we took our seats expecting nothing and miserably looking down a team selection that excluded an injured Vieira, but included Nelson Vivas and the horribly out of form Ray Parlour. You see, we knew what was going to happen. 1-1 but only if we were lucky. The first thing that struck us was that Newcastle, tidy and methodical, looked a for a team in black and white, somewhat grey. We’ve seen that autonomic form of play at the Arsenal many times; there’s an electric current going through the severed frog’s leg that makes it move, but you can’t help wandering what they’ve done with the rest of the frog. You know what I mean. Arsenal began the game much like the first twenty minutes against Bayern; a strange mixture of spirit and uncertainty. Henry looked sharper than a tack, Ljungberg picked up where he left off on Tuesday, Dixon in for Luzhny looked amazingly fresh and there in middle making us remember what Vieira was like when he didn’t have to shoulder the entire responsibility for the Arsenal’s midfield muscle was a tackling, running blur, that quite unbelievably had the name ‘Parlour’ on its back. Honestly, if Parlour hadn’t scored, he still would have been man of the match. He was that good. Arsenal made the odd sortie in the beginning. Henry seemed content to test the parameters of the Magpies’ young centre backs and Kanu to lope around the middle making a nuisance of himself. Then Adams picked up a ball barely outside his own area, sent a seventy yard bomber up and dropped it at the feet of the running Henry. Thierry was shielded all the way, but turning, he launched a wicked bending shot that smacked into the net much to everyone’s surprise. Minutes later a breathtaking bit of play found Kanu in the middle. He slid a ball forward and there to meet it was Parlour, unsighted and marked, but still able to hit it as hard as you could hit a small round thing without spilling its guts. It bobbled, lamped the post and went in. It was at this point that the rarest of Highbury emotions; optimism, started to peek out from behind the thick moaning exterior that all true Arsenal supporters are born with. Half time and all was well. In the second half I think Newcastle had a shot of some sort; certainly Manninger made a stunning point blank save from Dyer, but all we really remember were three beautiful goals. Henry made a lightning run down the right, whipped the ball across the face of the North Bank and there, turning his head with perfect precision was Ray Parlour. A lovely gliding header, away from the defender, away from Given and into the wide open acres of a billowing goal. Later Ljungberg, took on the Newcastle midfield, put a little ball through to that rarest of beasts, a sixteen foot Nigerian in full lope and Kanu dragging defenders in his wake like flotsam gave us all an exercise in perfect timing as he moved the ball from one foot to another and then slid it past the goalkeeper and tucked it just inside the post. 4-0 and all the people who love to go home early were well happy, content on leaving five minutes before the end so they could get to Iceland before it shut or walk the dog or do whatever they do that is so important in that 300 seconds before the whistle goes. So we knew there was going to be another goal for the faithful. And what a goal. Slightly reminiscent of Tony’s goal that sealed us the league a few season’s ago, this one started with an intelligent up and over from Pires that seemed meaningless until you took account of peripheral vision and saw Parlour running through as if his arse was on fire. His momentum took the ball high, brought it down and with an ear splitting Highbury roar urging him on, he smacked it cleanly to complete his hat trick. Words at this point fail me. I don’t think I’ve been happier this season. Wonderful. And there you have it; Football. Boring, frustrating, annoying and pointless. But every now and then the clouds open and you get to see something golden, shining and above it all. It’s called magic. Man of the Match: Ooo arrr.
Tottenham 1 Arsenal 1 Liverpool 4 Arsenal 0 This
is probably a prime bit of short-changing; the old two reports in one,
but seeing as they started and finished the week and we watched both of
them in a state of ongoing inebriation on Sky TV, there is, at least,
the merest thematic link. The Spurs game was a prime exponent of that
much loved footie cliché; the game of two halves. Tottenham, in the
first half, crowded the midfield, played three centre backs and
generally elevated their play to the level of a cup final just to
contain the Arsenal. As Rory McBremner said, ‘I was invited to the
Spurs end of season party, but I couldn’t go because I was doing my
Christmas shopping.’ Spurs played brilliantly, but that’s it. They
aren’t going to do anything with it; their season has finished. One
good half against the Arse and they might as well go straight to the
pre-season tour of Norway. Their goal was nothing to worry about,
inevitable, maybe, in the current Arsenal bad luck stakes, but what was
so surprising was the lateness of the Gunner’s equaliser, given the
complete domination of the Arsenal in the second half. It was surprising
that the Spurs goal was given seeing as they had three players offside,
but the referee, Jeff Winters, is no friend of anyone in N5 and Andy
Grey, on Sky, is a congenital moron; the only people who accord him any
wisdom are fat, old Spurs supporters and the quiched-up Surrey Red
Devils. Arsenal’s goal came at the end of a half of intense pressure
and culminated in a fine Vieira header a nanosecond from time; the only
thing that dented Sullivan’s deserved man of the match award. Of
course, all the Scum thought Patrick had tugged Ferdinand, but their
season consists of reaching for straws, whilst ours, statistically,
still involves reaching for cups. A fair result? As the week went on,
maybe it was. Not a good week. But a draw against Leicester on Boxing Day and a comprehensive mauling of Sunderland will still keep us in the running. Merry Christmas. We’re off to four hundred varieties of turkey, gallons of Advocaat and loads of virtual reality footie on the Playstation and the Dreamcast. May the red and white one excite you in the chimney department. Men of the matches: Vieira and Henry.
Arsenal 6 Leicester 1 Traditionally, Boxing Day is a day for leftovers. That hot, plump bird that only twenty four hours before nestled in the oceans of its only bubbling juices, can, a mere day later, look like something the dog had just dug up to check to see if it was rotting down properly. Similarly, Boxing Day football usually consists of a collective hangover; 38,000 people rub their sticky eyes, scratch themselves aimlessly under dozens of layers and try silently as possible to burp and break up great bubbles of Brussels sprout wind trapped in the lower colon. Boxing Day footy is never pretty. It’s supposed to be a collective doss; a bit of aimless nodding at twenty two people sleepily going through the motions of what for the other 364 days of the year is sometimes called, ‘the beautiful game.’ Believe me, Pele never played on a Boxing Day. So, it was with little qualms that an executive decision was made and for one day of the year football was to take a back seat to reacquainting myself with the small nuclear unit called ‘family’, doing a bit of a backbreaking activity called ‘gardening’ and doing a lot of what’s called ‘eating and drinking more than the GNP of a third world country.’ You guessed it. The one Boxing Day match since Christ was in shorts that deviated from the norm and I missed it. Of course I saw it on Match of the Day, of course all my so-called mates gleefully told me every sublime detail and of course I spent the rest of the day sulking, growling at all my wife’s relatives every time one of them even went near a word that had A’s, R’s, S’s and L’s in it. So, picking through the official match reports, the downright lies of my ex-friends and the evidence of my own peepers, albeit overlaid with a BBC sensibility, this is what broadly happened. The first half was typical 26th December fare; cold, miserable and puzzling. Several people wondered how the dead turkeys of Christmas Day came to be magically resurrected and appeared to running around in Arsenal and Leicester shirts. And then Henry scored a wonder goal hitting it low from about 25 yards out through a whole slew of players. Cut through the air like the previous mentioned windy Brussels sprouts, apparently. Half time. 1-0. For me and my brother in law, many miles away, looking up the score, that was that. 1-0. Game over. Vieira then decided to do a Kanu. He ran, flicked the ball over a Leicester player and from point blank range buried it into the net. 2-0. Leicester pulled one back aided and abetted by the customary Manninger fumble. And then somebody got hold of the traditional Boxing Day script and ripped it to shreds and Leicester vacated possession of their bodies to leave something behind that looked like Frankenstein with a motor neurone disease. Me, I’ve consigned a million brain cells to the deep pit of lost memory in the last three days, so what follows might be a wee bit impressionistic. Also, I’ve still got the arsehole about missing the game. Ljungberg came on as a sub and with nearly his first touch bundled the ball over the line. Henry duly completed his hat trick with two goals I remembered perfectly until I spent an evening drinking the strongest lager in the world. But the last goal, just before the whistle, was an absolute beaut. Tony Adams, having one of those visionary moments he is blessed with every now and then, ran the length of the pitch to receive a ball that he leant back on and hoofed into the roof of the net; not as satisfying as the one that won the double, but very close. My own personal, favourite of the season so far. So, more exciting than any Boxing Day in living memory. You should have been there. Bugger. Man of the Match: Henry. Scored, provided and secured his place of the pantheon of Arsenal gods.
Arsenal 2 Sunderland 2 It was a nice holiday while it lasted, but now it’s back to reality. 2-0 up at half time, a Sunderland side whose sole tactic was to launch the ball into the big blue thing called the sky and watch to see where it landed like a load of dopey retrievers, a thrilling, rapacious performance from the best team in London; and it was all truly a joy. And then the freezing lid of winter closed down, the uncertainty crept in and the referee, a surly one sided beast in the first half, tore off his green shirt to reveal another barred with red and white underneath. Sunderland fluked a penalty and scored a late wonder goal and Arsenal were left fighting a referee of such monumental bias that you suspect in years to come, that somebody discovers that a few brown envelopes changed hands on this one. First, there was the usual Kanu can’t go near Vargas, but Quinn can quite blithely be condoned for trying to bludgeon Adams to death with his elbows. And then there were the fouls; Ljungberg nose was rubbed green by grass by the end of the game and Henry, never a feature in the second half, limped around and finally completely off looking dead desultory. It was a horrible stinking fit up. If Sunderland carry on like this they might as well begin to market their own brand of jam. And the good things? The first goal was one of those bundles in the goal mouth where the ball crosses the line (Ljungberg) comes out and is whacked in by another (Vieira). God knows who scored it, but it was just reward for some fierce Arsenal pressure. Likewise the second goal from an Henry cross was parried by Sorenson and fell to Mr Stratosphere himself, Lee Dixon. Lee kept it down and the net stretched suggestively as he belted it in. That’s it. We were cruising. And then weird shapes began to appear; all of them looking horribly like pears. Stepanovs, deputising for Keown, spoiled a decent performance by doing his hilarious Andy Lineghan impersonation and Wenger brought off both strikers to bring on a feisty Parlour and a run out for the mysterious new boy Tomas. But by then Sunderland’s frenetic unfocussed mobility was beginning to grind everyone down and the referee was intent to earn his illicit bonus. Seeing as how it was so bloody cold, we all finished the game steaming. Not much more to add except happy new year to everyone except referees, linesmen, Alec Ferguson, the entire Tottenham Squad, George Graham, Tony Blair, Railtrack, Ann Widdecombe, Ann Robinson and any dickhead with a mobile phone who thinks it brilliant to go through the entire Budweiser ‘whassup’ ad on the number 19 bus. Have a good one. Man of the Match: Tony Adams.
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