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December 1997 13.12.97 Arsenal 1 Blackburn 3 22.12.97 Wimbledon 0 Arsenal 0 (Match Abandoned) 26.12.97 Arsenal 2 Leicester 1 28.12.97 Tottenham 1 Arsenal 1
Newcastle 0 Arsenal 1 Two months ago we would have laughed at this fixture. Under Keegan, Newcastle were both breathtaking and profligate. Beating them 1-0 last season, whilst only having 10 men, was one of the highlights of the year. They were good then, real contenders. However, this season, Dalglish has been doing a prime bit of turd polishing: John Barnes, Ian Rush, Stuart Pearce, all they need is Clive Dunn and they’ll have the whole set. The Newcastle side is looking so aged, I’ll reckon they’ll need carbon dating to work out how old they are. Before someone mentions, ‘pot’, ‘kettle’ and ‘black’ concerning the agist comments, I must add that taking recent form into account, Arsenal would have been hard pressed to beat a team of telly tubbies let alone the zimmered up, liver spotted Newky bunch. So, it was with some trepidation we paid our tenners to sit in the north bank and watch the big, spotty telly, that the Arsenal officials think is such a technological whiz. It shows you how much times have changed when people are pleased to see that Ray Parlour is back. Vieira is still unfit, so Born Again Platty was the chosen anchor. Yes, I said ‘anchor.’ After about 10 minutes it was good to see that Newcastle have about a million more problems than us: an inherited iffy defence, a midfield that seems solely to consist of a one eyed David Batty and a shadowy bloke who used to be Rob Lee. Up front they had the Medina Cartel’s favourite distribution man, Tino Asprilla, who really did play like he’s spent the last two months tickling his nasals with Beecham’s Powders rather than some decent Columbian whiz. Bit of error playing him, I reckon, Kenny boy. Arsenal, didn’t look too bad. Keown and Adams saw eye to eye and more importantly foot to head, Overmars and Parlour looked good and more importantly Ian Wright and Dennis Bergkamp looked like they were awakening from their two month trip from that circle of hell reserved for people who know how to score but have lost their way. You know the one with the entire Tottenham side in it. Stuart Pearce, looking like someone should take him along to Animal Hospital to put him out of his misery, very nearly scored with a cracking free kick. When the ball thumped into Seaman the noise was so loud it didn’t sound real; like one of those pumped up Stallone fight scenes. He punched it wide and the North Bank was up on its feet applauding. Just after that Berkamp fluffed a couple of chances, but they were good chances. On another day they would have been buried. The Arsenal goal came from some tenacious Bergkamp footwork, a little cross, finding Wrighty in bags of space, who just flicked his head and put it wide of Hislop. Boy, did he look relieved. The shirt went over the head, he ran the length of the pitch and celebrated in front of the Arsenal fans. On his t-shirt, in red felt pen, it said simply, ‘At Last.’ I only hope he hasn’t been wearing it for the last six weeks. Not much else happened. Parlour had a few flurries and Adams got bigger and bigger as the game went on. Definitely worth a tenner of anyone’s money. Man of the Match: Tony Adams.
Arsenal 1 Blackburn 3 I reckon that this is going to be a big hit at Christmas. It’s called ‘The Arsenal Squad Model Kit.’ It’s made by Airfix, cost about £40 million quid, comes in about fifteen highly moulded, beautifully engineered pieces and includes easily understandable instructions. The problem is, when you take it out of the box and attempt to put it together none of the pieces fit. The Dixon piece doesn’t fit at all, the Adams piece has a hole in it, the Wright piece (part 8) doesn’t have the correct fittings to fit with anything, the Overmars piece seems to conform to an obscure continental standard not recognised in the UK and the Winterburn piece appears to have a leg missing. In a nutshell, the parts are greater than the sum. And that was the problem against Blackburn. They may be just journeymen and stout yeoman all, but they play, fight and graft as a team. To be honest, they weren’t that great. They’re very square at the back and a nippy, cohesive midfield will make mincemeat out of them. (As indeed, Man Utd did only a few weeks ago.) But they’re tall and fast, with an ability to break quickly and pass accurately. And, more importantly, they are a team, not just a collection of players. I can’t believe that the Gunners have turned into cattle overnight. But Tony Adams’ man of the match performance against Newcastle was followed up by probably the worse showing by him outside of an England appearance. He fluffed, he puffed and contrived to be by far the best Blackburn player on the pitch. Maybe the pressure of his English O level is getting to him. Everyone is allowed an off day, particularly Tone, but there’s no escaping a stinker of Bhopal proportions. Somebody said, ‘one swallow doesn’t make a summer’ and if that’s the same as ‘one turd doesn’t make a cesspit’ then we should be forgiving the Arsenal boys bigtime rather than having a pop at them. But, it was bloody hard to think of a more inept performance. (Even that 6-2 thrashing by Man Utd a few years ago wasn’t as bad as this clinker.) Seaman flapped like some kid in a school play playing a tree, Dixon chuffed up and down like Thomas the Tank Engine and David Platt started to look like, well, David Platt again. Only Martin Keown played like someone born to the red and white. He had a wicked game, mainly running around with a shovel and a sack cleaning up after Adams. Bergkamp and Overmars looked all Dutch ie. flat and grey and Ian Wright continued to show us his best England form ie. not all that. Arsenal’s one bright spot, the goal, came from a fifty yard looping punt from Petit who found an accelerating Overmars, who, choosing his moment perfectly, lobbed Tim Flowers with a graceful ball that seemed to take an age to go into the net. After that it all went Spurs shaped. Arsenal found it impossible to match Blackburn’s inventiveness and cohesiveness. We had the more talented individuals, but they had the better team. We’ve been rumbled. No doubt about it. Just to make matters worse, Wrighty, in the dying seconds, performed open boot surgery on Henchoz to earn his fifth yellow card. That puts him out of the Spurs game, I reckon. Blinding. I could bang on about the crap ref (a certain Mr ‘Magoo’, I believe) and the linesman who wouldn’t know a straight line if you jacked a snooker cue up his arse, but that’ll just be me running through the usual excuses. Somebody will say that hard work and diligence will solve this one, but I keep thinking about sows ears and how those promised silk purses never seem to materialise. Man of the Match: Don’t believe the Sunday papers. Martin Keown by a mile.
Wimbledon 0 Arsenal 0 (Match abandoned owing to shitty lights)
Arsenal 2 Leicester 1 Boxing day traditionally is a day of leftovers. All that dark meat on the turkey that nobody wants, the cold wizened cocktail sausages and of course the bilious attacks of nausea and the perennial heartburn. The football equivalent is a 0-0 draw where the players can’t be arsed, the supporters just want to get away from their wives and kids for a couple of hours and the weather just wants to piss on you. This year we had the debut of a new phenomena; a 0-0 draw with goals. Still looking like a machine with several vital components missing, the Arsenal chugged along manfully, every now and then giving a little peep on the whistle to let people know they were still there. Platt, Wright and Bergkamp all had bright flashes, whilst Seaman entertained us all with a hilarious Ian Walker impersonation. Talk about flappy. Arsenal’s first goal was a smart set piece. A Bergkamp free kick headed in nostalgically by David Platt. Apparently Platty suffered a groin strain getting the goal. That’s not as daft as you think. My mate reckons that the groin and the head are inexorably linked. He says that every time he touches his groin his missus gets a headache. See. We spent most of the game trying to work out which of the assorted Christmas nuts (ie. Brazil, hazel, walnut, etc.) most resembled David Platt’s head. Definitely brazil, I reckoned, but my mate stuck to his guns and plumped for a malformed hazel. The game soon got mired in that Christmas no-mans land of staleness and flatulence. Apart from Ian Wright who had a zippy game the rest of the Arsenal looked as mobile as snowmen. Our second goal, a candidate for lob of the season was a wonderful piece of opportunism by Steve Walsh, of all people. He spotted Keller off his line and avoiding the lumbering line of Arsenal players, lobbed the hapless yank from about thirty yards out. Blinding goal. The best Arsenal strike in months and it comes from a Leicester player. Their goal came from an appalling Seaman cock-up. He really is looking every inch an England keeper at the moment. At the end the Arse were more than a bit lucky. The old ‘uns tired badly and Leicester contrived to miss a couple sitters that Stephen Hawking would have put away on a bad day. Still, Merry Christmas, though I reckon the new year will be more ‘crappy’ than ‘happy’. Man of the Match: Ian Wright (Don’t write him off yet.)
Tottenham Hotspur 1 Arsenal 1 Tottenham being a generous bunch, a whole 800 tickets were available to Arsenal supporters for this derby. Faced with the choice of paying over the odds to sit in a building site full of duckers and divers from Walthamstow dressed in car coats and sheepskins or pay a tenner to watch the game on the big telly from the lofty heights of the North Bank it was evident which way we would go. Interestingly, Fulham for their 3rd round tie next week at White Hart Lane are only getting 3000 tickets. Mmmmm. The one bright thing this season has been the truly appalling form of the scum. A defence that is the complete antitheses of Rourke’s Drift; one heroic black figure (Sol Campbell) surrounded by white idiots, a midfield as substantial as sherbet and a lopsided attack composed completely of one sided wingers and Kryten (Les Ferdinand). Add to this a manager who not only is bonkers but also Swiss and you have a set-up so preposterous that the only thing you can do is give up and enjoy the rich comedy of it. Then, when things are going truly badly you re-employ Pervy Pleat (‘Here’s your company car David. It’s only got one gear and it keeps pulling towards the kerb.’) and the most calculating football mercenary of all time, Jurgen Klinsman. Still, you know local derbies, the form book along with any sense or skill, usually goes out the window. The big problem with the Arsenal is that they’ve been sussed. Earlier in the season we had bags of room to play in but now it appears that the whole of the Premier league closes us down, runs us ragged and waits for the old boys to flag. With nobody acting as a linchpin in the midfield invariably the main ball winners for the gunners are usually the over stretched centre backs. Couple this with the lack of a traditional centre forward and we begin to look a bit ragged. Certainly Tottenham pressed and closed everything down in the first half hour. Every single ball was fought tooth and nail for. Effective, energy sapping, but not very pretty. The scum played Ginola in the middle and for once he looked effective. Only a tip top Martin Keown kept him in check. As for Klinsman, you could see what forty grand a week gets you now; a knackered old kraut that looks like his mother was fucked by an Afghan hound. Pathetic. Of course the scum scored first. A ball from nowhere that went through the Arsenal line that gave old flappy no chance whatsoever. Our reply to that was to hit the post with a fine shot from Anelka. And that was the first half. Bergkamp invisible, the backs huffing and puffing, Anelka looking like a ten year old and Seaman looking like the sort of player that when you were kids always got left by the fence in the playground when you chinned up for teams. (‘You have him, we had him last week.’) The second half was better. Dixon went off and Grimandi came on. Spurs ran out of puff and Arsenal took advantage of the slightly slackening grip. Ray Parlour, who quite astonishingly had been magnificent in the first half, latched onto a ball some way outside the area, had a poke at the goal and was rewarded by seeing his shot come off of some poor saps arse and balloon past Walker into the Spurs goal. Brilliant. He’s scored a few like that. After that the game went back to endeavour and attrition with Spurs looking more and more ragged. Later a testy Bergkamp went off for Hughes. Anelka too was replaced, by a sprightly Isiah Rankin. Good little player, that one. Watch him go. Not a classic, but the point was welcome. Arsenal might have to face up the fact that on current form they are no better than Derby or West Ham. Tottenham, however, might have to face the prospect that their next local derbies might be against QPR and Charlton. Sod ‘em. Man of the Match: Ray Parlour.
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