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FEBRUARY 2000 5.2.00 Bradford City 2 Arsenal 1 26.2.00 Arsenal 3 Southampton 1
Bradford City 2 Arsenal 1 For anyone who hasn’t worked it out, football, basically is a long-term thing. The paradox is that the whole thing is experienced as a series of intense short-term bursts, making it almost impossible to get any objective hold on it. So, number one, losing to Bradford is on par with something out of the Book of Revelations and two, when Jesus finally descends from glory, he will, unfortunately, have the word ‘Sharp’ stitched across his chest. This is the word. Quite another word is ‘bollocks.’ Those of us with long memories, vast waistlines and narrow arteries we remember Man United having to flap around in the old second division. They had a season in football’s purgatory only seven odd years after lifting the European Cup. Believe me, it’ll happen again. The wheel will turn and Old Trafford, 60,000 plus capacity, will echo to the moans of the real 20,000 hard-core non dilettante supporters that the club really has. (Arsenal, by the way, by our incisive drunken logic, has about 18,000 true red nutters who would watch the team if they had to play Grimsby and Scunthorpe every week.) So what’s the point here? We think it might be, ‘don’t panic.’ For us, the war maybe over, but the campaign lasts a whole lifetime, not just one season. Arsenal, basically, were deeply unlucky, whilst Bradford, had a little bit more fortune and bags more grit. The simple reason we lost can be summed up in one word: Vieira. Bradford played a wait and see counter attacking game and when they finally broke there was no-one to stop them but Malz and his floppy Hugh Grant fringe. Hardly a terrifying prospect. Without the injured Vieira the midfield looked thin, the only saving grace being an absolutely potty Petit who ran around like he’d been drinking Lemmy’s bath water. Their first goal came from Seaman faffing about with his wall formation at a free kick and then watching like a headlight fixated animal as Bradford banged in the simplest of free kicks. Seaman has always had a weakness in seeing things from a way off; indeed the next thing coming at him from the distance, might be a boot up the arse and a P45. Let’s hope he spots that one coming. Not many minutes later, Henry picked up a ball in an area of the pitch that was nearer to the pie stand than the goal, got hold off a half volley and absolutely belted it. What a goal. Roy of the Rovers special. For a time it looked if we might nick a few more; Henry made himself look busy and lobbed one on top of the bar and Sukor, when he could find his only foot, nearly looked average. But, you know how it goes; you know when the moment has past. Of all people, Dean Saunders, 108 years old, covered in liver spots and trailing a saline drip, colostomy bag and dialysis machine, runs through a sedentary Arsenal back line and scores with one of those crucially embarrassing goals, that makes you remember as a first year, what it’s like to play those bastard fifth formers. Horrible. Near the end, Dennis Bergkamp, limped on, looking thin and insubstantial; a blonde ghost that couldn't scare Scoobeedoo. A talismatic presence, rather than a real one. His time will come. We all think the League might have just disappeared into a red and black hole this year; but be of good cheer, everything, ultimately falls apart: stomach muscles, urinary system, the Roman Empire, Tony Blair and of course, the Stretford End Globetrotters. Man of the Match: Thierry Henry. Gave a flying one.
Arsenal 0 Liverpool 1 Is there any comfort Arsenal supporters can draw from this? Well, at the end of the game thousands of Liverpool supporters refused to budge from their corner of the ground. Apparently, they were staying put, intent on claiming political asylum in the South owing to the oppression of their native culture in the North. If it’s good enough for the Afghans, it’s good enough for the Scallies. Something to do with their Giro’s being late in the post, or something. Yes, this game did serve a good function; reminding us how much we hate northerners and Scousers. (Have you noticed how all the media apologists for the North; like Michael Parkinson, the Gallaghers and all those professional Scousers like John Peel and John Parrott all live in places like Barnes or Camden? Weird, eh? It’s like me living in Salford or Toxteth and keep banging on about jellied eels, Mike Reid and what a great time we had at Violet Kray’s funeral. Doesn’t make any sense to me.) So what’s the point of all this? Well, it’s called, ‘avoiding the issue’ and the issue, quite basically, is that Arsenal were absolutely terrible. It’s true we never really had the rub of the green and that too many players were only half fit (Bergkamp and a subdued Overmars) or half assed (Parlour and Keown) or completely lame (Vieira) but that aside (and we do have to have both ‘asides’ and ‘excuses’ as regular readers of this rubbish only know too well) if you were downwind of the Arsenal today you’d have thought that a major sewer in North London had been breached. True, it started brightly enough with a major bit of serious eyeballing between the Arsenal mascot, the Gunnersaurus, and some dude dressed up as Sonic the Hedgehog; a spiky blue beast with a hairstyle that was very Freddy Ljungberg. We all hoped it would develop into one of those Japanese film slugfests, where two fat blokes dressed as 200 foot versions of Basil Brush and Sooty smack one another up and trash Tokyo in the process. But like the rest of the afternoon it fizzled out into a pedestrian bore. Liverpool, five at the back, strung in a tight green line, like vegetables on steroids, did little to deviate from their simple game plan; tackle everything, break quickly and get the ball rolling a foot in front of Camara. Tedious, simple and effective. And it worked a treat. Their goal was exactly that, Camara running through the line and wrong siding the unhappy Seaman to make it one-nil. And that, as they keep saying on those fucking annoying Dreamcast ads we have to sit through until Arsenal get a decent sponser, was that; Game Over. True, Arsenal did have their normal late flurry; a bar was hit and several balls were placed into geo synchronous orbit with the Earth, but it was never going to be enough. Petit disappeared at half time and any teeth that we were showing in the first half disappeared into a gummy hole. The second half, if at all possible, was worse than the first. Only Henry, who was served by his team mates worse than any customer at Grace Brothers, can hold his head up. Where do we go from here? Unfortunately, we reckon it’s the opposite of up. Two potentially depressing games against a rampant Deportivo and the chance to spank the scum now appear as the highlights of a disappointing season. Game over, indeed. We never had this problem with JVC. Man of the Match: Thierry Henry. But only just and only because we have to put something here or it upsets the graphic design of the page.
Arsenal 3 Southampton 1 It’s been a strange couple of weeks for watchers of the football world. There have been umpteen no-nothing pundits and government ministers oozing out of the woodwork proclaiming that football is beset by thuggery, brutality, bestiality and lots of other words in this desperate sequence straight out of the junior sub-editors’ rhyming dictionary. When yours truly finds himself agreeing with the Leeds United chairman on Question Time, you know that adversity has once again made allies of the strangest bedfellows. The argument broadly goes: footballers earn too much money, footballers are thick, football is just one long foul-mouthed ruck and footballers have no respect for authority and are therefore lawless beasts who should be brought to book. The argument really goes: footballers earn too much money and footballers are thick. No argument there, really. Footballers are actually no different from 99% of the population with the exception of the money thing. During the aforementioned ‘Question Time’, Rugby, of all sports was held up as a shining example of a ‘good day out’. Now this is the sport where the bloke had his ear torn off last year and the ex-England captain is a self confessed drug dealer? Oh that Rugby. Can you imagine if any of that had happened in football? As for the authority thing, most referees are serial underachievers who broadly occupy unimaginative constrictive middle management positions and the only chance they have to make their mark on life is by making everyone else bow down to their ‘authoratay’ as Eric Cartman would say. With few exceptions they have no interest in fairness; they’re there to make a point. I’ll be shutting up shortly, but this rant was brought on by Mr Winter’s refereeing performance yesterday. What you basically had was an average game brought to the pinnacle of a riot by a ref who saw nothing, did nothing until almost too late and then waved his little yellow card around like it he was Tara Palmer Kensington at a frock shop with a platinum Amex in attempt to wrest back control. I’ll shut up now, I’m getting a bit hot and moist. Still, there were a couple of things this week that even the most ardent Arsenal watchers may have missed. David Beckham, dropped by Manure for going AWOL sat in the crowd at Elland Road and gave a five star sulk wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with a large ‘A’. A hat, I believe, that is available at most Arsenal shops. Coincidence? This same week saw Wenger cleverly subverting Ferguson’s ‘authoratay’ by appealing directly to the boundless greed of the Manchester United shareholders in his opening gambit in the ‘Buy Beckham’ saga. Clever bugger. Also, this week, HRH the Duke of Edinburgh turned up at Highbury to patronise some locals and shake hands with small children who have yet to learn just what a complete fuckwit he actually is. Firstly, Phil the Greek, displaying his startling inbred acumen, thought that two teams occupied Highbury, namely, ‘Sega’ and ‘Dreamcast’. And then, in an act that has gone completely unreported, mainly because it happened to my mate's nephew, Stephen, the Duke asked the Arsenal kitted eight year old, ‘And who do you support then?’ ‘Stenhousemuir, you old cunt’, should have been the ironic answer. Honestly, I ask you. And we still pay for these clueless parasites. Talking of clueless parasites brings us neatly back to Glen Hoddle’s Southampton. Poor old Glen, castigated for his unfortunate remarks about the disabled last year, he now finds himself doing Karmic penance with that most disabled of teams, Southampton. Of late, teams coming to Highbury seem to mainly composed of giants that stand in lines across the pitch and chop anything small and red that tries to run through their legs. A limiting but effective tactic and lately employed by Southampton, albeit with a surprising amount of mobility and vision. Now, there’s two words that nobody has ever applied to the Saints. The game began statically enough; a perfectly observed minute’s silence for Sir Stanley Matthews and the Arsenal suffering more of a hangover from the Liverpool game than was healthy. Tone was back in harness and very nice is was to see him too, though he stopped more than often to put his hands on his hips and rotate his back. He also kept doing weird hamstring stretching exercises, I know, I’m doing the same things for my back. At last, I have something in common with the Arsenal captain. Southampton were surprisingly quick and busy; nothing like the hot breath of relegation to get the yellow and brown juices flowing. Arsenal, looked a bit smelly too; collectively Keown, Petit and Vieira wore great big pants and ran around in them. They were bloody awful. Thank God for Tony, Dennis and Freddie. Kanu, back from the depths of Nigeria, grew in stature during the game and kept us all royally entertained as he tried to cover all eight slots on MOTD’s goal of the month competition. Shots from the left, the right, ones that bent, ones that corkscrewed, inside of the boot, outside, indeed everything except the ball rolling over the bleeding line. Arsenal’s first goal, out of thin air, was a subtle bit of Bergkamp vision and running that saw a short diagonal ball (as opposed to a round one? What am I on?) laid on for Ljungberg, who avoiding the closing Saint’s player, steered the ball into the bottom left corner of the Clock End goal. Great. The second goal really was the pick of the bunch. Adams, who had been bringing the ball up all the game, strode forward, split the Southampton defence with a breathtaking slotted ball that Silvinho ran onto, turned and crossed, all in one movement. The cross whipped across the face of the goal and Bergkamp, for only the second time I remember, smacked the ball with his head past the flapping Jones. Half time and Southampton made a few changes; taking off a few grisly blokes and bringing on likewise. Up front they were definitely missing the deft touch of Pahars, though a meaty Kevin Davies gave a solid performance. An Arsenal mix up in the area from a corner (basically a bodged Ray Parlour back header) gave the ball to a Southampton player who headed in from close range. Dozy goal really. By this time Arsenal were looking a bit more like Arsenal and Southampton had trouble working out where the next player in red and white would pop up. The third goal, looking like a speculative cross from Ljungberg, was ran at by Vieira, who, true to form, missed it completely. The ball, however, tired of being punted about, bent in the air and settled itself just inside the post. Freaky goal, but it made everyone laugh. After that Kanu put on his big flappy shoes and gave us a virtuoso display of pure circus football. Arrogant, predator football that showed complete disdain for the Southampton boys. Still, it was better than watching the old warhorse (or should that be ‘cart’?) Mark Hughes run around like the last nutty dog left in Battersea Dogs’ Home. A decent afternoon with a couple of decent goals. Who could want more? Man of the Match: Freddie Ljungberg. An asset.
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