February 1998

7.2.98 Arsenal 2 Chelsea 0

21.2.98 Arsenal 1 Crystal Palace 0

7.2.98

Arsenal 2 Chelsea 0

Right, let’s get one thing out of the way: If the referee had sent Steve Bould off, then Chelsea would have won the league. That’s what Ruudy reckons and who I am I to disagree with him? Of course, Mark Hughes running around the pitch showing everybody what nice elbows he has is a completely different thing. And as for Sooty (D Wise) he must be still hallucinating; still seeing taxi drivers everywhere, ripe for assault and battery. Add LeBeouf and Petrescu to this grisly crew and you have a team that would have given the wild bunch a run for their money. But in Ruud’s version of reality his team are always the perennial victims, more sinned against than sinning. The reason you lost Gullit is because, though your team relish a fight, they have no bottle. They have flair, but no depth and they have big, fucking mouths but they say nothing. There are none so blind as those that cannot see and that particularly goes for humpy dicks with ratty dreadlocks and a penchant for young Cruyffs. Also, if you manage a team that itself can only manage a grand total of no shots on goal for the whole of the ninety minutes then you really should shut it.

As for the Gunners, well, they’re still not on top of their game, but even on two thirds power they could see off Chelsea putting out a side with Garry Lewin in goal and the Gunnersaurous as an outfield player. Wenger put the returning Ian Wright on the bench, but the improving Anelka looked good enough for his place. Ray Parlour had a stormer and Petit is proving himself every bit as valuable as Vieira. Stephen Hughes, who is massively benefiting from Overmars’ new ‘wandering’ role, now looks like the exciting player we all thought he could be. His first goal came from a fine bit of play from Anelka, who tangled up LeBeouf and Charvet, had a shot blocked and then watched the loose ball flick out to Hughes who blasted it in from close range. And only four minutes gone. The rest of the half was like something out of Predator: ambush, chop, kill, eviscerate, wave the spiney bit about, etc, etc. Grisly, but fascinating. Hughes’ second goal, just before the break, was a Tony Adams flick-on from Tony Adams from Bergkamp’s free kick. Hughes bravely stuck his head into the blue sea and bulleted it in. 2-0. No contest.

Chelsea moaned, kicked and pissed about in the second half; Mark Hughes tried to thump Petit and Adams whilst Wise, (has ever a player been so badly named) looked around for someone littler than him to whack. I bet the ball boys were shitting themselves.

Not much more to this game. Arsenal have now beat Chelsea three times this season. I’ll settle for a fourth, but I think it’ll be tough.

Man of the Match: Stephen Hughes.

Divvy of the week.

My mate, who missed the match finally got to his mum’s about 8 o’clock on Sunday night. He asked her the score, to which she replied, "Hughes scored two." Well, he didn’t say much, just went to bed early with the rotten hump. It was only when he went to work the next day that he found out that it was ‘Stephen’ not ‘Mark’ that had scored. Prannet.

21.2.98

Arsenal 1 Crystal Palace 0

We spent ages trying to work out the best way to describe Grimandi’s wonder goal. Was it a lob? A loft? Or a volley? He had his back to the goal, received the ball at knee height, half turned and ‘lollied’ the ball across the face of the goal in a beautiful long arc that left the ‘keeper wondering what all the cheering was about. This was early in the second half, after a fairly typical Crystal Palace first half: more sterility than a Sellafield worker’s gonads. For once, Arsenal had an airtight excuse: no Seaman, no Winterburn, no Adams, no Bould, no Marshall, no Petit, no Parlour, no Mendez, no Garde, no Wright, no Wreah, no Bergkamp and no Overmars. That’s just about a whole Arsenal side. Dixon, the man who makes the Teletubbies look like an Olympic sprint team was captain and Hughes, Platt and Vieira made up the spine of the midfield. Upson played central with the injured, but playing Grimandi and Wenger gave a league debut to Paolo Vernazza, who funny enough, comes from Islington. Up front the sleepy Anelka was partnered by the positively narcoleptic Boa Morte, who missed an astonishing open goal in the second half, that fully eclipsed Wreah’s missed sitter against Money Utd.

The highlight of the first half was a tame Upson header that barely bruised the Palace post. Half time and Wenger must have given them all ‘Le Rocket’. They all looked so much better: even Anelka, who we increasingly think is possessed by the spirit of Kevin Campbell, made a decent fist of it.The second half hardly had a dent in it when Grimandi resigned his membership of the ‘John Jenson’ club, leaving Petit as the sole member of the club who couldn’t score in a Bangkok whorehouse. It was a great goal. The second highlight of the game was a remarkable save by Manninger, a full stretch tip over, that was truly world class. Those two fingers gave us three points.

Later, Wenger bloodied the Irish sounding Gavin McGowan. You don’t see many paddies with dreadlocks, though. He looked extremely interesting. Rankin, the other great black hope, stayed on the bench.

All in all, a promising game, rather than a great one. How Palace will play on Wednesday in the cup, God knows. Arsenal have an FA Youth Cup game against Leeds on Tuesday. The way things are going at the moment with all the injuries, they’ll probably be playing Wednesday as well.

Man of the Match: Stephen Hughes.

Postscript.

Vialli has been shooting his mouth off again. Replying to Wenger’s assertion that Chelsea dived all over the pitch on Wednesday, he told Wenger to ‘shut up’ and that his charges were ‘bullshit’. Coming from an Italian conman who’s never done a days graft in his life and indeed seems to know very little of real life, this is fucking rich. Just because your dad owns half of Italy Gianluca, I suppose when you couldn’t get your own way that you rolled on the ground clutching your face and had a bit of a tantrum. Well it might work against simple-minded referees like Potts, but it didn’t get you anywhere against Leciester yesterday did it? Vialli also said that Wenger should get his own house in order before he starts muck slinging. Quite right, Gianluca. I was particularly impressed by Dennis Wise at the end of the semi-final when he came running over to the Arsenal supporters and with his back to the cameras made an obscene gesture to us and called us all, ‘a bunch of cunts.’ That’s really getting your house in order, isn’t it Gianluca?