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January 2001
Charlton 1 Arsenal 0 One look at the team line-up and you just knew that though the year had just begun, the season, as far as the Premiership was concerned, was well and truly over. Manninger, Dixon, Grimandi, Stepanovs, Silvinho, Parlour, Vieira, Vivas, Pires, Kanu and Ljungberg. No Adams, no Henry, no Keown, still no Seaman and not even a sniff of Bergkamp or Wiltord. A lopsided side with little fire in its belly and not an original thought in its head. If the Liverpool game was a fluke and the Leicester game more to do with the Foxes having a complete breakdown, the Sunderland game down to inept refereeing, then this one was the one where we hold up our hands and just say, ‘we were crap’. With a defence that covered the pitch no better than a king size duvet, a midfield obviously using the Munckins as a role model and an attack as toothless as the Queen Mother, this was a game where you prayed for the final whistle scant seconds after they blew for kick-off. Of course Manchester United won their ramble against West Ham; nowadays United games have more to do with the other teams giving up the ghost even before they’ve kicked a ball. You can see it in the managers’ eyes, keep the score respectable, don’t lose by too many and then meekly roll along to the post match press conference and tell everyone that United are unbeatable. With the exception of Houllier the rest of the premiership managers are a disgrace to their profession. What sort of manager goes out and doesn’t believe his team are capable of beating anyone on the day? I bet the Carlisle manager is winding his players up something rotten about Arsenal’s visit on Saturday. Wouldn’t surprise me if we threw that one away too. But I digress. The league is not looking good. We had a big inquest the other day and before the ale ran out and we were all forced to brave night buses, blind minicab drivers or the long inebriated walk home in the wrong direction we came up with our mid season appraisal. Here it is: Seaman Looked finished at the beginning of the season, but now we can’t wait to get him back. But need to buy another goalie before the season disappears around the u-bend. Weaver or Wright still our favourites. Manninger Stick him in a big plastic bag and leave him for the bin men. The odd over elaborate reflex save is no substitute for positional sense. Couldn’t catch a cold. Dixon Slowing up, but still preferable to Luzhny. Luzhny See Manninger. Silvinho Erratic but valuable. Still a wing back rather than a back back. If you know what I mean. Ashley Cole The best prospect in years. If anything is remembered this season it will be his debut. Adams Still a god. On his day he is peerless, but the days are getting less and less. Gotterdammerung for Mr Adams we reckon. Keown Shakier than normal this season, but still a vital component. (Piston, maybe.) Vieira Not always as effective as he was. But seeing as he has all the defensive midfield problems heaped onto his shoulders he is doing bloody well. For God’s sake Wenger buy someone to take the pressure off him. Ljungberg Having a good season. Not always played in his best position, but has bags of heart and soul; a rare commodity nowadays at Highbury. Parlour Up and down like a whore’s drawers. When he’s good you have to pick your jaw off the floor, but when he’s bad he’s Ray Parlour. Grimandi Every team needs a Mr Utility. Having a great season but is only as effective as the people around him. (Play him with monkeys and he’s peeling bananas with his feet within minutes.) Pires Didn’t do what everyone thought he would do, but can play deeper than Overmars and seems to work OK with Silvinho. The best is still to come, we reckon. Bergkamp Increasingly peripheral but still has a great brain and two wonderful feet. No other top European club would put up with Denis’s no-fly policies. Look for him to sign a new contract with the Arse in the next few weeks. Wiltord Not been much cop has he? A bit more patience from all of us, I know. Personally I’d take him back the sales counter, explain that this one is broken and can we please have another one. (Salas’ll do.) Kanu Very disappointing. All the flicks, shimmies and nutmegs in the world can’t make up for a striker that doesn’t score. We’ll give him the rest of the season, but I’d rather see him arse warming the bench than named in the starting line-up. And am I the only person in the world who’s annoyed that a seven foot ten geezer can’t head a bloody ball? Henry Golden days for him. The way he’s playing at the moment is the kind of stuff you tell your grandchildren about. Don’t go along with all that press bollocks that Thierry is underachieving. Most journalists never actually go to the games so they never see any of the off the ball stuff ie. running, feinting, drawing people off, so most of the pissed up, tabloid idiots have never seen Henry in full flight. Every club on the planet is gagging for him. And the others? Peripheral. Makeweights. Anyway, that’s what we reckon. Lots more games to go and opinions like the wind can change in an instant. Are we optimistic? Not particularly. Anyway, happy new year from the grumpy bastards at @FC. Man of the Match: Maybe next week.
Arsenal 1 Chelsea 1 The day after the Tower of Babel fell the people wandered around in a state of disarray. They did not know one another, could barely string a coherent thought together and where previously they had been able to communicate they now spoke a myriad of languages, each a closed impenetrable world. Where they had been one people they were now a group of babbling, brutal idiots- only able to communicate by random acts of violence and fits of pique that bordered on autism. Welcome to Chelsea FC 2001. The appointment of Ranieri, an urbane man, who seems to speak every language except English, is the latest attempt by the loony team of Hutchinson and Bates to make Chelsea a real force in the Nationwide. Vialli had his faults, but at least he had a rudimentary grasp of the Queen’s English, even though he did insist on calling his players, ‘cheps.’ Ranieri, a worried looked grey man, somewhat reminiscent of a Mafia advisor, obviously has a few smarts, but seeing as they are left to that peculiar looking translator bloke to put across, (the big bastard who looks like a bulldog in a full length overcoat) you can tell that this one is going nowhere. You’ve got a better chance of getting a pearl to grow by putting a bit of grit under your foreskin. In that last couple of weeks we’ve seen Ranieri talk in his peculiar somnambulant form of Italian for about ten minutes solid only for the whole doleful mess to be translated as, ‘it was a game of two halves.’ And then more hilariously seeing the grinning organ grinder’s monkey, Zola translating complicated, protracted tactics from Ranieri to John Harley by saying, ‘he wants you to play a bit better.’ Best show in town we reckon. Catch it while you can. So, what’s all this to do with the Arsenal? Well, to be honest, this is the worse Chelsea side we’ve seen in years; a tactical mess, frightened, bitter and confused. We should have murdered them. But they still have one thing that the Arsenal are sorely lacking at the moment; spirit. Arsenal could have been three up by half time, only a few wonder saves by Cudicini kept them in it. And then in the second half as New Arsenal’s spirits inevitably flagged, Chelsea gave themselves a good slap (and anyone else) and grabbed a goal that basically involved moving the ball by sheer willpower through what looked like the entire Arsenal team standing on the goal line. By the end of the game, the lack of vim, verve and any other scouring astringent made the Gunners look like they had just had the whupping of their lives. Pathetic, really. The only player who looked really upset and arsed was Ljungberg. Inexplicably, Wenger at his most capricious and George Graham like, took Freddie off with about eight minutes to go to make way for Vivas. Even Mr Wenger who hears and sees things so selectively must have caught the 30,000 people booing his decision to pull Freddie off. Black mark, Arsene. So what was the good stuff? Pires’s early goal was an inspired piece of persistence that involved sticking to the ball despite the attentions of three Chelsea defenders, then having the presence of mind to shoot a curler across the goal that the keeper could only wave bye-bye to. Seaman was back and Manninger’s miserable run of games only served to make Spunky look better than he is. Still, his positional stuff was nigh on faultless. On the bad side were some of the woeful tactics. We surrended the left to Wise and failed once again to compete for the ball in the middle- Edu can’t come soon enough. Up front Wiltord got on Henry’s nerves and we all thought of the wonderful things you could do with 13 million quid. Wiltord is beginning to look like an expensive bit of madness. But the real problem is the lack of spirit. Chelsea, despite being composed of more nations than the Earth actually possesses, do have some sort of commitment. Wise and Poyet, whatever you think of them are terrific motivaters. And in Ferrer, they have one of the most tenacious backs in the world. And then they have this terrible management- a full bloodied English ‘Carry on Kicking’ scenario. You figure it out. So where do we go from here? We reckon we’ve had it this season- in all competitions. It’s a mental thing. There may be light at the end of the tunnel but it’s only a bunch of people coming the other way who are as lost as we are. Man of the Match: Freddie Ljungberg. Shame on you Wenger for taking him off.
Leicester 0 Arsenal 0 Now this is getting monotonous. Having spent the bulk of the eighties watching arid drivel like this, we thought all this stuff was consigned to the dustbin of history along with Margaret Thatcher, red braces and mobile telephones the size and weight of house bricks. The Boxing Day drubbing of the Foxes, was to be honest, more to do with Leicester’s brains imploding than Arsenal going mental. At Filbert Street it was always going to be different. Arsenal started well enough; a couple of potshots and Wiltord, haunted by the ghost of Diawara, managed to hit an upright. But that was your lot. The peculiar ennui that has lodged itself like a truculent rain cloud over Highbury for the last couple of months was still evident. Adams returned and the defence looked more solid than usual, but the problem really lay with the team as a whole. When Leicester went down to ten men, they had a reshuffle and basically committed nine men behind the ball and that, as they say, was that. It didn’t help that all week Wenger has being saying that Edu is totally unfit and then Arsene throws him on and the Brazilian promptly rips a hamstring. Out for a minimum of three weeks. Nice one Arsene. Already a lot of moaning, miserable bastards are looking forward to next season, having written this one off. I hate to say that I’m rapidly becoming one of them. Next week QPR. Anyone fancy a 0-0? Man of the Match: At least Henry looked like there was soul animating the flesh.
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