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MARCH 2000 5.3.00 Aston Villa 1 Arsenal 1 12.3.00 Middlesbrough 2 Arsenal 1
Aston Villa 1 Arsenal 1 Have you ever tried to do anything, even something unthinkingly simple, with a hangover? Your head feels like one of those puzzles where the ball has come out of the little hole, your limbs ache and every time you open your mouth to say anything you fully expect to see a Technicolor torrent composed of eight hour old lager, prawn cocktail crisps and half masticated kebab. And as for farting; forget it. What starts as a silent pop ends up as long wet rasp with just the suspicion that somewhere in that moist packet there might be a few embarrassing lumps that you might have to waddle to the loo to deal with, that very second. So, what has all this to do with football? Well, it’s actually a very good description of the game. Everybody was hungover from the Deportivo game; players, supporters, media. Everybody. Arsenal plodded around the field like Sunday League players and Villa, who are now supposed to be a ‘top team’ did likewise. Only a sparky Paul Merson kept up the Villa end whilst the Highbury boys looked like pale shadows with the notable exceptions of Seaman, Bergkamp and Dixon. Seaman had quite a bit to do and still managed to get caught by a dead ball goal (flick on from Mersy’s free kick). Arsenal’s one surprise was a stonking Lee Dixon run five minutes from time and a finish, including a Sukor like side-step, that surprised absolutely everybody. Forgettable game, apart from a bad tempered Petit performance and one for the Dixon family scrapbook rather than an inscription in the marble halls. Man of the Match: Lee Dixon. Played like it was a cup final.
Middlesbrough 2 Arsenal 1 We’re all getting a bit sick of this. You can understand the no-show in Coruna, but this abject surrender down at the Riverside is just embarrassing. When footballers earned twenty quid a week the odd brown run and dicky play didn’t matter so much. But now, twenty grand for standing around and pointing, is just taking the piddle. True, Arsenal did wake up, but by then they were two down to a team you wouldn’t feed your dog to. Bergkamp, chipped the Boro keeper sublimely and Arsenal went up a notch as they pressed for an equaliser. We’ve seen it all before and as a rerun it’s a bit sad. Obviously, the boys had one eye on Bremen. Fuck the Germans. All we’re interested in is taking Spurs apart next Sunday and qualifying for the Champions’ League. UEFA Cup? Not really. Disappointing day in a disappointing season. Man of the Match: Dennis Bergkamp. The first quality player Middlesbrough have seen this season.
Arsenal 2 Tottenham 1 You would have thought that the only football news this weekend worth mentioning was the fact that an overpaid bloke from Leyton, currently playing for one of our more successful PLC’s had paid something like £300 to have his head shaved. David Beckham’s newly revealed chickpea shaped head covered most of the back page spaces, the front page spaces and the middles, relegating the real news of the weekend; the mass suicides in Uganda, Gordon Brown’s latest parcel of stealth taxes and those lying German bastards at BMW to a grudging footnote. Indeed, the other big weekend thing; the annual Gooner/Scum bunfight, got nary a mention in the rush to find out why Posh’s old man had spent an absolutely stupid amount of money on an old fashioned number one that makes him look distinctly number twos. Up in Highbury, however, all eyes were glued to the green rectangle as Tony and Sol lead out their respective crews as the big hand crept onto the twelve and the little one nudged the three. Indeed, all week we’d been talking about this one, arguing about it with Spurs’ fans, selecting the team in our heads and generally making Gilles Grimandi’s ears burn with somewhat unflattering appraisals of his midfield prowess. But, more about that later. Again, the aforementioned, Grimandi deputised for the hamstrung Petit. Manninger did likewise for Seaman and Luzhny stood in for Martin Keown. The big surprise was to see Dennis Bergkamp arse warming the bench along with Ljungberg. With Henry playing up with Kanu and Parlour and Overmars just tucking behind, it was obvious that Wenger was trying to crowd out the middle; the very lack of this proving our undoing earlier in the season at White Hart Lane. The game started bright enough with Kanu getting a snap shot out that Walker only managed to smother. It was also evident that the referee, the ginger weeble himself, the hated Paul Durkin, was again going to run the game using those rules that only appear to exist in those half a dozen atrophied synapses that this dickhead midget uses instead of a real brain. Broadly it goes something like this. Tottenham players can elbow, climb, obstruct and back into any players wearing red shirts. The red shirt goes down and when he finally gets up ginge waves a yellow card at him, peeps like a fat sparrow waiting to be fed and then frog-marches away completely oblivious to the fact that 37,000 people would pay good folding to see the wanker’s bleeding spleen spread out on a butcher’s block. The man just beggars belief. In this climate it was miracle that we were allowed to take the lead. So what about the first goal? Don’t really know, I didn’t see it. Then there was the replay; didn’t see it again. A corner was swung in and Henry moving like lightning flicked it with his head and bingo, it was in. We all duly watched in slomo at half time and you still couldn’t work out how he did it. Miraculous. In-between Tierry’s goal and our missed goal post-mortem there was an awful lot of leaping up and down, punching the sky, showing a couple of fingers to the visiting supporters and singing about the dubious profession of George Graham’s mother. Of course, Spurs pulled one back; a Ginola cross whacked Armstrong on the head and Manninger jumped in eight different directions, none of them the right one, of course. The sight of the Spurs fans leaping around in their nylon tat was royally getting on my bits when Ray Parlour, who basically had the game from hell, fell down in the Spurs area. Didn’t see any point in screaming ‘penalty’ as Durkin was bound not to give it. But he did. Up stepped Henry and 35,000 people covered their faces with their hands and only peeked through the fingers at the last moment. The noise, thunderous and dangerous, told the more fainthearted of us that the kick was good. 2-1. And half time scant seconds later. The second half was very much like the first, until Graham pulled off Sol Campbell. Campbell up to that point had been doing a rather over zealous job of marking Kanu, but now, we assumed crocked, he was gone. And this is where Arsene Wenger demonstrated that even he, brain the size of Jupiter, can still act like a complete divvy given half a chance. The game now needed Bergkamp. Tottenham’s defence was in shreds. So what did Wenger do? Of course, it’s obvious, you take off Henry and replace him with…Nigel Winterburn. Blimey, if you had an old relative that did that you’d pack them off to the twilight home for the loose of bladder and mind mucho sharpish. Absolutely bonkers. The last fifteen minutes were miserable. Tottenham couldn’t believe their luck and came flooding forward. All the Arsenal players looked confused. Grimandi was so confused that he overheated and had to be cooled down with an early bath. It was mayhem out there. But, we did hold on and when the retarded ginger midgo finally peeped we all went up and down scattering loose change around Highbury as we slapped one another on the back, kissed babies and babes and shouted out ‘we beat the scum 2-1.’ Top afternoon. Man of the Match: Tierry Henry. Late update. Monday 20th. The reason we didn't see the Henry goal was because he...er...didn't actually score it. Late last night Chris Armstrong sheepishly admitted that he got the final head to it. So, an own goal. I think Armstrong was better on the wacky baccy.
Arsenal 3 Coventry 0 The first half? Forget it. Pure 1985. Twenty two men suffering from collective amnesia; they could have been playing any sport in the world that involved a round ball, or even one that involved an oval one. To be fair to Coventry they did make life extremely difficult; their flat back eight mopped up most of the Arsenal’s forays. Indeed, the only glorious moment in the first half was a stupendous run down the left wing by Luzhny, who played a deft one-two with Vieira and then had a great shot stopped by the 103 year old Steve Ogrizovic in the Coventry goal. Good old Ogrizovic; patrolled his area like a bloke ambling around on his allotment. He even wasted time when Coventry were one down. Absolutely senile. Still, he did keep them in the game and to be fair, old Mr Potato Head now has serious competition in the ‘Ugliest Man in Coventry’ competition. First there’s Gordon Strachan himself. Take a raw Wall’s sausage, squeeze all the meat up to one end to make a big head shaped knob and then put a tiny ginger wig on it and you have a perfect Gordy; correct skin tone and the same uncooked lips and arsehole mentality that characterises the shrivelled, vitamin deficient pallid Scottish underclasses. Then there’s dear old Colin Hendry; nothing more than Frankenstein in a blonde Bay City Roller fright wig. And last but not least, Hadji. My God, he’s an ugly spud. That chin. He looks like the genetic fruits of a one night stand between Bruce Forsythe and a billy goat. But enough of the opposition, what about the second half? This was more like it. Shots galore. Petit hit a post, Henry ran moved around like summer lightning and Ray Parlour tried to recreate his German hat trick. Thrilling stuff. But still Coventry held out. Their creaking monsters stuck out legs, stretched sinews and ran around like cockroaches in a torch beam. That was until Vieira split their lines that an onside Henry ran onto, found himself in clear air and stroked the ball past a committed Steve Ogrizovic who appeared to get tangled up in a saline drip stand. Arsenal’s pressure was now immense, even allowing for Marc Overmars, who had one of those games where he couldn’t hit the sky if he kicked the ball at it. Not long after Petit curled in a free kick/corner (I forget what, exactly) the ball bobbled in the Coventry area and fell to Grimandi who smacked it in from almost no range at all. Boy, did he look happy, running around like a loony and punching the air just like we used to do at school. A quick word about Luzhny and Grimandi who deputised for Adams and Keown; they did well. By this time Kanu had come on; apparently he was in starting line-up, but it takes him two hours to lace his boots up… Receiving the ball in the middle, Kanu ran (or ambled), with Overmars parallel. Ogrizovic moved towards the Nigerian and this is where Kanu should have squared the ball to the bandy legged Dutchman, who would have walked it into the net. But no, he did his ‘play with the ‘keeper like he’s nothing more than a wounded mouse’ bit. Oggie finally committed and Kanu walked around him and caressed the ball into the net. Not as good as the goal against Deportivo, but it still made us laugh out loud. And there it finished. Good looking Team 3 Genetic Dead Ends and Incontinent Stair Lift Team 0. A lovely 45 minutes and worth putting the clocks forward an hour for. (You did remember, didn’t you?) Man of the Match: Manu Petit. Great passing.
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