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MAY 2000 9.5.00 Arsenal 3 Sheffield Wednesday 3
Arsenal 2 West Ham 1 There’s three things I really hate. (Actually, there’s three things I hate today, in particular.) One, football mascots shaped like dinosaurs, eagles, foxes or Sonic the bloody hedgehog, that go around ruffling the hair of the poor disabled sods that sit in the front row, forcing theatrical handshakes onto them, capering like fucking loons and generally undermining whatever vestige of dignity the people in the wheelchairs have managed to hang onto. Secondly, the thick blokes who sit behind us are beginning to give me the royal hump. Shouting out that Kanu was ‘rubbish’ and he should ‘stop following’ the West Ham player who was clearly man marking him marked a new nadir in inane comments from the teachers and social workers who occupy Row D of the East Stand. I think it was the one with thirteen wobbly chins who looks like a suckling pig that said that. And thirdly, I really hate it when West Ham supporters call themselves ‘cockneys.’ These fucking scrotal spillings from some Essex sprawl housing estate should be made to study the A to Z and be made to point exactly where Bow bells actually are. For the uninitiated it’s Mary Le Bow near Bart’s hospital not that bloody traffic island in the east end that is also, quite spookily called Bow too. You may have gathered that this is a bit of a raw nerve; see if you can guess where we were all born. No, it’s not Essex. Mind you, there’s a couple of thing I really love. One of them is stuffing West Ham in the very last minute. To give credit where it’s due, West Ham played pretty well. Having half their defence decimated by injury seemed to have no effect on them whatsoever. In fact, they looked fast, resolute and were a lot more accurate in finding their midfield than the Arsenal were in the first half. Wenger had piddled with the team slightly. Keown was announced but by the time he trotted out of the tunnel he looked exactly like Luzhny. Well OK then, it was Luzhny. Petit was rested and Bergkamp continued his partnership with Kanu. West Ham played with Kanoute in parallel with Di Canio and they looked pretty good together. Arsenal’s big problem was getting overrun in midfield. Vieira looked like the bloke at the end of Dawn of the Dead; one bullet left and 500 dripping zombies banging on the door. Parlour and Overmars were mysteriously swapped for long periods causing a hole the size of Kent and Adams looked a bit uncomfortable having to spend inordinate amounts of time pointing to where he wanted Luzhny to go. Arsenal had so much of the ball on some occasions that I haven’t seen that much possession play since I was at primary school. And of course West Ham scored first; somewhere about four minutes before half time. Dixon failed to make a tackle on the by-line, the ball was whacked at Seaman, who made a good reflex save, but unfortunately steered the ball back out to Di Canio who stroked it in simply. The mockneys in the Clock End went batshit; blowing bubbles, having a knees up, sewing pearly button slogans on their whistles, etc. It went on and on and it was bloody horrible. The second half was even more one sided. The Arsenal played keep ball until they ran into the massed Hammers defence, or were fouled or both. Arsenal’s attacks, bereft of the speed of Henry, were great, lumbering things that usually ended with Ray Parlour vying with NASA as the most prolific entity for putting small round things into orbit around the Earth. God, it was frustrating. At some point Petit came on. Dixon went off and amazingly managed to hit the tunnel instead of ending up in Row Z. Luzhny dropped to right back and Manu slotted next to Vieira. Game on. Twenty minutes to go and Overmars ran onto a terrific ball, took the defender with him, completely overran it, came back, checked and squirted the ball just inside the post at the squeakiest of angles. Looked fab on the replay. West Ham’s bottle went a bit now. Arsenal flooded forward with great purpose, but zero menace and the clock moved onto the big 90. People were streaming out around us and suddenly we found ourselves sitting in a half empty stadium watching the West Ham fans jump and down and the West Ham players roll the ball around for a bit of well earned time wasting. A last ditch throw found Petit, about thirty five yards out. He took the ball down in one movement and then just walloped it. Somewhere on its flight it hit something (a West Ham head, maybe?) soared up and forward and miraculously ended up in the far corner of the net. Did we go mental or what? Actually, we weren’t the only ones. Paulo Di Canio managed to surround the referee all on his own shouting, gesturing and looking utterly, utterly bonkers. Can’t for the life of me see his problem; super goal. He was booked and shortly after and Sinclair was sent off what looked like nothing and suddenly Paul Durkin is looking to blow the final whistle and get himself a police escort off the pitch. We all waited to see the goals again and then trudged up Avenall Road in near silence; our throats shredded by the last ten minutes. Blimey. What a blinding evening. A little bit of everything. Lucky? Nah, blood and sweat and a whole bucket of tears for the Dick Van Dyke cockneys. Man of the Match: We forgot to mention that Tony Adams was magnificent.
Arsenal 2 Chelsea 1 As you get older you develop some alarming medical conditions; growing stomach, shrinking testes and adjacent appendage, hair that migrates from the top of the head to the underside of the ear lobes and half a dozen other shrinkage’s and blossomings that ultimately give you the appearance of a badly scrawled kids’ drawing. Probably the worst aliment that some of us are going through at the moment is called ‘feeling sorry for Chelsea.’ Everybody, it seems, could see where Chelsea were headed, apart from the Chelsea supporters. (No surprise there then.) Vialli is a decent bloke; great player, but a completely indifferent manager. He’s managed to create a team that adds a new dimension to the term ‘one dimensional’. Now there’s a paradox. Recruiting a team mainly composed of your old mates is a smelly piece of short term management barely seen nowadays outside of Whitehall. Flicking through an address book of your cronies is no substitution for having an eye for the young, the unsung, the forgotten and the slightly damaged goods that some managers are unnecessarily wary of. People laughed when Wenger shipped in the crocks and the underachievers. But who’s laughing now at Petit, Vieira, Overmars and Kanu? Chelsea’s big chance was last season. Everybody knows that. Buying older players gives you a shorter time to get it right, not a longer one. And looking at some of the Chelsea players today, you couldn’t stop yourself thinking at the Blues supporters, mate, you’ve got more passengers than Connex SE. Chelsea’s future, it appears, relies on the spiky talents of Dennis Wise and the peculiar Jody Morris, a substandard Stephen Hughes clone; an appallingly average example of what passes for home grown talent nowadays in west London. As for the rest; well, Zola’s a one man team who has always been treated badly by every Chelsea manager he’s played for and the one Blues player most Arsenal fans would give their rapidly shrinking right testicle for, Gus Poyet, was left varnishing the bench with his sweaty arse on an amazingly sweaty afternoon. Anyway, enough of the fading fortunes of London’s second club, what about the capital’s premier club? When the sun shines at Highbury at comes out like a laser; babies boil like microwave meals, bald heads turn the colour of beetroots and the East Standers, full in the sun, squint like Japanese snipers into the glare where the pitch used to be. And yes, some people were still wearing quilted car coats. Indeed, in the post match inquest, Vialli said that one of the reasons they lost was that is was ‘too hot.’ What’s he think Desailly and George Weah are, Eskimos? Arsenal, quite unbelievably, nearly fielded as full strength side. Apart from the absent Keown and the damaged Ljungberg, it was a good line-up, even sporting a fully fit Henry. Which was a bit embarrassing as I spent most of last week persuading various mates to remove Henry from their Fantasy League sides as he ‘didn’t have snowball’s chance of playing.’ What do I know? I think I’ll stay off work tomorrow and watch the hair grow on me lobes while my colleagues trash the office a deface the Dennis Bergkamp poster (again.) Arsenal began the game well. Petit and Vieira treated like Dennis Wise like a bluebottle, Adams was a solid wall and Grimandi was nothing short of a revelation. Up front, Bergkamp, though frequently swamped, looked useful and watching Henry was like trying to grip water and follow lightning with the naked eye. Masterful. And Chelsea? Well, to be honest, they really didn’t look arsed. Apart from Wise and Zola, they looked poor. But it still took a while for Arsenal to penetrate the final third of the pitch. Overmars was causing problems and the long balls from midfield were making LeBeouf and Desailly look like Little and Large. Indeed, one through ball found Henry in space with just the Chelsea keeper to beat. There was no way he could miss, but of course he did; Ed De Goey made a terrific save with his legs. At this point, the invertebrates who sit behind us were bellowing that Henry was ‘rubbish’ and he’d ‘never get another chance like that.’ He must have good ears that Thierry Henry because two minutes later a long ball from Vieira found Henry in exactly the same position, but this time guarded by the blue shirted centre back double act. Thierry ran it wide, pulled the backs with him, held it, ran, held it, turned, took it too far, held it, turned again and with us screaming at him to shoot, held it even longer before nonchalantly rifling it between De Goey and the post. A goal, indeed. The second half was much the same. An early knock on from Bergkamp found Henry on the left, he ran then twisted, then shoulder charged the encroaching Desailly and stuck the ball between De Goey’s legs to make it two-nil. The North Bank went ballistic. After that it was party time. The Chelsea supporters went quiet and the Arsenal taunted them with an impromptu rendition of, ‘You got Chris Sutton, you got Chris Sutton.’ They hated that. And then with Kanu limbering up on the touchline we all launched into, ‘Here’s that Kanu again.’ They weren’t too keen on that either, several of them having nerve clusters big enough to remember him coming off the bench earlier in the season and whacking in a cheeky hat trick. Indeed, Kanu came on and spent about twenty minutes trying the same cheeky shots from the corner flag, just to rub it in. The big problem was Wenger taking off Petit. Chelsea brought on Deschamps and Poyet and suddenly Arsenal were under the cosh. The midfield became bereft of red and white and Chelsea for the first time in the afternoon began to look like a team. Poyet’s goal, a near post flyer through a crowd of players was a bit of class. The last ten minutes of the game lasted just over an hour; I think we were sweating inside as well as out. When the whistle went we all leapt about like we had actually won something, rather than just having seen off a bunch of old egotistical foreign mercenaries. There’s nothing like watching Chelsea for ninety minutes to help make your mind up about feeling sorry for them. Doctor, I think I’m cured. Now if you could only help with this disappearing willy problem of mine… Man of the Match: Not easy. Vieira? Grimandi? It’ll have to be Henry.
Arsenal 3 Sheffield Wednesday 3 I bet the scouts from Galatasaray spent most of the first half trying to figure out whose testimonial game they had stumbled onto at Highbury tonight. Arsenal had all the excuses under the sun for reinventing football as a non contact sport, seeing as a flaccid Leeds performance had already secured the runners-up spot for the Gunners, but Sheffield played with all the enthusiasm of the freshly dead. But, that, as they say, was the first half. Going into the break (and my God, we needed it) the boys barely had their noses in front. A weird Lee Dixon block/cross/pullback that inexplicably ended up in the interior of the Sheffield side netting was the only thing that separated the men from the droids. In the second half Bergkamp appeared and Nigel Winterburn, captain for the night, was subbed by Silvinho. On the touchline we could see the ridiculous Peter Shreeve jerking around like a electrocuted muppet, looking every inch an ex Spurs manager. The match itself seemed to be building up to average when Wednesday brought on Sibon (a twenty foot foreigner who looked suspiciously like Chris Sutton) and De Bilde (who looked like he just escaped from the set of Papillon.) I think I blinked three times and every time my eyelids closed Wednesday ran up the pitch, mugged Seaman and stuck one/two/three in the net. Unbelievable. By now, with twenty minutes left, me, the other Gooners and the team itself, began to develop a small hump that was rapidly swelling into a full scale strop. The travelling Wednesday brass band (trumpets, cornets and an instrument that was called, I believe, a ‘Shutthatfuckindrumup’) was well into an off key version of ‘The Great Escape’ theme. And then Silvinho remembered that he was Brazilian. He caught the ball on the left wing, ran a bit and then hit it like he’s been promising all season. The ball described a narrow parabolic curve and went with such power that it would have taken out any buildings that were in its path. Truly, a goal from the southern hemisphere. Minutes later Henry got the ball in his favourite position (sidey sort of run on - you know) and rifled the ball in by the near post. 3-3. And that was that. We waved goodbye to the Owls supporters, watched our mob do a lap of honour and trotted off to the pub. It was all a bit mechanical and a little juiceless. Roll on Copenhagen. Man of the Match: Silvinho.
Newcastle 4 Arsenal 2 Well, what did you expect? A team of youths and reserves; though Kanu scored a great goal from a long range chip. Maltz waltzed the other. Also England’s most overrated player (Alan Sheerluck) scored a goal that was apparently important if you’re interested in statistics. Piffle. Man of the Match: Young Cole looked good, but Kanu for the chip.
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