November 2001

4.11.01 Arsenal 2 Charlton 4

17.11.01 Tottenham 1 Arsenal 1

25.11.01 Arsenal 3 Manchester United 1

17.11.01

Tottenham 1 Arsenal 1

Nobody except the parents loves an ugly child. And nobody outside the orbit of the ‘N’ postal codes in London can possibly appreciate what this fixture means. This year we had the added spectacle of grown men going to the trouble to have balloons and t-shirts printed up with the word ‘Judas’ written over it. These ‘men’ then spent the whole match waggling their big white balloons and their even bigger white bellies in the direction of a definitely worried looking Sol Campbell. It was fucking pathetic. If some of their parents had deemed to use big white balloons of their own then maybe some of these tossers might not have made it into the world. What is it with Spurs supporters? There’s nothing big or clever about well orchestrated hate campaigns. If Tony Adams had walked out of Highbury and planted himself down The Lane what do you think the reaction of Arsenal supporters would have been? Shock. Yes. Disappointment. Definitely. Then a growing realisation that we didn’t really need him, hadn’t actually liked him that much and never thought he was much cop anyway. Classic defence mechanism. And when he turned up in his new lily-livered livery with its little blue chicken on the front, there would have been a few boos and jeers that ultimately would peter out into surly indifference. And then an eagle eye on the newspapers and TV for any news of a career threatening leg break, sex scandal or anything to pull him down a peg. But not Spurs supporters, they have throw bricks and bottles at the Arsenal coach, chuck bottles at the players and generally behave like they’ve just retreated from Kabul. They’ve always been misguided. They think that they were chosen by the god of football to be the sole team of attractive artists, engaged in a crusade to illuminate the trogs down the other end of the Seven Sisters road as to what the true purpose of football really is. In reality they’re small minded losers hopelessly living off the fume of memories. In the Tottenham lexicon there is no future tense, a bare acknowledgement of the present and an overbearing shadow of the past. They con themselves that they are still a big club. And that’s what hurts. When Campbell, who served out his contract, walked out, they couldn’t take the icy wind of reality that blew through the door he left open. Tottenham supporters are fantasists. Arsenal supporters, may be a bit miserable, but they have two things that the Spurs boys will never have; their feet are firmly on the ground and their tongues are firmly in their cheeks. We can laugh at ourselves, the Lane boys can’t. So join me in laughing long and hard at anyone who supports Spurs. And if one more Tottenham fan says, ‘I don’t care if we win as long as we play attractive football’ show him your photos of Tony Adams holding up a cup with two hands and laugh at the fat man holding up the small white balloon.

Oh yeah. There was a game as well.

Following our fair weather supporter editorial the other week in ‘Talking Balls’ about how we weren’t going to write anymore match reports because we thought the team was a bit smelly, stacks of people wrote to us and said we were a bunch of miserable arses and dead lazy with it. Slightly ashamed that we were so quickly sussed we had a bit of a pow-wow and decided to cut out a few things.

No more post match drinking. Waking up at the end of the tube line covered in copies of Metro and chilli sauce isn’t actually conducive to writing great missives about the beautiful game.

No more moaning. More piss taking is what’s needed.

No more slagging off Wiltord. (We lied about that one.)

So what was the game like? Kind of like pinball but you can use your elbows. Les Ferdinand will always have a job when he leaves football teaching small children how to perform ‘The Birdy Song’. Up, down, up, down, flap, flap, flap. Sheringham continues to model his play on the behaviour of the Borgias and Gus Poyet’s mouth must be on a bit of elastic. If he keeps it open he’s going to swallow something big one day. Keown and Campbell paired up at the back and did a pretty good job. Campbell, in particular, had his best match inside an Arsenal shirt. Ashley Cole returned and there was a snap and fizz to his pace that reeked of someone who was relishing the atmosphere of a local duff-up. Lauren continues to play ‘can you guess what it is yet?’ but seeing as this is the all-new non-moaning us, we won’t say anymore about that. In the middle Parlour and Pires played well and Vieria shone. Wiltord continued to play on a different level to anyone else, which believe me, is a bad thing and Bergkamp was just a teeny bit quiet. Henry, really, really crocked and not just trying to avoid the French Aussie call-up, sat this one out. Nearly forgot old tousled headed Gilles hoofing around the middle of the park. Played well and had one stunning low drive tipped around the post by Sullivan.

These games are never about current form. We all thought we’d lose, that’s how shallow and untrusting we are. But as the game wore on you could see the old familiar patterns of thwarted stalemate stamping themselves on the game. Spurs had chances, we had about the same amount and then Wiltord went on one of his peculiar cross pitch diagonal lopes (‘Silvain Wiltord’ said a mate of mine, ‘the only man with the turning circle of a large semi-detached house.’ There isn’t a football pitch in the world that’s ever going to be big enough for him to finish that manoeuvre.) I digress. He released (lost) the ball Pires stepped up and whacked a 30 yard curler that Sullivan could only palm into the net. Great goal.

Richard Wright then made two world class saves that made his two handed blunder from Gus Poyet’s scissors volley in the final minute all the more galling. The boy’s not having the best of times at the moment. But hey, the new smiley us aren’t moaning.

A draw was about right, but it would have been nice if Campbell’s header on goal in the first half had gone in. Glenn Hoddle went a long way to rehabilitating himself in the eyes of Gooners by his magnanimous arm around Campbell at the final whistle.

Believe it or not we actually enjoyed this one. Bit of passion, bit of commitment, bit of decent defending and a top drawer goal. A Saturday game that kicked off at three. Just like the old days.

Man of the Match: Had to be Sol Campbell. (Just to irritate any of the Scum that can read and operate a computer.)

25.11.01

Arsenal 3 Manchester United 1

After the appalling debacle of the Deportivo game, where the Arsenal spent the whole ninety minutes conducting a daring experiment in applying the rules of hide and seek to a game of football (all hide and no seek, however) we had little hope for this game. Indeed, the in-house bookies at Highbury, a dour, cynical lot, firmly entrenched in reality glumly had the Arsenal at 8-1 for a two one win. Even we thought the odds were generous.

In amongst the real drizzle that filled the air outside the stadium you could just hear the tiny patter of barely heard comments; perhaps this would be the game to fire the spirit of our motley team- a collection of the petulant, the mercenary, the lazy, and in Wiltord’s case, the only player built exactly like a Smart Car, but without the smarts. Perhaps, this would be the game to kick start the season. A rare sighting of a flying pig curtailed that idea quite sharply. So we filed into the ground expecting nothing but a good damping and a sound drubbing.

The first clue that things were slightly askew was the team selection. The enigmatic (as in ‘what the fuck does he do’) Van Bronckhorst had been dropped and to accompany him was the only bloke who turns slower than the little hand on a watch- Silvain Wiltord. Alongside old Pouty up front was Kanu ( or ‘Emwanko’ as the bloke behind me in the North Bank kept calling him during the Man Utd Worthington cup game.) In midfield Ljungberg lined up with Parlour. Now this pairing looks good on paper; it looks like it should work. But then so did that cupboard I bought from MFI. At the end of four sweaty hours I had a shape that was an affront to right angles everywhere and about a million screws left over. Let’s face it, Ray and Fred just don’t go together. Or so we thought. After Richard Wright’s mysterious withdrawal in Coruna, Arsenal were forced to field a ten year old goalkeeper, half mascot, half Rodney Trotter, with a peculiar Ian Walker retro haircut. Stuart Taylor looked like somebody who had just been woken up in front of the telly where he had been playing FIFA 2002 on the Playstation and told to get his kit because he was playing. His understudy on the bench was a still-wet embryo wearing a shirt where the numbers went into treble figures. Still, Taylor, got a rumbustious cheer, whilst the rest of the team got the usual polite guarded ripple.

And so we prepared for ninety minutes of ritualised humiliation.

We like to think that Arsenal’s current problems are largely spiritual with a just a touch of duff tactics and talismanic team selection. (‘We paid good money for that Silvain Wiltord and you’ll wear it every day even if the other boys do take the piss out of you.’) But after about fifteen minutes we realised that our problems are nothing compared to those of Manchester United. If the referee had belonged to the same species as the rest of us, i.e. vertebrates, then he would have carded half a dozen United players in the first quarter of the game. There was more fouling going on than a diarrhoeic dog with a loose arse ring. But something quite incredible was dawning on us; that we were the better side. Parlour and Ljungberg were actually complementing one another. (Not ‘complimenting’ as a mate of mine reckoned- ‘Nice hair Fred, a kind of run over Pepe Le Pew look is it?’ ‘You still look like a wet Spaniel, Ray.’) Anyway, it was all deeply enthralling and for once the boys actually looked like they gave a shit as opposed to just playing it.

Arsenal had a couple of attacks and Barthez fisted away one sweetly struck Henry free kick and, to be fair minded, we were looking a bit sweet too.

And then United scored. A Lauren slip on the wet grass allowed Silvestre to get to the by-line. A straight cross was met by Scholes about three yards out and sided in. The strange purple mottled figure dressed in what looked like a black nylon sack, leaping up and down, gave everyone a nasty turn until we realised it was Sir Alex Ferguson. For the next five minutes heads went down and that blank eyed lumpen look returned. But it was United’s only attack in the first half and the Arsenal realised and then believed that they were truly the better side on the day. Meanwhile, all sorts of interesting things were happening. Upson was having the game of his life against Van Nistlethingy (or ‘Robbie’ from Eastenders as he is affectionately known in the watering holes of north London.) and Campbell was mopping up everything else. Ashley Cole played with fire and pride and gave no indication that this was the same player who spent ninety minutes pretending to be a statue in Spain. Even Lauren cottoned on to the fact that this match was it. Bugger this one up and the Worthington tie against Grimsby becomes the crunch match of the season.

Half time arrived. We never hold out much hope for Wenger’s fiery half time pep talks (‘You must ‘ave belief in the belief of your believing’) or Pat Rice’s (‘Does anyone know how to open deze oranges.’) So we waited in the rain for the inevitable Manchester jam session, where they fluke something and the world’s press fall over themselves in praising them for taking advantage of dumb luck.

Squinting through the sheets of drizzle it was apparent that something else was out on the field, something that no-one has seen at Arsenal for ages. Yep, there it was again. And again. That something was self-belief. United were having a torrid time; Beckham quiet, Veron appalled by it all and a Neville stinking out the stadium. Some clever midfield work, done at quite an astonishing speed, gave the ball to Ljungberg on the corner of the goal area. With one movement, somewhere between a scoop and a twist, he chipped the ball. I saw it go up, dip over Barthez and then for one sweet second saw that between it and the net was only clear air. Freddie has a penchant for scoring against United and the goal snapped something in him as he went roaring around the pitch mouthing things, that to me, didn’t look or sound terribly Swedish.

True to form, we then had our now classic ‘underachieving’ fifteen minutes where we create a zillion chances, make every crap ‘keeper look brilliant and bolster our Carling Opta stats in the ‘team that fucks around more than any other department.’ Honestly, we were murdering them. And we had nothing to show for it.

But, whilst clouds rarely have silver linings, French goalkeepers like their Scottish cousins can be relied upon to be complete dingbats on the odd occasion. Another Arsenal attack had broken down. Barthez was dribbling the ball around his area. He tried to kick it out, place it in the middle, put it on the moon, put Alex Feguson in an oxygen tent with Houllier, who really know what goes through that existential noggin of his. The ball went no further than the front of the area- hit the retreating Henry who turned around, had the presence of mind to accelerate and dribble the ball around the horrified Barthez and whack it into an empty net. Now let’s see that one again. Ho, ho, ho. A telling shot on the big screen had Ferguson turning his back on the whole thing. To be fair, United responded by trying to kick anyone in a red shirt. Several gooners in row z wearing replica strips were kicked by the Nevilles, (or in the Nevilles) I believe.

A few minutes later the aforementioned Neville (though I couldn’t say which one, Liam or Noel, they’re all the same) lost possession badly on the edge of the area. Henry nipped in as Henry does. Barthez, with plenty of time for the smother, fell on the ball, missed it completely and Henry was off. Nip around the dead ‘keeper and whack the ball in. Dead simple. Cue pandemonium. Ferguson’s face was picture, albeit a very scary one.

Fair result? Definitely. Even Ferguson admitted it was a complete disaster and that Arsenal played them off the park. Big of him, I thought. This might be the kick start or it might be a blip, but it was a glorious afternoon and it might the highlight of the season. Nice one.

Man of the Match: Vieira was wonderful, so was Pires and Ljungberg. Campbell played his part but we’re going with Matthew Upson. His first mature centre back performance.