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November 1997 22.11.97 Sheffield Wednesday 2 Arsenal 0 30.11.97 Arsenal 0 Liverpool 1
Derby 3 Arsenal 0 This result has been on the cards for weeks. Wenger’s inability to mix and match and think in a tactical dimension has finally been exploited by Jim Smith of all people. The first half was all Arsenal, but without Bergkamp there was no urgency and very little penetration. Wrighty did his best with the rapidly disintegrating Anelka, whose quality of passing bordered on the shocking. I don’t believe in reincarnation but Anelka is giving every sign of being Kevin Campbell reborn in a slim, French, teenage bod. Vieira alone, showed any sign that wages are there to be earned on the pitch, rather than picked up on the way to the photo shoot or the chinwag with uncle Des at the Beeb. It was his clever run that led to Arsenal’s best first half chance, a penalty. Wrighty’s shot, solid and hard, quite inevitably, hit the bar. Anelka squandered the rebound with a limp header. Wrighty looked daggers at him; the wastefulness of youth versus the precious one-off opportunities that a 34 year old knows are becoming rare as a Tottenham clean sheet or an Arsenal goal. In the second half Arsenal tried their one paced, blinkered football again, obviously hoping that Derby would just roll over and play dead because our team cost more than theirs. Jim Smith, meanwhile, had shuffled his pack of jokers and came up with a combination that made mincemeat of the Arsenal defence. And this is exactly what Wenger cannot or will not do. If you can’t dictate the pace of a game, you have to change your plan. Derby caught us on the break again and again. With the lack of a controlling Ince type figure the Gunners were stretched, run ragged and hung up to dry. If the Derby goals were unspectacular, they were at least the products of moves that relied on speed and pace; both things that our boys are having increasing trouble with. You would have thought that Arsenal playing with a haemorrhaging defence that Wenger would have shored it up. Something Keown shaped would have been most welcome. But no, off comes Winterburn and on comes Chris Wreah. There’s a three foot hole in the fucking dike but rather than stick a finger in it, you piss off home for your tea. Ludicrous tactics. The last two games we’ve been blaming referees (too little, too ginger), the weather (too bright, too cold) and anything else we can think of for Arsenal’s poor showing. However, the truth lays somewhere between a lightweight midfield (Vieira working his plums off and everyone else watching him) a defence that inexplicably stands still before the music stops and an attack that’s gelling as well oil and water. Couple this with Messieur Wenger’s inability to get beyond track one of the ‘How to Play Football’ CD and our exciting season looks like it reached its peak during that first half at West Ham. Derby weren’t brilliant but in the tactical department they were light years ahead of the Gunners. Years ago when I was going through one of my more mentally ill phases, I tried to teach my brother’s Alsation to play chess by telepathy. I stuck his front paws on the table and tried to beam the moves at him. He sniffed at bit, bent his head over the board, looked almost human for a second and then ate his own queen. God knows why I’m telling you this, but every time I try to think logically about Wenger, I just see this long face, weird hair arrangement and wet nose pushing pieces around with no rhyme and reason. Good eh? 180 minutes of footy and only two points to show for it. No midfield, no Bergkamp, no goals, no idea, november. Man of the Match: Patrick Vieira. PS. It’s not all doom and gloom, after all, next week it’s Moan Utd. Remember how the West Ham fans wound up Beckham about his ‘relationship’ with ‘posh’ spice? I’m looking forward to that. Also having a pop at the disgusting Ryan Giggs, who can see nothing wrong with hitting women in the face, I’m definitely up for giving him some grief over that. Funny how the private lives of Man Utd players don’t attract the same sort of press coverage as that of the Arsenal players? Let’s all go along to Highbury next week and wind up Giggsy, Himmler in goal and old Taggert. We might not win on the pitch but we’ll kill ‘em on the terraces.
Arsenal 3 Man Utd 2 We were playing this game walking up Avenall Road after the game, called ‘Fergie’s Five Fav Excuses.’ Anyone can play. You assume the persona of a dour East coast Scottish Presbyterian, stand around on a touchline in a bad car coat, point a lot, try retain a purplish demeanour and scream at the top of your lungs. Then, when things don’t go to plan, you go whinging to the press, laying out in clipped tones with an undercurrent of barely controlled fury all the excuses you can think of. Five points for a new one, but only two for a recycled gripe. Well, we reckon they’ll be: 1."It was definitely a penalty in the first half. The referee is blind/stupid/Noel Gallagher." 2."Andy Cole was fouled constantly/is carrying a ‘strain’" (I didn’t know cocaine came in ‘strains’). 3."Europe took its toll on us." Blah, blah, blah. It goes on and on. The truth is old Rab Ferguson and his team of spice boys, lab rats, woman beaters, drug addicts and nazis were well and truly stuffed. We may not have enough depth to win the league but we still have enough gumption to see off a team that is largely an invention of the media. Slaughtering teams like Barnsley, Sheffield Wednesday and that mob of Dutch canal dredgers doesn’t make you Brazil. All week gooners have put up with no-nothing, fair weather, armchair tossers trying to work out how many goals Man Utd would put past Arsenal before they declared. I’ve smiled, nodded and gritted my teeth and take all this condescension when all I wanted was to scream into their faces, ‘WE’RE GOING TO WIN. SO FUCK OFF.’ One of my mates, a Forest supporter, was the only one who had that look. He knew. People who know football, who watch hundreds of matches a year, everything from park five a sides to some Puerto Rican toss on at 5 in the morning, they know. Mind you, he said we’d beat Derby. Still, taking up my seat, for the second home match on the trot as a fully unpaid crowd extra for Murdoch’s footy circus, I couldn’t help wondering if my gut feeling of the certainty of winning wasn’t due to the fact that I have a big gut rather than a big brain. No Bergkamp, no Petit and Bould on the bench, Grimandi being the preferred beanpole in the middle. The big surprise was Overmars. The papers missed that one. The fact is, since Marc has been out the team Arsenal haven’t won. I’m still not sure whether his playing is vital or talismanic. But, heh, don’t knock rabbit’s feet if they work. The extra width would be useful. It was good to have him back. The midfield was predominantly Vieira and Platt, whilst up front was the team of Wrighty and Anelka, a pairing as harmonious as Leslie Ash and Lee Chapman on a good day. It was a fine start by Arsenal. It looked like they were having their ‘good twenty minutes’ quite early on. Overmars caused problems for all things called Neville and Parlour forget that he’s supposed to be crap by playing a blinder. At their end, Scholes was a royal pain, turning on a sixpence to dispense balls through a midfield as congested as a consumptive’s lungs. Andy Cole, a shadowy slimy thing, wriggled and squirmed, but no one was impressed. I was more impressed when he raked his studs down the leg of Lee Dixon, right in front of the referee. I don’t suppose Alec Ferguson saw that one, though. Meanwhile, Overmars was terrorising the left. He ran, feinted, had a shot blocked that squirted out to Anelka who picked his way delicately around the edge of the box and let fly a vicious shot that beat the Uberlumpenpigfacegoalie at the near post. 1-0 to the light side of the Force. The East Stand went bonkers. After an age when the hubbub finally died and we surfaced from the communal hugathon and Beckham baiting to see another Arsenal attack end in a rebound that bounced out like a dopey, friendly dog and fall at the feet of Patrick Vieira. The way he was sizing up to hit it, I feared for the clock at the clock end. It had sky written all over it; we’re talking firmament, not television, by the way. As it looped over the heads of the United defence, I saw the big, blond mug of Himmler, in goal. He got a half salute to the ball but its momentum carried it past his white paw. Escape to Victory, or what. 2-0. Amazing. Of course, the Gunners went to sleep then. Their first goal, a header from Sheddy Terringham was a rotten bit of ball watching. Their second, was one of those lightning Man Utd bits of interplay, all back heels and switches. If anyone else in the world had scored it, it would have been blinding. Of course, it was the man with the Richard III haircut who got it, Teddy Breughal. That was the first half. Apart from Winterburn getting hit by something thrown by some Manky and Hitler getting beaned by a five pee or something. Next time Clock End if you’re going to throw things at Manchester United’s goalkeeper make sure its bigger and its got a fucking sharp point on it. If you think I’m condoning pointless, loutish behaviour, then you’re wrong; I would never support Schmeichel in anything. There was also some very heavy handed policing in the Clock End, some real Poll Tax riot throwback stuff. The second half was always going to be a bit of a stand off. Vieira failed to appear after half time; Bouldy came on instead. Wenger looked like he was shoring up the back. Good decision, we thought. United faffed and fannied for a while but got nowhere, largely thanks to a superb performance from David Platt. Cometh the man, cometh the 45 minutes. He was a revelation. 1989 vintage Platty. Overmars was still making United’s prepubsecent defence wet itself and Parlour, well let’s just say that I don’t believe one player can improve so much in six months; I reckon he’s been replaced by a pod. I’ve seen ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’. I reckon the real Ray Parlour is trussed up in a sack in an allotment shed somewhere near Romford. The only dark cloud was Ian Wright. He’s becoming like that bloke in the Noel Coward plays who only has one line but continually fluffs it. Still, he did have one shot tipped over the bar. Maybe the play’s not over yet. The blonde pig between the sticks kept out Arsenal time after time. Anelka went off, Wreh came on. I’m unsure about the sequence of things, but a long corner flashed into the United area and everyone went up for it. I remember thinking how surprised I was to see David Platt higher than anybody else. He may have a head shaped like gooseberry but it was his bonce that guided the ball like a bullet into the top right corner of the net above the peculiar leaping goalfrau. 3-2. Tears shed, voices lost, glasses bent, strange men kissed. Outstanding. The last couple of minutes were spent chewing fingernails down as far as the watch strap. Wreh missing two sitters that Stephen Hawking would have buried didn’t help, either. So, we go second on goal difference, one point behind United. I can’t talk, see or find any remains of the aforementioned nails on my bit fingers, but I am monstrously happy. My favourite Sunday this year. Absolutely nothing to moan about, eh, Alec? Man of the Match: David Platt.
Sheffield Wednesday 2 Arsenal 0 When that well known orange skinned, shredded wheat haired mangler of the English language, Ron Atkinson, returned swathed in camel hair and reeking of Paco Rabanne to Hillsborough earlier this month, we knew our number was up. Just like last season, when Frank Clarke left Nottm Forest and they shovelled in Stuart Pearce, we knew deep in our marrow that the planets were aligned against us and that whatever Arsenal did it was bound to be early doors for the boys. What we couldn’t foresee was the complete wretchedness of the Arsenal performance. Since we been doing these reports (a season and a half of rabid biases) we’ve always managed to salvage something and have a bit of a laugh or a bit of a pop, but today has just left us all seriously depressed. Perhaps the Arsenal could badge a few tubes of Prozac and knock them out through the shop. Sheffield has never been the best place that God created and to go up there and lose to a team of Pleat’s fagged out old mercenary whores hurts more than you’ll ever know. It doesn’t help that Arsenal put in a showing so inept that anyone who saw this horror of a game should qualify for free counselling sessions. I felt like singing, ‘Are you Tottenham in disguise’ at one point. The first half looked like one of those pointless WWI battles, all entrenchment and mud; but not ‘lions led by donkeys’ but more ‘slugs led by snails.’ Beating Manchester United is fabulous, but meaningless if you can’t hammer Sunday park sides like Wednesday. That first half must have been six months long. The whole grisly half culminated in Grimandi, under no pressure whatsoever, putting a pass back to Seaman, so underhit that a well aimed fart would have given it more poke. Appalling. Of course Wednesday ran it down. Of course they scored. A deeply crap first half with Wrighty looking like a blind man trying to catch a bus and Ray Parlour so embarrassed by his team mates that he feigned an injury so he could have his bath early and not bathe with people who stank to high heaven. Forget the second half. Wednesday played better, Arsenal played statues. What a load of rub. Next week it’s Liverpool. Seeing as today they lost 0-1 at home to Barnsley, I reckon they’ll sack Roy Evans, have a new bloke in by Thursday and we’ll get beat again by that new broom. Men of the Match: The thousands of Gooners who traipsed all the way to Yorkshire to see this piffle.
Arsenal 0 Liverpool 1 The last of the home Sunday games this year saw us all in fine spirits. Fortified by a 101% proof bottle of Wild Turkey and a big bar of Galaxy chocolate we were ready to indulge in our favourite sport; namely, kicking a scouser while he’s down. Even the highly charged rumours that Arsenal have decided finally to move from Highbury hardly made a dent on our state of advanced softness. Ho, ho, ho, we thought. What a splendid early chrissy pressy; a weakened Liverpool side, sans Ince and Fowler, full of big blokes with unpronounceable names and Roy Evans about to be booted back into the boot room. Excellent. Don’t bother to wrap the three points, we’ll eat them now. Well, Arsenal had their blinding ten minutes at the beginning of the first half with Tony Adams, of all people, getting in with the shots. And that, my dear Arsenal fans, was that. What followed was a before and after, but without the after. Bergkamp flitted in and out leaving a vague smell of edam in his wake, Stephen Hughes, exiled to the right wing, skied ball after ball and Lee Dixon chopped legs, made divots fly and generally huffed and puffed in that peculiar Dixonish way. On the other side of the pitch Winterburn, looking more like Rumpelstiltskin every day, hopped around on his one foot and Petit made pinpoint passes to anybody with a scouse accent. The big tactic of pumping high balls onto the midget heads of Wreah and Wright, for some peculiar reason, proved somewhat ineffective. Keown and Adams played head tennis and Liverpool picked up everything in midfield. Only Overmars played with the passion that an Arsenal shirt warrants. Even with a hit squad of Liverpool players snapping at his heels he tried all the considerable tricks at his disposal, but inevitably ended up hemmed in by a bunch of scallies. And Ian Wright? Well, he’s looking a forlorn figure and even though he must take some of the blame (at one point a Liverpool player ran past him with the ball. All he needed to do was stick a foot out. Wright just watched him run by. Running is for boys in plimsolls and foxes, apparently) still, he is not getting any decent balls at all. With very little to work with he’s looking more like the Wrighty that plays for England than the Highbury hotshot. Quite frankly, he’d get better service from the girls on the pick-a-mix counter at Woolworths. What really rankled was that Liverpool were not that good. Apart from McManaman, who was a one man team and scored a spectactular, though flukey goal, they were a bit dour and a bit poor. If you want to blame anyone for their goal then blame the bloke who sits behind me; he was the one who threw the bloody ball back. Boy, did he get a mouthful. On this showing Arsenal will find it difficult to compete with any team, let alone the elite. Suddenly the problem of increasing the stadium capacity disappears. Why bother with a new stadium when you can play shit and go back to crowds of 15,000? Man of the Match: Marc Overmars.
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