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October 1997 18.10.97 Crystal Palace 0 Arsenal 0 26.10.97 Arsenal 0 Aston Villa
Arsenal 5 Barnsley 0 Arsenal fans are an ungrateful bunch of wretches. Five goals, two of them sublime, top of the league, a sunny day and what are we talking about as we walked up the hill home after the game? The fact that the match ‘was a bit boring.’ Unbelievable, but true. It was good, but not that good. That first half against West Ham has spoilt us. For the first twenty minutes Arsenal floated around in a little cloud: an insubstantial residue that smelt faintly of souvlaki and retsina. The Greeks, had done a good job on the Gunners. Arsenal, looking like a team that had been on a long 18-30 break to Corfu, stumbled around like that perennial pissed Geordie bloke you always meet on holiday; the one covered in sick, wearing only a pair of shorts and one flip flop, who can’t remember where his hotel was. Honestly, we looked well out of it. Barnsley, being a spirited bunch, decided to match the Arsenal in the shit stakes. However, it was the northerners who forced the first real chance when some Dutch bloke (Hertz Van Rental, Billy Advocaat, Dick Van Dyke… I don’t bleeding know) made Seaman wake up and produce a reflex save that I didn’t know he was capable of with all that hair. Twenty five minutes into the game and the somnolent Gunners were just about to change into their jim jams when Winterburn slotted a ball to Bergkamp who was 25 yards out and not that far from the touchline. He ran a bit and whacked off a shot that I thought was a trifle optimistic. I know bugger all about aerodynamics, but the curve on that ball as it slammed into the top corner of the net probably contravened every known law of physics. A wonder goal. Not long after, Bergkamp was at it again. This time two Barnsley defenders went with him. Dennis ran with them, drew the keeper Watson out and then hit it with the outside of his right foot. It was the kind of flick you do when you’re trying to get something off the sole of your shoe. Brilliant. Barnsley, who contributed to their early demise by playing a highly immobile three across the back, just caved in. Overmars had a shot saved, Ray Parlour hit the post and Wrighty skied the rebound. Just before the half time ceremonies of ‘Who’s brought the crap sweets’ coupled with ‘I’m too tight to buy a programme, can I smear my sticky hands all over yours’ who should score, but Essex’s finest, young Ray Parlour, from a simple tap in from Bergkamp’s unselfish pass. In the second half, it was much the same. A Petit corner, found the odd shaped head of substitute David Platt, who scored with a text book, ‘head down for optimum power’ type header. Ian Wright, who by his standards, had a ropey old game, finally came alive with a smart strike. His goal, a classic Wrighty ‘run through and sucker the already committed keeper’, was excellent. The dickheads who sit behind us were screaming at Wrighty, ‘Pass! Pass!’ Tossers. They also thought he ‘milked’ his celebrations. Joyless middle management, politically correct husks. If someone doesn’t punch them then I hope they catch a painful urinary infection. That was it. Petit and Vieira were outstanding as was Adams. Five goals and the ironic cries of ‘Boring, boring Arsenal echoed around Highbury. Well, it was a bit flat and I feel like an ungrateful two-faced git. No way do I want to go back to those eternal nought noughts with pub teams from the East Midlands. In reality the only boring thing was the man of the match. As predictable as Halley’s Comet. Copy, paste, copy, paste, copy, paste, Mr Dennis Bergkamp. Man of the Match: Dennis Bergkamp.
Crystal Palace 0 Arsenal 0 Have you noticed that when the writer of these tiresome, biased reports has the hump, that the whole review just degenerates into a vindictive list? Well, this is no exception. Moan 1. The referee, some piece of invertebrate life called ‘Mr S W Dunn’ deserved to be kicked all the way home to whatever dismal area he crawled out of. I’m quite prepared to do the kicking myself and I’m bloody sure I could boot this piece of shit from here to eternity and he would never notice my size 9 up his harris. Certainly, he spent the whole match not noticing Palace tearing chunks out the Arsenal. Don’t these miserable time servers ever pay attention to their own FIFA directives? I thought the whole point was to protect players? Not book them when they point out that some fucking Lurch of a player has just whipped out their hamstring. Coppell, who has spent most of his life running away from things, clearly saw nothing wrong in living vicariously through his ‘players’ in their attempt to re-enact ‘Zombies: Dawn of the Dead’. Just wait until somebody has a pop at Lambada and listen to his whining tune change On days like this you miss players like Keown. ‘Jackal’ would have sorted out that Nordic icehole, Hermann Hreidarssonn in about a nanosecond. So what happens? Well, Bergkamp gets booked for not being grateful for being kicked senseless by a player who wouldn’t be allowed to graze at Highbury, let alone play and now sits out the Man Utd game. Great. Moan 2. Palace are the worst side I seen this season. Hoof, kick, foul, shove. It’s a shame you can only relegate a team once. Moan 3. Their ground still looks like a display from MFI. Their new stand looks like a fucking pram. Moan 4. Just how many raffles can one team have? Every five minutes they announced a number and some south London simp won a stuffed eagle or a year’s supply of toilet ducks. Drove me bonkers. Moan 5. Two points lost. We could have played until the sun went nova and the score would have been the same. Moan 6. What the hell do you do with the pull out poster of Lombardo in the Palace programme? Simple, screw it up into a ball and kick it all around the garden. Let’s see how they like it. Man of the Match: Nigel Winterburn. Never put a (left) foot wrong.
Arsenal 0 Aston Villa 0 The clocks went back today. Arsenal managed to put theirs back about fifteen years. The years in-between seemed as nothing. The team out there today had all the presence of a cornered Tory politician, armoured only with a fevered tenacity and an old bag of dirty tricks; but enough of Villa, our mob didn’t exactly look sparky either. The passing was awful, the running non-existent and the vision tunnel. It was probably a blessing for Villa to have the premier league’s greatest shaven headed under achiever, Stan Collymore, sitting up in the stands with the other under achievers. All season Villa have been trying to put the ball five feet in front of Stan at about five hundred miles per hour and all season he has been falling over his odd legs and showing that ‘Brian Little’ really is an anagram for ‘little brain’. Today, playing Yorke and Joachim upfront, Villa managed to look more like the dour, tight sods of last season than the free and easy wastrels of this year. It probably wasn’t enough that Arsenal were piss poor; there always has to be a little twist. Enter the miniature red headed referee, Paul Durkin. It’ll be hard to find something more little and twisted than this bloke. Vieira was booked for handling the ball into the net and Seaman, later in the game, for handling (accidentally, look at the vid) outside the area. Curiously, at least three Villa handballs went unpunished. Villa could abuse the Arsenal back four as much as they like (believe me, there’s no aerodynamic reason for Tony Adams to move sidewise in the air.) But, if we went anywhere near their bunch of shirt pullers and lifters, up came Mr Fussy and peeped like a little chicken and waved something yellow around. Seaman had to be sharp on a couple of occasions: Dwight Yorke is no mug and generally the defence acquitted themselves well. Only a couple of typical wayward Dixonisms marred a solid performance. In midfield, we were so pedestrian that a zebra would have been at home. Only when David Platt came on to a few sarky cheers did we look to have the right combination of vision and combativeness. I wish people would get off Platty’s back. He’s not ideal, but we do seem to be playing teams that he can excel against. Up front we were so lacking in leadership that we might as well played William Hague. Wrighty continues to labour. If he carries on like this he’ll probably catch the eye of Wilkins and Keegan down at Fuggem. Bergkamp looked like he had already started his suspension, leaving just a blonde husk to run around a bit and look cool. The second half was much, much worse. We made Villa look robustly average and Mr Durkin, being little and red, decided that he hated anything that was big and red ie. The entire Arsenal team. Petit, booked for a body check, quite inexplicably found himself being given a red card for what looked like an attempt to stop the referee running into him. I felt like running down and thumping the little shit. Perhaps then he’d realise the consequences of his actions. But as my mate Dave pointed out, 1. By the time I’d have got onto the pitch Durkin would have been in his light blue Fiesta, doing twenty up the motorway, listening to his brass band tapes, on his way home to Little Shitbag, or wherever he lives and 2. I hit like a girl, a big girl, but still a girl. You would have thought out of 38,000 people that somebody would have been brave enough to take the law into their own hands. Nothing much else happened. Wrighty, like the Palace game, warmed up as the afternoon wore on, Anelka came on and looked ok and Bergkamp looked ko’ed. Perhaps the enforced rest of the suspension will do him good. A terrible afternoon. Everyone went home with the hump and a burning need to find a small ginger person and ram a whistle up somewhere you could only find with a Proctologist and an endoscope. Man
of the Match: Patrick Vieira.
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