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1998/99 Qualifying League Bit 30.9.98 Arsenal 2 Panathinaikos 1 21.10.98 Arsenal 1 Dynamo Kiev 1 4.11.98 Dynamo Kiev 3 Arsenal 1 9.12.98 Panathinaikos 1 Arsenal 3
Lens 1 Arsenal 1 Noisy lot the French. Then I suppose once you’ve won the World Cup you’re entitled to bang the drum a bit. Quite simply, we should have won this one. Overmars’ superb goal from a laser accurate pass from Petit was deft, European and total quality. It even made up for the gloopy mayonnaise they put on your chips out here. Lens (pronounced Lons) gave Arsenal (pronounced champions) a real run for their francs. The play flowed both ways: bars, posts and legs were hit with exciting regularity. Their goal, from a set piece, right at the end of the game was a bit of a heartbreaker, but the result was probably just about fair. Overmars and Anelka were both outstanding and I think on the wide acres of Wembley they’ll mow down all before them. Patience mais freres. Remember it’s a league now, not it’s a knockout. Man of the Match: Marc Overmars.
Arsenal 2 Panathinaikos 1 There’s nothing quite like a home game and this was nothing like a home game. Two hours to get to Wembley through the commuter hell of north London, including being evacuated from King’s Cross and two hours to get home, including a tube journey of sardine proportions where we sampled the dubious delights of 100,000 Gooner armpits. Still, it had its novelty value, like a hard boiled egg eating contest or how many bulldog clips you can put on your testicles before blood starts coming out of your ears. Hard work I’d call it. Then two hours in a dinky seat with a vague view of the pitch surrounded by yuppies who’d never seen a fucking game in their lives (yes, men wearing England shirts for God’s sake.) Perfect evening. And it rained. Then the icing on the cake: playing on one of the widest pitches in Christendom with one of your key wide players, Ray Parlour, injured, and suddenly you’re staring at his obvious replacement, Remi Garde (!) with a look somewhat akin to someone wearing suede shoes tramping through a field of diarrhoeric cows. Still Arsenal started brightly. Adams steered a header wide of the Greek goal and Overmars was torturing some poor bloke called Kostas something, who was wearing like the rest of his compatriots, some kind of weird Celtic cast-off kit. It was bubbling along nicely (no pun intended.) However, ‘Beware of Greeks Bearing Grit’. Like PAOK last season this lot were prepared to bide their time. They let Arsenal run themselves ragged and the when the boys cocked up they were in fast, methodically and silently. Very ungreeklike. I know I was there last week. A completely chaotic nation that spends its whole time shouting to one another over the noise of a million mopeds and that fucking Zorba music. And moving slower than a conga of wrinkles at the post office. The team, however, had a tidy midfield with a sticky propensity for hanging onto the ball that proved difficult to dislodge. Arsenal kept to their plan admirably; both Winterburn and Anelka had difficult chances that they only just fluffed. Suddenly, just when it was looking like a fruitless evening Overmars had a shot that the keeper failed to hold, the ball came out to Anelka who blasted it at the net from about three yards. Some Greek bloke sat on the line and on the ball and somehow got it clear using just the power of his sphincter muscles. Well, that’s what it looked like from where we were sitting. Half time, 0-0. The Greeks came out and played a bit of footy that had us all worried. Bergkamp was a concern; looking white and insubstantial he floated about like a little cloud trailing a faint odour of edam. The rest of the team though were playing their socks off. After about an hour, the Panathinaikos keeper, who had the whiff of dodgy about him, fluffed a cross. Vieira waved his limbs about a bit and the ball fell to Adams who thumped it into the net in a no-nonsense two veg and meat, thoroughly English way. Brilliant. The crowd went potty. Panathinaikos got a bit panicky then but a few minutes later Petit floated a killing ball across the goal and there was Martin Keown heading it across the face of the Greek goal and smacking the inside of the post to angle it in. That was it, really. Arsenal gave away a soppy free kick on the edge of their area and the Greeks got the softest consolation goal ever about four minutes from time and we spent the long remaining minutes cacking ourselves and amusing one another by singing, ‘We’re supposed to be at home’. A great result and a good game. It put us all in a mellow mood. Even the armpits on the way home smelt of victory. Man of the Match: Tony Adams.
Arsenal 1 Dynamo Kiev 1 Me, I’m gutted. It’s one in the morning, I’ve just got back from Wembley, liberated some volcanic slurry from the microwave, drank a couple of life giving beers and watched Man United put six past the worst defence I’ve ever seen outside of one of those mugs in a Southampton shirt. Arsenal, tonight were outplayed by an excellent Kiev side. They were strong, purposeful and had an almost telepathic awareness of where one another were. Arsenal, however, without the injured Petit and the suspended Vieira, looked like a ragged fringe of red with a sodding great hole in the middle. The evening , however, started off with the usual unreasonable expectations. Just getting to Wembley was another unlooked for adventure. 70,000+ Gooners trying to get across London, 50,000+ Hindus celebrating the festival of light in Neasden and a couple of thousand of ambling families intent on seeing Mickey Mouse on Ice at Wembley Arena (or should that be ‘Walt on Ice?) all trying to funnel into the same square acreage. Potty. It’s all very well for David Dein to say that everyone should get to Wembley an hour and a half before the game, but he doesn’t have to fight his way through the elephant headed god worshippers and the mouse headed god worshippers. And he doesn’t have to work for a living, in the sort of job where they don’t take too kindly to you bunking off early for the footy. Yes, we were promised, ‘extravagant pre match entertainment’ but to us it looked suspiciously like some old trout in a white mini pretending to be Tina Turner, some bloke Rod Stewarting and some sad fruit who thought he was Freddie Mercury. If David Dein thinks that this constitutes ‘entertainment’ then the sky must be a very funny colour in Chardonnay World or whether it is he lives. The match, though, was a killer. Kiev demonstrated how and why they’ve beaten the best in Europe over the past few years. Arsenal were horribly stretched at times; both Parlour and Hughes were called upon to do some in-depth defending. Our shots at their goal were few and far between. On the odd occasion when we got a breakaway either Overmars disappeared into a Russian forest of legs or Bergkamp a tactical cul-de-sac or Anelka just that usual rabbit hole that he seems to spend most of the game in. However, it was Anelka who came closest in the first half, holding the entire Ukraine at bay whilst he blasted over the bar. The second half was basically a Russian invasion. We amused ourselves by singing ‘Red Armee, Red Armee’ and then watching the Russian supporters look nervously over their shoulders going, ‘where? Where?’ Overmars was unlucky with a goalbound whipped shot that a Russian intercepted. And that was it from the boys in red. Until. Until Dixon, who had been having a git of a night, received a pass on the right wing from a broken down Kiev attack, ran down the touchline, crossed beautifully only to find a rampaging Bergkamp, who held off a defender and scored a wonder, with his head. God, you should have heard the Wembley roar. I had goosebumps on my goosebumps. A pure, soaring adrenal moment. Somewhere in all this (and I can’t remember if it was before or after the goal) a Kiev forward was bang through on the Arsenal, Adams ran after him, drew up alongside and executed one of the most beautiful tackles I’ve ever seen. Watch it on the end of season video and marvel. One of the greatest football moments ever. Oh yeah, Kiev had a goal disallowed for offside that the telly proved was on, then went on to score in the ninetieth minute with a goal that was definitely offside. I know, I was level with it. Straight down the bastard’s spine. Fuck the telly. Fuck the cameras. We, the @FC boys are telling you it was OFF. So there. We didn’t deserve to win, but it was wonderful to be in front. Their goal was a killer. 73,000 people walking down Wembley Way and you could hear a pin drop. Sometimes I hate football so much. Man of the Match: Tony Adams. The Tackle! The Tackle!
Dynamo Kiev 3 Arsenal 1 Well, it can’t get much worse can it? From top to bottom of the league in ninety minutes. Maybe we should’ve have bunged Bronby a few bob like the mankies have obviously done. (Their away tie in Denmark was a disgrace. One of the most ‘suspicious’ games we’ve ever seen.) Doubtless, we’ll get the usual badly spelt e-mails from the Man Utd contingent, but we’ll still stick with our suspicions and our grapes of the sour variety. Anyway, Kiev, who have a history of bribery and corruption (suspended by UEFA in 1996 for trying to nobble the referee with thirty grand’s worth of fur hats; this is true) deserved to win tonight. But boy, were we unlucky. We were used to the idea of no Bergkamp (dicky back), no Adams (dicky back) and no Overmars (dicky front) and then we had the scare of no Petit (tickly throat). Still, it was a big shock to see the Gunners lining up in the Ukrainian damp without Anelka who had a septic foot. Apparently, it’s like a septic tank, but only twelve inches long. Fuck knows. It’s a mystery where that one came from. With Petit (doubtless on the industrial strength strepsils) and Vieira in the middle, most of us were actually happier than we were at Wembley when we stared at the hole in the middle of the team with wide-eyed horror. Leading the line-up however, were the slight figures of Boa Morte and Wreh. Inevitable, but a worry. Arsenal started breezily, but a few of us had this horrible feeling that the karmic balance was still about to tip even more against us. First Bouldy had to leave the pitch several times to have a cut eye swabbed. It was only a matter of time before he was subbed for Grimandi. Blimey, you could hear those barrels having their bottoms scrapped on the Arsenal bench. Then Wreh missed a half shot and a full header. Two fluffed chances, at this level, that were to prove crucial. Meanwhile Parlour, playing a kind of roving role in the middle, and Petit, just playing out of his skin, were doing their best to control the area around the centre circle. And doing it quite well. Vivas and Dixon, on the other hand, occupying similar zones to one another, were as about as effective as a couple of chocolate spanners. Kiev, strong and prone to pack hunting, moved on and off the ball with an ease and grace that was so embarrassing that it started to look like a footy masterclass. It was one of those runs down the right, that found a labouring Martin Keown struggling to keep up with some flying Cossack. The inevitable clatter, of course, led to a penalty. Seaman got a hand to it, but it went backwards instead of forwards. So one-nil to the Ukrainians. We’re a miserable breed, us Arsenal supporters. Yeah we knew they were going to score. Technically good, blah, blah, put seven past Barcelona, yeah, yeah, yeah. We knew all that. So what should we do? Just roll over and play dead? Fuck off. We’re no five minute wonder like Villa or a living franchise like United, we’re the fucking Arsenal. We’re a team. We’re champions. Tradition, backbone, guts, one-nils, sleeves rolled up, heavy industry footy…well, we were all beginning to lose it big time sitting there on the sofa watching the boys being pulled apart by a bunch of Russian pit ponies. At one point the door opened and logic just walked out, we were raving. Their
second goal came from a free kick. Vivas, the same size as one of those
plastic trolls, was marking a Ukrainian the size of a mature Sequoia. Up
goes the bloke who writes his r’s backwards and steers a text book
header past the grasping Seaman. Sick. Just before this Vieira had a
plum chance to slip one It was only a matter of time before they got another free kick in a dangerous area. Our three man wall could do nothing against a free kick that bent like a horseshoe and missed Seaman’s outstretched fingers by a good six inches. Yeah, we all knew that was going in too. If we could predict lottery numbers like we can free kicks then we wouldn’t have to rely on writing this tosh to feel good about life. The red mist had descended. Someone said that Stephen Hughes was on. We didn’t know. We were concentrating so hard on the ball pinging around that we could see individual rain drops hitting grass blades. It was like being on magic mushrooms. An Arsenal corner woke us up. A low ball fired in, a Hughesy diving header and finally a Gunner directed ball billowed the Ukrainian net. Five or six minutes to go. Forwards, backwards, sideways, forwards, backwards, sideways. And then a ball over the top, Wreh on the end of it…and it’s in the net. Of course it was offside. Just like the Kiev goal at Wembley. Disallowed. The karmic balance creakily rights itself. Shit, shit, shit, as my missus so eloquently put it. It can’t get any worse. Beat Lens, draw in Athens and pray to a god that obviously has little interest in us poor gooners. (Yes, we are feeling sorry for ourselves.) ‘It’s up for grabs now’ a bald mystic once said. How very true. Man of the Match: The frog with a man in his throat, Manu Petit.
Arsenal 0 Lens 1 Nobody wanted to write this. People went home, went to the pub or went to bed with the hump. Nobody wanted to put down their thoughts on what is now becoming a horrible ritual: the early exit from European competition. Mind you, this still wasn’t as bad as that night when Benfica made us look as effective as a team of Long John Silvers. By some disgusting coincidence we were at Wembley again on the Thursday night, wives, girlfriends in tow, to see some ‘popular’ beat combo band called the Lighbulb Family, or something. Twelve thousand people in their mid thirties all swaying along to some Melody FM slush, all with nice haircuts and pressed denims. A few wiggled their cellulite and a couple of thousand cheered when the lead singer took his coat off. His fucking coat. It was frightening. Ersatz emotions; a complete phoniness totally devoid from visceral reality. And it came to me that this was exactly how football would end up. This is David Dein’s vision of football. This is why Arsenal moved their home ties to a ground that as a team we were massively ill-equipped to cope with. Make no mistake, the reason that Arsenal’s European campaign has been curtailed has got sod all to do with anything except that moving to Wembley was the biggest error since the signing of Eddie McGoldrick. The wide open spaces of Wembley would never favour a pressing team like ours and indeed, our thin squad looked fucking anorexic in all that space. Wreh and Boa Morte simply aren’t big enough. Small soldiers. Twenty four hours earlier Arsenal emerged into the chill of Wednesday sporting a previously unseen, absolutely vile blue satin effect strip. Where did that come from, the Spurs shop? What happened next was a catalogue of events that anyone with half a brain (Harry Harris, for example) could have scripted in their sleep. First Wreh put his foot over the ball and fluffed completely, Parlour wide, Adams energetically over the bar (I bet this was where his back went. Looked bloody awkward to us) Anelka wide, high…you get the drift. Never going to happen in a million years. In the second half, Adams failed to emerge and the prognosis is crap: out for two months. Bouldy deputised and Keown expanded to fill the gap. They played well. Up front, Ray missed a good chance with a straight shot that had a bit of pace to it but found the French keeper’s arms. And then Lens scored. So what if they had two players offside? We knew this was going to happen, so the sooner the better some people reckoned. Some Arsenal ‘fans’ perversely welcomed the Lens goal as a timely piece of footballing euthanasia and took the opportunity to sneak out of Wembley and catch an early train. A pox on them, I say. You support your club when it’s clapped out, smelly and incontinent, not just when a few silver pots are being hoisted skyward. It was all over then baring the inevitable messy post-mortem. Overmars lobbed tamely into the goalkeeper’s able arms and Ray Parlour got himself sent off for booting the bloke who had been hanging on his shirt all night. Dixon, then, was clumped, suffering from that all too common footballer’s complaint of ‘going down clutching the bit of body that was acres away from the bit that was actually hit.’ Some Lens player who looked like a seventies hairdresser was red carded for it and quite frankly I cared not one jot. Just to round off a thoroughly miserable night, the Greeks gifted Kiev with a silent comedy own goal, that put the Ukrainians in a blinding position. Me, I hope Kiev win the whole thing. So what happens now? The coffers are full, David Dein’s vision is becoming reality and we have the prospect of having oodles of dough but no European football. What price now of attracting world class players to Highbury? In the short term Wenger will have to draw deeply on his reserves and we don’t mean the midgets with the high squad numbers. Man of the Match: Marginal. Let’s just say Martin Keown. Actually, The Lightbulb Family weren’t that bad. Beware the seductive homogenising powers of the Deinity.
Panathinaikos 1 Arsenal 3 Make no mistake, this was a monumental performance. The players tonight: Seaman, Bould, Vivas, Grimandi, Upson, Grondin, Mendez, Vernazza, Anelka, Wreh and Boa Morte not only gave a warm glow to the red part of north London but also played with a fire and pride rarely seen nowadays. We always maintain that there is something special about pulling on an Arsenal shirt and sometimes, just on the odd occasion, you feel that some of the players fail to understand just what that shirt stands for. But not tonight. They were terrific. However, just before we get carried away on a nostalgic icky sea of red and white all singing ‘Good old Arsenal’ (by the way, totally the worse football song ever written. Even worse than ‘The Anfield Rap’) there were a few things that firmly kept reminding us that reality is both mundane and deeply shitty. It’s probably churlish to moan about Boa Morte’s shooting accuracy, but the boy couldn’t pick his nose without covering his index finger in ear wax. We think he’s taking this Micky Thomas business a bit too far. Also, some of the defending was a little stretched, but what the hell, when you’re fielding a side whose average age is about six and a half, you’ve got to expect a few kids wetting themselves. Still, it was nice to see Alberto get a goal from his free kick, even if it did tonk one of the thin panty people on the way. Anelka’s goal was a simple thing and when Boa Morte finally found that cow’s arse with his wild banjo swings, we all cheered wildly. What was so encouraging was the verve and sheer joy of the boys. It was a perfect little tune-up game for the Villa clash on Sunday. This was a good honest red pride night and everyone can be proud of the lads. Excellent. And Kiev saw off those miserable Lens turds. Good old Arsenal. Men of the Match: What about the whole side?
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