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2001/02 3rd Round 4th Round Other games that we saw but for various reasons couldn't be arsed to write reports for. Sorry. The Final 4.5.02 Arsenal 2 Chelsea 0
3rd Round Watford 2 Arsenal 4 The score might suggest that this was a closely fought contest, but the truth was this was a rudimentary notch on the bedpost. Arsenal, 2-0 up after ten minutes never really looked threatened even after Gifton Noel-Williams headed Watford back into contention in the twelfth minute. Watford crowded out the midfield and looked busy, but never really troubled the Gunners. The only bloke capable of taking advantage of Keown’s blind side, the gifted Tommy smith, was playing so deep, he was almost standing in the Arsenal end. I’ve always hated Watford fans. It goes back to the early eighties when I worked with a career threatening dickhead who was a rabid Hornets fan. In lieu of me scanning the trade publications looking for an obituary for this twats painful premature death, I content myself by having the odd crow over a decisive Watford defeat. Somewhere I picture my old nemesis dying inside a little every time his beloved team turn in another stinker. Ha, ha. Though I’ll still settle for an unbreathing body being pulled out of a steaming mangled car wreck in his case. Que sera, que sera. Watford fans generally only exist so Chelsea supporters don’t feel they are the bottom link on the food chain.. they certainly display all the ignorance of Blues fans; no conception of a foul, offside or even why they’re standing around outside in the middle of winter watching 22 men in lurid PE kit run around. You get the impression that the gene pool around the Watford area isn’t that deep. None of arsenal’s goals were that memorable. They were the kind of slide-ins and tap-ins that come from the sublime build-up play that out-manoeuvres gullible defences by pulling them out of position. Henry, Ljungberg and Bergkamp’s goals all were more impressive in their making rather than their taking. Only Kanu’s goal (the third) had an air of special about it. A real one-on-one rarity, a directed header from the man the same height as a telegraph pole. Elsewhere we were engaged in a bit of player watching. Van Bronckhorst continues to look outclassed, even against the dead matter of a mid table first division side. This says more about the quality of Scottish football than the ability of the Dutchman. Who is he going to look against? Carlisle? Orient? Or is he only doomed to shine against sides that only play the strolling park football so beloved north of Hadrian’s Wall? Luzhny, deputising for the crocked Lauren, again demonstrated that he couldn’t find a cross in the Vatican. Time for him to be flogged to some mangy gaggle like Middlesbrough. Pires and Ljungberg waxed and waned with Freddie just getting the edge out there on the right. Henry and Kanu were fine, whilst Vieira continues to do something brilliant followed by something that I would probably do. Definitely Madrid bound, that one. Campbell looked solid, but the cracks in Keown’s game are getting wider all the time. Ashley Cole had a brilliant game. His overlap running for the return one-two was a joy. Not a bad game. Somewhere between a canter and a romp. A small ranter, maybe. Just how we like them. Man of the Match: Ashley Cole.
4th Round Arsenal 1 Liverpool 0 For this one the old Arsenal shirt came out of mothballs. Flung into the innards of the wardrobe after that long sullen trip back from Cardiff, it was resurrected from a pile of old freebie T-shirts and lonely divorced socks and pressed into action once again in the never ending fight against the perennial chirpy cheek of the Scouse animal. I don’t like Manchester United supporters that much, but many of them are people quite close to me; stockbrokers, airline pilots, magistrates, members of the royal family, etc. So I put up with them. Spurs fans are different again; as a collective concept they’re up there with nazis, politicians and TV presenters. Individually, they’re my best mates, my family and a couple of nice people I know at work. So, no joy there then. But I hate Scousers. Always have. At the final whistle the Scallies in the Clock End turned their moon faces up to us in the East Stand, held up five fingers, gestured to us and then waved their thumbs in the general vicinity of Avenall Road and then mimed a throat cutting slice. (Translation. You. Me. Outside. Five minutes.) An Arsenal supporter, old enough to be everybody’s granddad, moved to the front, looked at the leaping Brooksiders and slowly with his thumb and forefinger together did his own mime of how you would grease a pole. Really, if I’d had any loose change left I’d have tossed it Liverpoolwards. They were completely crushed. Their appalling one-trick pony team had been well and truly sussed. If you didn’t see the game, you missed a corker. All the stuff about spirit and commitment that has been bothering us most of the season disappeared under a stormy gale of red and white. Henry was magnificent, leading the line, Bergkamp was tricky, even Van Bronckhorst and Wiltord were superb. And Luzhny didn’t let anyone down. And we kept a clean sheet; it was just like the old days. For once all the little flicks and one-two’s paid off. The goal was a fascinating bit of interplay between Van Bronckhorst and Henry; a wonderful cross from Thierry and the best glancing header of the season from a perfectly placed Dennis Bergkamp. Fantastic. Liverpool’s only reply was to let Heskey kick people and drop balls out of the stratosphere, vaguely reminiscent of a long range mortar attack in the direction of the little goal robot, Michael Owen. It was pathetic. Arsenal were never truly troubled in the whole game. That is until Owen broke down the right, Keown yanked him back, the referee blew up and Martin was shown a little red rectangle. Well, it is Michael Owen. He’s inherited the talisman of protection from Alan Shearer. Goal robot do no wrong. You know the score. Five minutes later, Hypia, who uses his hands more than fucking Henry Moore, handled the ball blatantly and the referee saw nothing. (Just like the old days - Liverpool players playing to their own set of rules.) We all went a bit mental, but not as mental as Bergkamp, who reasoning that the referee’s eyes worked on a different frequency in the electromagnetic wavelength, reckoned that this would be a good time to remove Carragher’s ankle. Daft tackle and the daft Dutchman missed completely. Another red card. Carragher, preening on the touchline, was getting a bit of stick from the East Stand lower. He bent down, stood up and to me it looked like he thumped the linesman. Bad angle for me, he was merely returning a small item of dropped loose change to a gentlemen in the crowd. Right in front of the referee as well. Slung it back. Silly sod. Another red. Nine men against eleven with twenty odd minutes to go and then suddenly it’s nine against ten. What a meringue. On the record. The bloke who threw the coin should be pilloried, pelted through the streets and hung up by his sweetmeats until his body is cured bacon and the crows have feasted on his jellies. Off the record. It probably won us the game. I know we should be condemning it - but it was bloody funny. A great game with some proper Arsenal performances; red blood, red shirts and free money being thrown about. What more could you ask for? Man of the Match: Thierry Henry.
4.5.02 Arsenal 2 Chelsea 0 4.25 am. Crawled out of bed, eyes gummed shut, head full of cotton wool, vaguely aware that three hours earlier we’d been drinking tiny green bottles of varnish, labelled ‘Biere de Gare’ (beer that comes from the railway station - something like that) and that the huge chicken curry that had seemed so appetising only scant hours before, was still refusing to budge from the gut, holding its position in the narrow oesophageal passes like the Greeks at Thermopolae. Mate number one (Dave) is downstairs drinking tea and watching Polly Toynbee talk about the monarchy. She talks for about ten minutes and doesn’t mention the word ‘Arsenal’ once. Turn the telly off with mutterings of ‘ignorant slag’ and leave. Security guard returning from a night shift gives us the thumbs up. A good omen. 5.15 am. Called around to a mate to pick the tickets and him up. Me and Dave are dressed ‘football travelling light’ style. Team shirt, trousers with capacious pockets for things like cash, tickets, passes and a pair of stout boots. Also obligatory is the Marks & Sparks and Sainsbury’s carrier bags full of sandwiches, crap snacks and those cheapo carton drinks that are the colour of industrial effluent. We’re underdressed, it’s freezing, but we don’t care. Mate number two (Chris) lets the side down by appearing to be wearing every garment he owns. T-shirts, red Arsenal polo shirt, cardigan, great big waxed coat and most worrying of all, an Arsenal bum bag. It later transpires that for some mysterious reason the bag is actually full of batteries. Don’t ask. We didn’t. He is also carrying a plastic bag full of God knows what that is the same size as a builders’ skip. 6.00 am. Get onto a coach near the stadium. Sleepy people in full kit, toting the entire sandwich output of northern Europe, file onto the bus. Several of them have made laughable attempts to put red streaks in their hair and a few brave souls have even had a go at face painting. We look like a coach full of burns victims. Everybody is quiet. Nobody really thinks we have much of a chance. But at least it’s a day out. 6.50 am. Coach leaves. A convoy snakes through north London and hits the motorway to the west. People dive into their bags and start eating like Homer Simpson. Why everybody (me included) is eating Scotch eggs is beyond me. This must be the great unsung primordial football food. When I was young it was all Wagon Wheels and Bovril 6.51 am - 10.30 am. A coach journey. England recedes. Wales, a small country conjoined to England, arrives. We spot sheep, unnatural looking hills that were probably once inside the earth and not on it and millions of cars all heading in the same direction. Some have blue and white streamers, others, red and white. Still half pissed from the night before, we cotton on that something must be happening 10.31 am. We’re in Cardiff. The driver of the coach tells us to remember where we parked (we don’t) and we head off in search of drink and incredibly, more food. 10.59 am. Mate two (Chris) wants to look around the castle. We look at him as if we were seeing somebody who had just shat into the open mouth of Queen Elizabeth, the queen. The suggestion of a castle tour is not a complete success. A few gooners are playing football in the moat of the castle. Fat, uncoordinated blokes, in dodgy replica strips, whacking a half inflated ball around- it’s almost like watching Spurs. We wander into Cardiff. A nice city that has renovated itself rather well. The old buildings have been lovingly restored, the new ones neither monstrous or carbuncular; it’s a nice town and it inspires you to think in a more elevated, cultural way. 11.00 am. Exhausted by aesthetics. Find a pub. 11.30 am - 1.30 pm. Welsh Guinness is a lot like English Guinness; black at the bottom, white at the top, but with the added bonus of being considerably cheaper. Watch the FA Cup BBC telly warm-up. Old Spurs players, old Liverpool players and old West Ham players. And for this we pay a licence fee. Decide that John Motson is too old to be wearing hair gel and that fucking car coat of his makes him look like a kiddy fiddler. Decide to get more food. 1.31pm - 2.00 pm Other people go on pub crawls, but we decided to go on a swift Cornish pastie crawl. In quick succession we do a beef steak special (cold to handle, filling the consistency of diarrhoea but with the temperature of molton rock). Still 6/10 for that one. Five minutes later we find a shop that has a sign saying ‘Award Winning Pasties.’ How can you resist that? Cheese, Leek (lip service to the Taffs there) and Ham. Pastry that tastes of ingredients, not packing material and an inside that blows your mind not your anal ring. 10/10. Another great omen. 2.01 pm - 3.00 pm. There seems to be millions of Chelsea supporters and slightly less of us. They’re like a rash, they’re everywhere. Get to the ground to soak up a bit of atmos and sit down before Cornish pasty starts to ooze out of my split sides. If you’ve not been to the Millennium Stadium. Go. It is a magnificent place. Everyone of those twats who is fucking up the redevelopment of Wembley should be forced to come down to Cardiff bay and see how it could be done. And when Tone leads out the lads on the hour, it is a moment that is up there with all the fine things in life: music, art, love, beer and whopping big pasties the size of a plough blade. 3. 01 pm - Three forty fivish. No surprises here. One of the reasons why there’s no Bolton report for last Monday was that we were so nervous, that we drank so fast, that we got so bladdered, that the whole week was one of playing catch up and trying to make up for the bad behavioural mistakes of the night. To anyone who saw me abuse the chocolate machine at Finchley Central, I apologise. Still, stocking the thing with fucking chocolate once in a while might be an idea. Chelsea obviously had a game plan. They closed everything down faster than I’ve seen most teams do this season. Arsenal’s best chance was a Lauren header that just shaved the bar. Chelsea got wide, but went nowhere. But it was nerve wracking. I was shouting and jumping up and down, pretending to encourage the lads, but really desperately trying to dislodge the poultice of masticated pastry, cheese, ham and leek that was sitting on my chest like a sleeping cat. And the game dead-ended itself in midfield. Henry looked unfit, Bergkamp was Desailly’s puppy and only Wiltord, my favourite £15 million quid signing of all time (THIS WAS A DEMONSTRATION OF SARCASM - for all my American friends reading) only Wiltord out of the front runners looked like class. At the back, Adams, Cole, Lauren and Campbell were consistently heroic. Half time. 4ish - 5ish. And the second half started exactly the same. Chelsea pressed ferociously. You were thinking that if it went to extra time that they would be knackered. Adams and co at the back were slightly stretched, the boys at the front nullified and the middle? Parlour, Ljungberg and Vieira were all over the pitch fire fighting. Twenty minutes to go. For anyone interested the pastie was beginning to shift. Openings were appearing. Wiltord, just inside the Chelsea half, slipped a ball to Ray Parlour. Ray ran, avoided the blue shirts, saw three Arsenal players draw off the Blues, he looked up, ran on bit and whacked one. Our seats were looking right along the Chelsea goal line. Ray’s shot dipped, arrived at the net. For a second I didn’t have a clue where it had ended up and then I saw net in front of ball. My God it must have been thirty yards. What a screamer. If you’ve ever looked through the little plastic window of a Dyson vacuum cleaner when it’s turned on you’ll have some idea what it was like in the stands when that goal went in. Screaming, loss of bodily fluids, pocket change scattered like confetti and fat blokes dancing exactly like how fat blokes dance. A true wonder. And we were happy. A second later we were miserable again, knowing that like last year, we were more than capable of cocking it up. For ten minutes or so, we thought about everything except the Arsenal; why is there only one Monopolies Commission? Why did those Wolves fans have that banner at the play-offs that said ‘You’ve let us down again?’ Did they make the fucking thing during the game? You tell me. And then there’s Edu, looking all sort of upright in his own way. He flicks a ball to Ljungberg, who is still inside the Arsenal half. Freddie runs. Tackles come in and he takes little notice. Advance he does (Sorry, that sentence was a bit Yoda - but you get the gist.) John Terry sidles in and pokes out a leg. Freddy starts to go down. But then gets up. Terry is the past. Years behind. Freddy advances. Just outside the Chelsea area he looks up, curves his foot to the ball, lifts it and shapes it. It bends and you know it is always going to be six inches beyond any goalkeeper in the world. It tucks inside the top right corner of the net and half of Cardiff detonates. Mate two (Chris) later put down his bruised useless throat to that second. Oh well, talking is overrated; monkey’s do OK without all the verbal. And though Chelsea looked spirited, there was only one name on the cup (apart from Axa - which I believe is some kind of sage and onion stuffing.) At the final whistle the red flares went up and the Arsenal team looked ten years younger- happy, smiling, leaping and care-free; just like us. Adams and Vieira received the cup together and the sun shone with that deep yellow that is peculiar to cup final day. ‘Sol’s a Gooner’, ‘We love you Freddie’. ‘Oo ar Ray Parlour’, ‘Vieira wooooooo,’ ‘Oleg Lutzny is God’ (maybe not the last one) all the great songs got an airing. We danced badly and clapped out of time and is was, in the words of Freddie, who was blipped out on a live broadcast; ‘Fucking great.’ 5.45 pm - 1.30 am. Couldn’t find the coach. Mate one (Dave) remembered it was ‘parked next to a building’. That’s sound if you’re in the Gobi Desert or Mars, but not much cop if you’re in the middle of a city. Found it. Right next to a ‘building’. Amazing. Coach goes. Beyond tired we do the only thing possible to do when you’re completely cream crackered; start eating again. Wales disappears under the wheels of the coach. The driver of the coach gets the hump with a Chelsea coach that overtakes us. He chases it and finally gets the better of it by overtaking it on the hard shoulder. Another Arsenal victory. We listen to a Welsh radio station. Try to sleep but keep seeing Ray and Freddie whacking them in. Eat more. Fall asleep. Wake up and someone is talking Turkish. Haringey Radio or something. Arrive back at Drayton Park. Go to pub. Go to sofa. Watch Match of the Day. Drink. Incredibly, eat even more. This time it’s quiche. Nice, but no pastie. Drink more small green beers. Begin to hallucinate. Tony Adams is running around the Cardiff stadium celebrating. He’s holding a giant pastie. Go to bed. Man of the Match: Two lifted the cup so let’s have two men of the match. Step forward Freddie and Ray. Arsenal gods.
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