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1996/97 3rd Round 15.1.97 Sunderland 0 Arsenal 2 4th Round
Arsenal 1 Sunderland 1 The ‘magic’ of the third round of the FA Cup usually consists of a poor team playing well and a good team under performing. This was no different. Arsenal were reduced to playing Steve Morrow, who spent most of the game doing his impersonation of a bad smell. With Vieira playing so deep that he had permafrost on his head, the only real player we had in midfield was Merson. Indeed, Merson saw so much of the ball that inevitably, ground down by the law of averages, he gave the ball away a bit too much for my liking. In a normal game he would have been man of the match. Ray Parlour, ‘the flying right wing back’ merely had the kind of game that demonstrated how thin our squad is in places. As for Keown, he made Morrow look like Liam Brady; he had a stinker of Bhopal proportions. Lukic looked wobbly and managed, even with the wind with him, to underhit everything. We all wondered just what kind of Sunderland side was going to turn up: the surly, unsure offside trap mob of the previous Highbury match or the nippy bunch of blokes who were rather speedy on the break. Unfortunately it was the latter. It wasn’t all doom and gloom. Hartson for the first 15 minutes was a revelation. An early back heel to Bergkamp almost produced a terrific goal. And Hartson’s header from Merson’s long, powerful cross, nearly took out the crossbar before it thundered over the line. After that, Bergkamp went close a couple of times and Merson produced some electric moments that ended in good saves from the Metallica look-a-like Sunderland ‘keeper. However, without the running and mobility of Wright pulling defenders about, Arsenal were horribly static upfront. There were just too many holes in the team for them to be effective. Wrighty now finds himself suspended for three games, all against Sunderland. I’ll bet that’ll be one for the pub quizzes in 2010. Sunderland were no mugs. Their number six, Melville, looking both great and white, even managed to handle the ball on the line from Steve Bould’s header. Unfortunately, the wallies who manage the ‘Jumbotron’ screens deemed this flurry too ‘controversial’ so none of us could have a good look at it until ‘Match of the Day’. What is the point of these screens, anyway? At the moment we’re paying nearly four hundred quid to watch a lot of Pepsi Max ads. Don’t drink it. Be a rebel. Drink soup. Sunderland’s number seven, a Poborsky ringer called Grey, not only scored their equaliser but he ran around the pitch like a Labrador on speed. I demand a drugs test, or barring that, perhaps he can give me a pint of his piss so I can put it in the car. Conclusions? This one is going to be uphill. We all know we’ll get Liverpool away in the next round, so perhaps we should bale out now. Get the league points next week lads and leave the cup to the teams that’ll be relegated. Man of the Match: Patrick Vieira.
Sunderland 0 Arsenal 2 What a rotten old January. Snow, fog, sleet, a flu bug straight out of the X Files, two days in Wales and an overdraft that’ll last longer than Kenny Dalglish at Newcastle. What else? Princess Diana looking like a catwalk model being photographed with some tastefully arranged Angolan minefield amputees, Labour’s new advertising campaign, based on the premise of the Tories putting VAT on the hydrogen atom or something and Arsenal doomed to play Sunderland until Hell gives up its dead and the sun goes nova. I hate January. So, what’s going to make this cold, wet smack of a month truly memorable? Maybe a goal of such precision, skill and beauty that for sad mugs like me it will probably be one of the all-time top twenty, deathbed goals. I’m jumping the gun, but who cares? Early in the second half Merson takes a throw just inside the Sunderland half. He makes it long and it finds Bergkamp on the edge of the Sunderland area surrounded by stocky blokes who definitely weren’t from anywhere around Highbury. Well, I’m not quite sure what he did then but there was a shimmy, a dummy, a pull, a little run and all he’d done was move about five feet to his left, just inside the area. The ‘keeper was off his line, but he had it covered. There were bodies everywhere. The angle to make a goal just didn’t exist. It wasn’t there. Compounding all the difficulty, was the ball, well grounded on a sticky pitch. Somehow, Bergkamp lifted and lofted the ball, bent the bastard around Perez and put it in the top right hand corner of the net. And all this was achieved with such poise and balance that the Bolshoi would probably hang up their pumps if they ever saw this gem. I must admit that in all the jumping up and down that I forgot to breath for a couple of minutes. The boys celebrated by holding their hands over their mouths in an exaggerated ‘nuff said’ mime. What else? Well, Merson just about ran the whole game; it was his cross that Nutty headed onto the post, it was his throw that gave us the first goal and it was his ball that Stephen Hughes dived in for to head over the line. Well done that man. This was the last ever cup tie at Roker Park, before Sunderland move to their new ground. Peter Reid, a nice bloke, was generous in defeat. His team isn’t bad and if they get over their horrendous injury problems will prove to be a right handful. I wish them well. Arsenal now have a home tie against either Leeds or Crystal Palace. With Wrighty back for that (but Bergkamp out) we will still have a great chance, come May, of having something to sing about. Man of the Match: Paul Merson. Goal of the Season: Dennis Bergkamp.
Arsenal 0 Leeds 1 Quite frankly I don’t feel much like writing this. So, instead of the usual well rounded observations, here’s a few venal stabs. 1. Leeds are shit. If you give a monkey a typewriter and infinite time the argument goes that eventually he’ll produce the entire work of Shakespeare. Two things: a) Shakespeare’s already done it. b) Shakespeare did it better. Leeds are never going to be a good team. They’ve got the monkeys and the time but the typewriter is strangely absent. What George has put together is the Son of Frankenstein. Arsenal may have been bits of dead matter stitched together, but at least there was a spark, a sign of life. Leeds’ life signs are no more than an electric currant being passed through a severed frog’s leg. 2. The referee (Durkin) was disgraceful. A horrible Thatcherite midget who appeared to be more outraged by bad language than blatant elbowing and fouling. This bourgeois, middle-management, middle-brow, corporate thinking is now endemic in referees. If Durkin was an accountable professional he would be out on his ear by now. Fat chance. Just pray that their is some circle of hell reserved for petty, prissy under achievers with fat legs dressed in black. 3. Vieira had a stunning shot deflected off the bar. 4. Wright missed a sitter with nothing left on the clock. 5. Adams was outstanding. If games were won on commitment alone we’d have walked it. Tony played at the back, in the middle, upfront and on the wing. 6. Leeds’ fans really are sad tossers. Getting all ‘tribal’ by stripping naked to the waist and whirling your shirts above your heads is in no way intimidating or aesthetically pleasing. The ‘We’re hard, because we’re fat, white, wobbly and Northern’ argument doesn’t really cut the mustard at Highbury. 7. Nigel Martyn made a meal of everything. Doing back flips from a back pass won’t get you in the England squad, laddy. 8. Leeds have got Portsmouth in the next round. David Hillier owes us one. 9. George Graham moaned about the state of the pitch at Highbury. Something about ‘pots’, ‘kettles’ and a bit of ‘blacking’, maybe? 10. David O’Leary tried to whack Vieira after the final whistle. Ha. Bit like Postman Pat going up against Michael Jordan. Sit down O’Leary before we forget that we ever liked you. 11. Everyone (not Arsenal supporters) tells me that the result is ‘ironic’. ‘Now you know how other felt when Arsenal rolled them over. Bollocks. Even at our most industrial there was still a spark there i.e. Wright, Smith, Merson. What have Leeds got? Ian Rush, Carlton Palmer and the living Malteser, Rod Wallace. Give me a break. 12. Sour grapes? You bet. Whole bunches of them. Man of the Match: Tony Adams.
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