By Myles Palmer
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Arsenal 3 Chelsea 2
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Desailly og 9,Van Bronckhorst 81,Henry 83,Stanic 84, Petit 85.
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Some of our readers in the Far East have asked if I can describe a match day in a bit more detail, so here goes:
It rains all night and it rains all morning and it is wet wet wet when I arrive and find the police saying there is a pitch inspection at 2pm.
It is a day for hats and hoods and umbrellas and one could only admire the perseverance of a damp woman who is flogging fanzines in the street outside the station.
Highbury’s drainage is the best anywhere, so there is minimal surface water when the teams run out.
Bergkamp sprints towards the goal,slows down as he approaches a static ball, and clips it gently into the empty net.A goal today will be his 100th.
Gilberto jogs diagonally with that slightly lumbering gait.
Vieira warms up with stretching high kicks, almost as high as his own eyebrows.
Luzhny is at right back, Lauren on the bench.
The all-Blues have De Lucas wide right, Le Saux in front of Babayaro,Zola not Gudjohnsen, Cudicini in goal.
The game starts and as expected it is tight and closely contested all round the field.
There is so much pressure on the ball that not much can happen, although Arsenal are defending,at times, with a high line, a long way from Seaman.
Then Pires finds Cole’s run on the left and he crosses.
The ball has a lot of whip and dip on it and as he runs in Bergkamp jabs his foot out and the ball flies up and over Cudicini’s flailing left hand.
But Dennis doesn’t celebrate. He walks away. The ball has hit Desailly on the shin or heel of his trailing foot and bounced viciously into the net, giving Cudicini no chance.
So Arsenal are 1-0 up after 9 minutes.
But it remains a tight game until Arsenal score again in 81.
First half, Chelsea play it both ways, pushing Zola and De Lucas forward and hitting it long.
But they also play through midfield at times, making good runs to support the ball.
Arsenal defend well, Keown is a rock, Seaman is competent.
Cole is superbly energetic, setting the tempo, covering huge areas,never shirking a tackle, their best player over the 90.
Petit and Vieira are both playing left side, so they rarely come into direct contact, except for once in the centre circle where there is a 50-50 and they are both about seven feet from the ball.
They both go for it, lunging with long legs, and Manu’s arm catches Patrick across the face.
It’s an accident and PV doesn’t make a meal of it. He knows his mate would not whack him deliberately, it’s just a game of football.
Surprisingly, ref Uriah Rennie has not yet issued any yellow cards,despite a two-footed tackle Sol jumps into, which gets the ball.He deems this dangerous and gives a freekick which Zola takes.
Rennie’s sojourn in the Nationwide has made him a better ref. That demotion has given him a bit of humility, taught him that he is not a superstar.
THE RAIN STOPS ABOUT 10 MINUTES BEFORE HALFTIME.
Pires and Wiltord had poor games and were taken off.
Gio comes on for Pires and scores and the crowd sing GIO! GIO! GIO! GIO!
The goal comes from an incisive counter-attack :Henry cruises on the halfway line, Toure makes a scissors run across the defence to Henry’s right, and he pushes a nicely-weighted simple pass through for Gio, who hits it first time from 20 yards, a diagonal daisycutter which arrows into the far corner for 2-0.
A helluva shot, clinical, hard and low, and as it goes in it seems to finish the game.
Immediately, Gilberto feeds Henry, races downfield in support and Henry spurts at Gallas, twists inside him and shoots with the ball still within his stride, shoots very early, as he is beating Gallas on the inside.
His low right-footed shot bounces in off the arm of Cudicini at the near post for 3-0.Hnery hit the ball so early that the keeper could not get down in time.
But Cudicini was not taking his goalkicks, Desailly took most, Baba a couple, I think.
At 3-0 it looks over,looks like the convincing victory I thought might be elusive.
But then a loss of concentration and mistakes by Seaman let Chelsea back into the game.
When Hasselbaink swings a corner beyond the far post, Seaman palms the ball out even though it’s almost out anyway and no Chelsea player is challenging.
When Petit swings the corner high beyond the far post,Hasselbaink makes a beautifully timed run to head back across the goal and Stanic nods it in from five yards.
Then Melchiot hits a long ball down the middle and sub Gudjohnsen gets above Keown and flicks on for Hasselbaink.
Seaman hesitates, then comes and grabs the ball on the ground but doesn’t get his body behind the ball.
Campbell and Hasselbaink are approaching, a collision seems likely.
Hasselbaink does not go in recklessly, but he kicks the ball out of Seaman’s hands and UNDER HIS BODY and Petit appears from nowhere to knock the loose ball in for 3-2.
The keeper’s job is to get his body behind the ball, in case the striker kicks the ball.
But, as usual,Seaman won’t expose his ribs, which have been cracked a few times,notably by Solskjaer,who whacked him viciously when he had the ball in his hands a few years ago.
It’s terrible goalkeeping:HE DOES NOT DO THE BASICS.
HE DOES NOT GET HIS BODY BEHIND THE BALL.HE IS TERRIFIED OF BEING HURT AGAIN. HE HAS BEEN THIS WAY FOR YEARS.
At the death an inswinging cross from Gronjkjaer just eludes Hasselbaink at the far post.
Overall, Arsenal have surrendered the initiative by taking Pires and Bergkamp off and bringing Gio and Lauren on, to add shape to their defensive unit.
Dennis played well and covered a lot of ground and was obviously NOT feeling his recently injured knee.
If the game had gone on for another five or ten minutes Chelsea would have scored again.
Lauren was atrocious as a sub and somehow escaped punishment when he jumped two-footed into Zola, over the ball, which left Lauren sitting on the ball, and Zola in agony.
We have seen players sent off for less many times. But Rennie did not even book him.
In such a physical game on a drenched pitch, Ranieri should have started Gudjohnsen. Or brought him on MUCH sooner.
On the plus side, it was great to see Patrick in super-gladiator mode, cruising forward like the colossus he used to be.
Skill,power,commitment,authority,the best footballer in the Premiership once again, as he was in 1998 and 1999 and 2000, but wasn’t in 2001-2002.
Also, a point they never make about Pat : resourcefulness.
Patrick Vieira is great team player but also a hugely inventive footballer who can work his way into and out of all sorts of situations.
There’s nobody,nobody,nobody like Vieira, anywhere.When he’s doing the business he is just…….. different class.
Last season, when he was playing at 70%, I doubted whether I would ever see him play like this again.
One run was pure magic, beating Le Saux and Petit, then Desailly and Babayaro, to cross low into the box before Le Saux can make a recovery tackle. But Gallas cleared.
I’d give Patrick 10/10 for his first half. Second half, he tired a bit.
But they all looked a bit cream crackered after 4 games in 11 days, especially Gilberto.
Cudicini wasn’t fit and couldn’t kick the ball very far from his hands.But Arsenal were far too slow to realise this, despite Pat Rice screaming at them to pressurise him instead of dropping back.
Was 3-2 the convincing win I was looking for?
Not really,but you can’t play four games in 11 days and expect to play fast,fluent football all the time.
But if you are very professional, and you get a few breaks, you can pick up 10 points out of 12, which is fantastic.
No manager would ask for more.Most would expect less.
Arsenal led by an own-goal for 70 minutes and for most of that time Henry played like a plonker.
Second half, he had two exciting breaks.On the first he zigzagged past Gallas and centred just behind Gilberto.
On the second he hit his shot straight down the keeper’s throat.
Then Henry made a goal and scored a goal, as he does so often.
So why do people write articles saying Henry is the best striker in the world?
It’s rubbish.It’s bollocks. It’s garbage. It’s hype.It serves no useful purpose.
Clearly,Thierry Henry is a fabulous athlete with phenomenal skills.
He is a fantastic left winger who scores a lot of goals.
That’s it. That’s all.
He is NOT a striker because he doesn’t have the bottle and he doesn’t see the runs. He doesn’t make the runs because he doesn’t see the runs.
He has a winger’s mentality.He picks defenders up off the ground and gives them a kiss. His message is: I’m a nice guy, I won’t kick you, so please don’t kick me.
I once saw him go over to take a corner and, as he bent down to place the ball, he was looking at the big screen to see himself take it. Then he remembered that if he didn’t stop looking the Jumboscreen, he couldn’t take the corner.
BUT : he is is the greatest spurt player I have ever seen.
And he is the greatest highlights player in England right now.
And he is,without a doubt,the greatest get-out-of-jail-goalscorer I’ve seen.
He can score late goals because he has fabulous feet and superhuman acceleration.
If Thierry Henry had Freddie Ljungberg’s bottle he would be Pele.
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ARSENAL: Seaman; Luzhny Keown Campbell Cole ; Wiltord
(Lauren 68)Vieira Gilberto Pires(Van Bronckhorst 56); Bergkamp(Touré 79)Henry.
Subsnot used: Taylor, Jeffers.
CHELSEA : Cudicini; Melchiot Gallas Desailly Babayaro; De Lucas (Gronkjaer 56)Petit Lampard Le Saux(Gudjohnsen 70); Hasselbaink Zola(Stanic 79).
Subs not used: De Goey, Terry.
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January 3rd 2003.
PS
OXFORD? Jeffers will take them apart.