By Myles Palmer
Red cards have become the main Arsenal story.
It’s become ridiculous.
Sol Campbell is sent off.
He deserved it ! He didn’t deserve it ! We will defend him! The FA are against us ! There is no anti-Arsenal bias, say the FA.
Gunners are paranoid !
And so on.
I’m bored with all that. I prefer football.
Arsenal should go to Middlesbrough and lose with 11 men.
That would be better than winning with 10 men, as they did last week against Everton.
Middlesbrough is a nothing game anyway.
Let’s not pretend it’s a big game. It’s a nothing game.
BUT IT’S LIVE ON SKY AT 4 p.m.
And if Arsenal get another red card on Sunday, all hell will break loose.
I prefer to look at the bigger picture.
For me, August-September is about bedding in Lehmann and Toure before the Champions League starts.
It’s about improving the defensive shape and understanding. It’s about tightening up to give the two new boys a chance .
Arsenal peaked too soon last season. They should not make that mistake again.
OK, I reckon Arsenal could beat Middlesbrough and Aston Villa in their next two games.
But Middlesbrough are a solid side, so Sunday will be difficult.
In an international week, preparation is minimal.
Mendieta will not make any difference to Boro overnight.
A good technician, a Spanish Beckham, a delivery man, an excellent crosser, a fine craftsman, quite subtle.
Mendieta could improve Boro, but not any time soon.
No surprise he didn’t make it at Lazio.
Now 29, Mendieta was bombed out of Barcelona after a loan spell there. His best football may be behind him.
Why does Sol Campbell now look like getting sent off in every game?
His first season was fun : he won the Double.
In his second season he was sent off twice and he missed the last four games, including the FA Cup Final.
So he blamed himself for blowing the title.
Sol has brooded all summer. And present circumstances have conspired against him
In Cardiff, Djemba-Djemba’s late tackle almost took a lump out of his thigh.
It was a wild challenge by a new player signed for his aggressive ball-winning and keen to establish his macho credentials.
Having managed to evade the worst of this assault, but feeling Djemba-Djemba’s studs ram into his hip, Sol spun round and tapped his assailant on the bum with his heel.
OK, he retaliated. But it was a tiff. It was powderpuff. It was handbags.
What Sol did was a minor foul compared the psycho-karate kick by Djemba which provoked it.
But the ref saw nothing wrong with Djemba’s karate kick !
He missed Sol’s heel-flick, so the video panel nail Sol for violent conduct and it could be a three-match ban.
I GIVE UP! THE SYSTEM IS STUPIDLY UNFAIR.
Last Saturday, Sol’s trip on Gravesen was silly.
As I wrote in the new chapter of The Professor, referring to another Sol incident : Sometimes a defender has to say, “OK, you’ve beaten me – now beat my keeper.”
But it’s a team game. If an individual is having problems, it’s often because the team is having problems.
It’s the team’s job to make sure that their centrebacks are not exposed to midfield runners like Gravesen.
And its the centreback’s job to be well-positioned at all times, to make tackles on the few opponents who come through.
Gravesen isn’t Pele, isn’t Del Piero, isn’t Zidane, isn’t even Juninho. But he is an under-rated player.
Gilberto should have tackled him. But Gilberto had a nightmare.
Gilberto had possibly his worst game since he joined Arsenal.
He was hopeless against Everton.
Gilberto allowed Gravesen to brush past him and then Toure went to ground and missed with his outstretched right foot.
And Sol was badly placed to react to the threat.
Then Sol moved at the wrong moment.He put his weight on his left foot and made himself helpless.
As Gravesen went past Sol, into a shooting position, the defender waved his right leg and brought the Dane down.
CLEARLY, SOL HAD TO GO OFF.
You could see from the expression on his face that he knew.
If you are the last man, and you trip an opponent in the D, you get a red card. He gets an automatic one-match ban.He deserves it. End of story.
I rarely write about Arsenal’s disciplinary record because everybody writes about it AND because they have been the victims of some very harsh and unfair decisions like Vieira-Williams at Sunderland, Vieira-Hamann at Highbury, Ljungberg-Ginola at White Hart Lane, and Vieira-Zola last season.
For David Elleray to say that little Freddie had headbutted Ginola, who is six foot two, was preposterous.
Freddie could have butted Ginola on the nipple. He would have had to climb on Ray Parlour’s shoulders to butt him on the head.
Nobody nutted Ginola. He was hit by a coin thrown from the crowd.
Elleray totally lost the plot that night, as Graham Poll did in the Liverpool game that followed the Sunderland fiasco.
Also, referees are scared of Man United.
So they let United players get away with more fouls than Arsenal players. Because they don’t wanna risk the wrath of the hairdryer or be bounced off Man United’s glamour games.
Having said all that, the United players ARE more disciplined than the Arsenal players.
They don’t get suspended so often, so they are on the field in more vital games.
That is a fact.
It is undeniable: Arsenal have paid in blood for their red 51 cards under Wenger. And United have won more trophies because they have fewer players sent off.
However, many of Arsenal’s red cards have been unlucky.
I’m not prepared to do a Ph.D on it.
But I will say this : of Wenger’s 51 red cards, at least 20 were undeserved or very unlucky.
There’s two things Arsene should do.
The first is to take the team into a small room and tell them that retaliation must stop.
And he should make it clear to Ashley Cole that he will be immediately dropped and sold if he grabs his face and dives on the ground when an arm just misses his nose.
And the team should do defensive drills, directed by Lehmann, so that they become a more compact unit as soon as they lose the ball.
If Arsenal can’t improve the back four by signing Mexes, they should improve it with defensive drills.
Otherwise they will be stretched and shambolic. They will be making risky tackles and they will get red card after red card after red card all season long.
As I say, it’s a team game.
22 August 2003