Manchester United 2 Arsenal 1
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Adebayor handball goal 48
Ronaldo penalty 53
Hargreaves free-kick 72
Not much to say about this clash.
Second half was good, first half was tame.
Arsenal are a midfield possession team who miss chances in one box and concede penalties in the other.
They look good in two thirds of the field but have no cutting edge.
Bendtner is their best striker BY FAR. But he got 15 minutes plus stoppage time.
Ade and RVP were hopeless !!!
Both of them were absolutely hopeless.
When RVP put in one good cross, somebody shouted “Keeper’s!” and Rio left it and Ade put his arm up to protect his face because he thought Edwin would come out and whack him- and the keeper stayed at home and the ball went in off Ade’s arm and……nobody appealed for handball ! The keeper and the defenders didn’t see it.
Adebayor scored with his arm from one yard ! What a clown! What a joke goal.
Man Utd have loads of efficient players, far more than Arsenal.
Their goals came from a sensational penalty after a Gallas handball, Ronaldo drilling the re-take past Lehmann. And from a Hargreaves free kick which he Beckhamed over the wall into the top corner, giving Lehmann no chance. We were told that Almunia has a wrist injury.
Decent effort by the boys today, especially Clichy. They never looked like losing 4-0 but never looked like winning either.
Bottom line, Arsenal have no strikers. They actually have no strikers. They were top of the table till February but they have no strikers. That is amazing to me. One of the biggest football clubs in the world, playing to 60,000 sell-out crowds every week, do not have anybody I could call a striker. That is seriously bizarre ! It is really quite mind-boggling. It shows what an amazing game football can be.
Today Arsenal had 18 goal attempts and 8 on target, apparently, but their shots were all powderpuff backpasses. A ball off the shin of Ferdinand, and another off the shin of Wes Brown, gave Edwin van der Sar a bigger scare than any of the powderpuff “shots” from Ade, Cesc or Hleb.
Adebayor missed four chances then handballed one into the net.
But Edelman & the board will raise the price of the world’s most expensive season tickets by 3% . If you give yours up, there are 40,000 people waiting to take your seat. Or so they say. You can believe that if you want to. When I was a lad my dad used to say : Believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see.
VERDICT :
Arsenal 2008 is a cheap, youngish team built to finish in the Top Four but not win anything. Have to agree with Ray Wilkins who said : Arsene has to buy three or four quality players in the summer, otherwise he will have another season very similar to this one.
There is a striker they should sign and I’ll put the link up Monday 9am or as close to 9 am as I can. He’s a cross between Ian Wright and Obafemi Martins and he’s exactly what Arsenal need.
And with that the old beatnik went downstairs to watch the final round of the US Masters from Augusta.