We all know that Arsenal have to beat West Ham on Saturday to stay on course for next season’s Champions League.
Peter Hill-Wood says failure to stay in the Big Four would not kill the club. Right. It wouldn’t kill the club but it would cost them what they earned from the Champions League last season : about £40 million.
What do you earn in the Uefa Cup? About £150.
Giant striker Carlton Cole says new boss Zola has got him playing better and that’s why he has scored five goals in his last five league games
As a kid, Carlton Cole played with Zola at Chelsea. He says. “The manager has made an effort in trying to make me aware of what’s going on around me on the pitch. Because of that I’m now in the best form of my career. I’ve just got to keep on going. I’m not letting it get to my head – I just need to get in the right positions.”
In recent games Arsenal have become scrappers, demonstrating more grit than talent. But they draw too often. Every time you draw, you drop two points. At this rate they could draw their way into the Uefa Cup, where the Hammers could also be competing.
In the unlikely event of a West Ham win, they would be seventh in the table and only five points off a Uefa Cup spot. New striker Savio Nsereko is 19, German, just arrived from Brescia, and played as a sub against Hull.
Zola, a rookie manager, finds himself at a club with dire financial problems. He has got them passing and moving. They’ve improved a lot recently. He’s lost Craig Bellamy to Man City, but he’s kept skipper Scott Parker, keeper Rob Green and centreback Matthew Upson. The busy young Mark Noble has shown promise in midfield for some time and he’s playing well at the moment.
Without Fabregas and Walcott, Arsenal are finding it much harder to score goals.
And sloppy play at the back often looks like costing them games. The build-up to the Tim Cahill goal at Everton showed that this Arsenal team lacks the solid partnerships and good habits that all good teams need. Having four very agile and quick defenders is not enough.
Leighton Baines took a throw on the left and he lobbed it to Fellaini in the box and he laid it back to Pienaar and he knocked it to the unmarked Baines by the touchline. Both Sagna and Denilson started to move towards Baines but they had left him in ten yards of space. They were equidistant from Baines as he received the pass from Pienaar, so Baines had time to look across the penalty area and measure an out-swinging cross to the far post, which beat Clichy and was coming down as Cahill met the ball with a very smart header that flew back into the near side of the goal, wrong-footing Almunia. Denilson and Sagna should have made it harder for Baines to cross that ball. Once he’d measured that cross, any defence would be in trouble. But Denilson was playing in an alien position, so he didn’t see the danger.He didn’t react as he should have done. Baines was his man.
Last night I went to Book Slam and saw four young novelists reading from their new books. Met my daughter Caroline there, as she’s come to London for a conference today.
We saw Joe Dunthorne, Chris Killen, Ross Raisin, Richard Milward and musician-comedians Ginger & Black. The DJ was Jamie Byng, the boss of Canongate.He was playing my kind of music but some tunes I didn’t recognise, so I wandered into the booth and start looking through his albums. That’s quite a rude thing to do but Jamie is very welcoming, friendly and hip.
After the fourth reading host Patrick Neate thanks us all for coming and says that Jamie wants to say a few words. He gets onstage and says this is his fifth Book Slam, he really loves it, that he used to be a DJ before he was a publisher, that he thinks the two are similar, being all about context and selection. He says that made serious bids for the two of tonight’s debut novels that were NOT published by Canongate. He also says that he had published, several years ago, a book called Dreams of My Father by a young guy called Barack Obama. And that tonight, as a small gesture of goodwill to Book Slam, as we leave the club we will each be given a free copy of that paperback ! Wow !
I’m tempted to have a music morning. While the Palmers seem to be reunited, I’m here on my own now. Michael went out to work in Covent Garden at 8.15 before Caroline got up, she’s gone to the Home Office, Jan’s gone to a funeral in Sudbury, north of Wembley, and I’m still in a funk groove after last night, so I could easily switch on Michael’s decks and have a party with Kool & the Gang, the Crusaders, Fred Wesley’s Damn Right I’m Somebody, Graham Central Station, Little Feat et al. I haven’t done that for a while. Or I could write till 1pm, play some tunes, then go to the gym.
February’s Book Slam will have Hanif Kureishi.