WILL ARSENE SIGN A SUPERSTAR?
Yes. I reckon he will sign a friend of Mr & Mrs Thierry Henry. He is a quarterback who can whip long passes and crosses round that big pitch. Arsene could give him the No. 10 shirt, but he would be playing mostly on the right flank. A London boy who would love to play for a London club, he lives in Hertfordshire, about six miles from Colney. He has been playing in a team of old men and would love to play in a team of young men. He needs that.
Florentino Perez quit as Real Madrid president last night.The man who pinched Anelka and tried to nick Vieira now admits that his club needs a change of direction. Perez is right about that. So David Beckham will come home.Superstars often move after World Cups. Ronaldo left Inter in 2002 and Ballack and Beckham will move this summer. The Sun says Ballack to Chelsea but Ballack is too similar to Lampard.
WHY INTERVIEW YOURSELF?
Brevity ! I’ll keep this short because I’ll interrupt myself before I start to ramble. I’ve become fed up saying the same things over and over. I sound like a broken record.
DID YOU WATCH BLACKBURN ON FOOTBALL FIRST?
Yes, but only the first half. Then at 10.35 I switched over to Match of the Day, which had shorter highlights. Blackburn fouled 23 times and the first foul was 10 seconds. The ref let bad fouls go but booked Lehmann for nothing. Steven Reid walked in front of him when he had the ball in his hands, just to provoke that reaction. All teams wind Lehmann up by doing that.The ref should enforce the laws of the game.The laws of the game are there to protect the game. Not the players, not the match – the game itself, the sport of football that we all love, or used to love.
THE PEDERSEN GOAL?
Arsenal still can’t defend a throw-in. Lucas Neill takes the throw 30 yards back into the Blackburn half. He takes it almost level with the edge of their penalty area ! He throws the ball down the line and it’s headed on by Sinama-Pongolle, beating Gilberto, and Flamini has gone AWOL, and Senderos is outpaced and tricked by Bellamy, as you would expect, and Toure loses his bearings.
Defending is about angles and good habits. If you wrote a textbook titled How Not to Defend, that goal would be in Chapter 1. And Chapters 2, 3 and 4 would be filled by many other goals conceded down Arsenal’s left flank over the past six years. Yes, Arsenal missed three chances in the second half. On Thierry Henry, Alan Hansen said, “He’s making it easy for back fours he’s playing against.” But I’m a big-picture man, a philosopher. I look forward to a time when Arsenal will be able to defend a throw-in.
HAS FOURTH PLACE GONE NOW?
Yes.
WILL THIS SQUAD BE WORLD-BEATERS IN 2008?
Not without signing three experienced players.
CAN ARSENAL AFFORD TO BE OUT OF THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FOR TWO YEARS?
No, but one year will be OK. You have to get it right in the league.
WILL THIERRY STAY?
Yes.
SO YOU DON’T GET BENT OUT OF SHAPE BY FOOTBALL NOW?
Somewhere in the Nineties I stopped doing that. I could still be neurotic about results, I could stress about the next 11 Arsenal matches, but I won’t. Every fan will have their own views about March, April and May. I looked at the fixtures on Saturday night and counted up the wins I expect – and Arsenal got 60 points. They seem to have been stuck on 41 points for a long time. Spurs draw matches, Arsenal don’t. Spurs have drawn 10 games, Arsenal five, so Spurs are five points ahead. Last season Everton won six away games and got 61 points and finished fourth.
DID YOU WATCH THE CARLING CUP FINAL?
I thought it would be 2-1 or 3-1 to Man United, but I hoped Wigan would win 3-2. So I had a bet on more than 2.5 goals. Last week I was talking to Nigel Bidmead and asked him what our pal Joe Bernstein was up to and Nigel said Joe was doing fine, he’d had some good stories in The Mail on Sunday. Lo and behold, Joe had the backpage lead : Van Nistelrooy has been dropped! If true, it’s a great story. If true, it’s a good call by Fergie because it give shim a third striker with pace. So I switched on to see if Joe’s story was true and it was. Rooney bounced a header off the bar, scored a while later, Saha scored one and set up Ronaldo for 3-0, and Rooney made it 4-0 with a Gerd Muller “little goal”. Nothing went right for Wigan after keeper Mike Pollitt did his hamstring after 3 minutes.
D0 FOOTBALL RESULTS MATTER?
Yes, but other things matter more. Like close relationships, love, friendship, family life, music, art, literature, the face of an alert, happy toddler in a buggy on the street.
WHAT ABOUT NEXT SEASON?
The Emirates is the best stadium in UK and a magnificent achievement by AFC. No other club in the world could have borrowed £260 million and built this stadium on time and on budget. The Emirates has a pitch the same size as the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. Highbury is the smallest pitch in the league and the Emirates is the biggest. I’ve been on a tour there and I’ll write something about that soon. The massive pitch will require a change of format and Beckham will be a big part of that.