By Myles Palmer
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CORRECTION : Lyon 0 Arsenal 1
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What a cross from Ashley Cole! What a header from Thierry! Jurgen Klinsmann eat your heart out!
From the highlights it looked as if Arsenal rode their luck but handled the occasion slightly better. More experience of big games and pressure games.
David Seaman made three decent saves.
Nice to see the boys hitting Kanu with longer passes. That can be a good way of playing if you want to win 1-0 away from home.
One Kanu pass to Henry, when he hit the outside of the post, was excellent.
I’m sure it helped that Wenger knew a lot about Lyon and could figure out what kind of game it would be.
My pal Nigel Bidmead phoned on his way to the game.
He is on holiday in Montpellier.
He called to ask the name of the stadium and the address.
I looked in the Champions League Official Guide Page 66 : Stade Municipal De Gerland, 350 Avenue Jean Jaures.
Nigel asked if I would be watching the game live on TV and I said : No.
So he said he would phone at half time if he could get a signal.But he didn’t call at half time.
After the game he called and said Lyon were well organised in defence,lively in attack but weak in midfield.
He had not called at half time because he was behind the goal and was the only Englishman in a mass of Lyon supporters.
We chatted for a while and then he said he was on the motorway and had to ring off.
Then my lawyer Alexis phoned and said Cole, Vieira, Adams, Seaman,everybody was brilliant. He had watched it at friend’s house.
This is a very big result and one which, frankly. I did not expect.I thought it would be a draw.
With Moscow Spartak losing 1-0 in Munich, Arsenal got two results last night.
They now go second in the group and can win their next two home games against Lyon and Spartak.
Six clean sheets in a row!
Can they make it seven in a row without Adams and Parlour on Sunday?
Arsenal 1 Chelsea 0?
Does that sound preposterous?
Not really.
Because the team has made a conceptual leap during February.It is a conceptual leap that I hoped they might make.
But I had not done a piece on it because I’ve been busy writing a football book which will interest ANR readers.
Arsenal have stopped scoring early and then struggling. They now prefer to struggle and score late.
The last three games have been 1-0 wins with goals by Bergkamp (79 minutes v Coventry), Henry (67 minutes v Ipswich) and Henry (59 minutes v Lyon).
I think that’s the way to go !
Stop scoring all those early goals! Don’t try to blow teams away any more, boys !
Because you were burning yourselves out and then getting very neurotic as soon as the other team pulled back to 2-1.
Just spend the first half sparring, organising, sussing the other team out.
Then raise the tempo, dominate and score.
It’s taken five years for the brilliant Mr Wenger to evolve the team to this stage. It’s been five years of trying to score three goals in the first half an hour.
That has often been be fun,and sometimes very exciting, but the blitzkreig creates its own problems, as we saw against Bayern Munich and Sunderland.
Six clean sheets? Let’s go for ten!
14th February, 2001.