By Myles Palmer
The Rolls Royce is purring in top gear again.
The footballer Don Howe once called a Rolls Royce of a player has turned the clock back to autumn 1997 in the last two games against Blackburn and Mallorca.
Dennis Bergkamp now looks fit, strong, smooth and confident. He is a wonderfully elegant player and most of his power has always been hidden within that elegance.
He has obviously had mood problems as well as injuries, but when he’s motoring there is nobody quite like him in world football.
Dennis helped Holland qualify for a lot of big tournaments.
As soon as he retired, Holland failed to qualify for 2002. That ain’t co-incidence. They miss him.
They have plenty of class players, but they miss him. They miss his brains, his vision, his power, his goals. He is a fantastic technician and a great team player and when he is motoring he makes the game look easy.
Some of what Dennis said on Wednesday night has been criticised since then.
He said, “Sometimes I feel that getting through the first stage can be the hardest job and we are delighted to have done that, but we’ve still got that thing where when 2-0 up, we go looking to make it 3-0 and suddenly it is 2-1.
“We let things slip against Blackburn on Saturday and until Thierry’s goal we did the same against Mallorca.But we’ve worked hard and made our opportunity to go on. Now we should be more confident we can do well.”
I happen to think the first group stage makes everybody nervous.
Arsenal think of themselves as a top eight club in Europe.
They were quarter-finalists, luckily, last year, and they had dearly wanted to be quarter-finalist in 1999 and 2000.
So the prospect of failure in the first mini-group is terrifying for the players.
Success in playing Arsene’s type of football depends on keeping a relaxed focus on the job, so that they can win the ball and pass it forward quickly and accurately.Its a fragile style because it needs a certain rhythm, a certain frame of mind.
As I said yesterday, Arsenal have been too tense.But qualifying takes the pressure off and I expect performances to improve in the next mini-group.
NOTE : I’m not saying results will improve because the opposition will be superior to Mallorca and Schalke.
I’m only saying that the performances will improve.I think Arsenal can play better football in the Champions League than they have played so far.
I may be a rash pundit at times but I’m not gonna predict that Arsenal will get through the next group before I know what clubs are in that group.
I may be reckless, but not that reckless.I know I still have some credibility with many ANR readers out there.
Sunderland v Arsenal?
I haven’t seen Sunderland recently, so I can’t comment perceptively on them.
26th October 2001.
P.S. Just had ten angry e-mails re a careless mistake in the Zidane piece.
One line contained one word too many.The mistake was corrected within three hours.Nice to know that people are paying attention!