By Myles Palmer
_________________________
Arsenal 2 Middlesbrough 1
_________________________
Whelan 22, Pires 56, Cole 80
____________________________
The last Saturday of 2001 turns out to be an enjoyably entertaining one when fellow author Alex Fynn takes me to Highbury.
We arrive and the Marble Hall is decorated with a big Christmas tree and we stand chatting to Bob Wilson until Dave Seaman comes and politely spirits Bob away.
Then we go up the stairs and get a team sheet from commissionaire Jim, who worked on the press door for years. While I’m talking to Jim, and Alex is talking to Gavin Dein, David Dein’s son, a man comes up and shakes my hand, so I look up to see who it is and it’s Arsene Wenger.
After that we go into the lounge, where Roy Hodgson is talking to Tord Grip and another man, who turns out to be David Kemp,the former Palace player.
So I get a cup of tea and go over and say,”Roy, there’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you. When you played here with Blackburn, and won 3-1,you had three players marking Dennis Bergkamp on throw-ins. You had one behind him, one in front of him, and one in the space that Dennis would normally dummy and run into to get the throw from Lee Dixon. Is that an Italian thing?”
On the contrary, Roy says he learned that marking from Dave Sexton and Bobby Robson in some of the first FA coaching sessions he ever attended. But he says the third marker was just a midfield player filling in of his own accord.
Roy says some surprising things about Italian football and he recalls in detail the Ginola cross which led to Bulgaria’s equaliser in Paris, when France failed to qualify for USA 94.Tord says Sweden were in that group and Cantona should have been sent off in Paris for a tackle on Jonas Thern.
Arsenal youth player Sebastian Svard, a charming, good-looking Danish lad,has a chat with Roy. They know each other.
Tord has just come back from Christmas near Stockholm with his daughter and says it was very,very cold over there.He and Roy are drinking red wine.
We talk about Joe Cole and Tord says,”We might need
somebody like that against Sweden. And maybe we need somebody else with pace up front with Michael.” He implies that Sweden always find England a bit predictable.
Alex and I enjoy our front row seats just outside the directors’box. I grin inwardly when a middle aged bloke in the row behind says, in a languid public school voice, “Kanu, old boy, how about a bit of that magic?”
Everything is hunky-dory except the match, which is tense and messy,with both keepers unemployed except for Mark Crossley once saving a Pires shot, knocking it onto the post.
I can’t really see where a goal is coming from until Sol miskicks a back-pass and Noel Whelan scores and we are 1-0 down at half-time.
Naturally, I’m thinking about my previous piece here, saying I prefer Arsenal as a second-half team.
I’m wondering whether Arsene looked at the last half hour of the 3-1 home defeat by Newcastle and said : Do I Not Like That!
With ten men or eleven, with Graham Poll or any other ref, he would want his team to be strong in the last half hour of games, not outplayed like that.
I’m watching the game in a more general way today, not working, not dissecting it, not taking notes, just following the ebb and flow, rolling along with it, rather as I imagine fans do. It’s so long since I was a fan.
Then Pires hits a looping 25-yarder for 1-1. (I don’t notice Thierry Henry’s crucial obstruction on Paul Ince until I see replays that evening.)
Bergkamp and Wiltord have come on and I’m saying to Alex : 20 minutes to go, plenty of time to score. With 14 minutes to go, still plenty of time.
Wiltord passes back to Bergkamp, who takes one touch and looks up and hits a stupendous curling cross over the defence and Ashley Cole races through to the corner of the six yard box and scores with a beautifully placed diving header.
I jump to my feet and stand there laughing with both arms in the air. You can’t jump to your feet in the press box and I never get that excited about football these days anyway.
I can only remember three previous occasions when I have jumped to my feet watching Arsenal.
A sensational Ian Wright goal against Neville Southall of Everton.A game at the Lane when Clive Allen rammed his boot into Paul Davis’s groin five yards in front of me and Bob Harris said, “Sit down, remember you’re a journalist!”
And in April when Ray Parlour scored that thunderbolt against Valencia.
But this was special.This was a world class header to convert a world class cross by Dennis.
What geometry! What vision! What a technician!
A fantastic winning goal!
We go inside for a cup of tea and a smoked salmon sandwich and then see Arsene with the Monday reporters, just outside the press lounge where he has just been talking to my esteemed colleagues on the Sunday papers.
Then we have a chat with David Dein. The match itself could have been a lot better, but you have to be realistic, so I tell David that I think there will be a lot of games like this from now on, tight,scrappy games where Arsenal are trying to win 2-1.
David doesn’t necessarily agree with this view but he is happy enough because Chelsea have won 2-1 at Newcastle, so on the last Saturday of 2001 Arsenal are top of the table ongoal difference.
On winning days like this football is a fun business to be in. Packed stadium, beating Liverpool, Chelsea and Boro in your last three games, FA Cup about to start, Arsene’s staying till 2005,new stadium permission granted at last, so it’s a good day to be David Dein and a good last home game of the year.
As David told me on another occasion, it is the bad times in football that make you appreciate the good times. If you’ve been through rough spells and disappointments, you really, really appreciate the exciting wins, the happy times, the joyful moments.
Alex and I walk round to the corner of Avenell Road and Gillespie Road and talk to Big Mitch, the well-known programme-stallholder, who has become medium-sized Mitch since he lost 15 stone this year.
Mitch points out that Kanu, Vieira, Ljungberg and Henry have not played well today, but we have still won 2-1.
A lifelong Gooner who really knows he game, Mitch reckons Gio played his best game for Arsenal today.
I’m in a good mood, so I don’t argue.
30th December 2001.