By Myles Palmer
I have studied the BBC video of last Sunday’s game.
Gio van Bronckhorst was sharp and mobile and did many good things against Liverpool.
He blocked a Gerrard shot which deflected over the bar.He nipped up behind Hamann and pinched the ball off him.He beat Steven Gerrard to a 50-50 ball and Gerrard got a yellow card for kicking him.
He foxed Liverpool by pushing himself five or ten yards ahead of Thierry Henry, so he could play one-twos with him, give him somebody to pass to, or pretend to pass to, which can be important for a dribbler.
Gio made his first feeble bad pass after 80 minutes. He looked dead on his feet after 81 minutes and he was replaced after 84 minutes.
You could see that the physical opposition, the high tempo and the wet pitch had, by then, done him in. He was completely cream-crackered.
But Gio had played a major role in a famous victory. Just a shame the match will be famous for the wrong things.Three red cards and coin-throwing.
Last week I was thinking that I needed a signal,a game that would convince me that Arsenal could win the title.I had seen too many players who had disappointed me.
Maybe I’m too hard to please.But I had not seen enough to convince me that Arsenal could be champions.Not nearly enough.
Yes, I know it’s marathon. It’s a grind. It’s an accumulation of points over nine months.That is why I never pontificate about trophies before Xmas.
I absolutely HATE people asking me in August : Who do you fancy for the league? I want to see the contenders and I need 20 games to figure out the contenders from the also-rans.
The Premiership title is not decided by how well you play compared to last season or any other season. It’s decided by how many points you get COMPARED TO THE OTHER CLUBS.
I know all that. We all know all that.
But I wanted a signal.I wanted to see a signal performance. Something that made me say : Yes, that’s it – they can do it! Now I really believe they can be champions !
Even though I know that one great game is not a great team. Any band can do a great gig,any team can play a great game, and even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
I figured, last week, that the defining, signalling performance might be a Cup tie, not a league game.
I even toyed with the notion that beating Liverpoool might be that game. But I finally dismissed the idea, even though I wrote two pieces here predicting an Arsenal victory.
I thought they would win, but I didn’t expect to have my doubts about the Championship assuaged so soon.
Sunday’s game was the first time I’ve seen every Arsenal player function properly this season. Some were better than others, but the whole eleven,and the subs,performed effectively. There were no passengers.
And Parlour coming on for Pires didn’t really mean that Van Bronckhorst was pushed wide. It meant that he was pushed further forward, which was what foxed Liverpool.They know how Arsenal play, but this bamboozled them.
We saw a collective sense of purpose, and a collective style of play which has now evolved to the point where, amazingly, the team can prosper despite the absence of Kanu, Lauren, and Ljungberg, and an injury to Pires after 20 minutes,AND the sending off of Keown and Bergkamp !
OK, Arsenal only scored one goal. But they only needed one. And, as everyone said, it was a fantastic move and a fantastic strike.
Bergkamp’s FA Cup header against Liverpool might be as vital, as much of a defining moment, as much of a signal, as the Marc Overmars goal at Old Trafford which led to 10 wins in a row and the Premiership title in 1998.
If France boss Roger Lemerre watched Sunday’s game he would have been well chuffed with Thierry Henry’s fiery commitment and his Brazilian chest-control.
Lemerre would realise that this was a revenge match for Henry, who must blame himself for the defeat in Cardiff.
He will be scarred for life if Arsenal don’t go back and win the FA Cup Final this season.So I think he will make sure he isn’t scarred for life by making sure Arsenal get there again – and then winning it. As they should have done last year.
It’s almost an obsolete concept now to talk about a player “turning it on” because modern football is so much more of a team game than it was in the Fifties and Sixties and Seventies.
But Thierry Henry turned it on on January 27th – and he can turn it on again. Especially with this team to give him the ball where he wants it.
Football is a game of many ups and downs. But I’m up at the moment and I hope you are too.
Sunday meant a lot to me. And since I’m so intuitive,and set so much store by fleeting, subjective impressions, I may be all wrong about this. Only time will tell.
And anyway I have the feeling that January, despite recent headlines, is the calm before the storm.
When the Champions League starts up again next month we will see Man United, Arsenal and Liverpool get some really odd league results.
28th January 2002.
PS
Ian Wright was the BBC’s studio guest with Alan Hansen and Gary Lineker.
He was unintentionally funny in a way that he will never understand. His attitude was : Do we have to show the next 45 minutes of football? Can’t we just keep the cameras on me?
TV flatters the low-key, which is why Hansen is a giant among pundits.He is composed,succinct, cool and sharp as a gin and tonic.
Wrighty is such a legend in his own mind, such a cuddly, amusing super-celeb, that he thinks that him being there is enough. Him being there is more important than anything he might say.Or anything that anybody else might say.
Wrighty, of course, is not in the football business. He’s not in the television business.
He’s in the Ian Wright business.
He made that as clear on Sunday as he did in his final season at Arsenal.I hope I don’t see him guesting on Match of the Day again. Because he doesn’t know how to fit into the format.