By Myles Palmer
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MIDDLESBROUGH were outclassed by Arsenal on Saturday.
Arsenal almost scored twice in the first two minutes and it was 4-0 before it was 4-1.
After the penalty went in it was damage limitation by Boro.
As I’ve said before, Steve McClaren is a dull man who produces a dull team. If you don’t have a go, you will never win.
In seven games against Arsenal, he has lost seven.
Of the four Middlesbrough games, this Premiership encounter was the most important.
The FA Cup game? Arsenal will win 2-0.
The Carling Cup is small beer. Will Arsene rest Henry for those two semis? Or play him in the first and win 4-1 again?
Aliadiere showed some good touches on Saturday, but went off with a twisted knee at half-time. He is out for a month.
ASTON VILLA away next Sunday might be interesting.
Do we believe that Arsene has bid £8 million for Juan Pablo Angel? No !
Angel is 28 and has been a good striker for a long time.
A middle class kid who played with Aimar and Saviola at River.He did well for the Colombian national team.
John Gregory wanted Benni McCarthy, a truly useless striker, and offered £8 million for him. But Celta Vigo wanted £12 million, so Villa got lucky.
When Gregory could not get McCarthy or Kanoute, he signed Angel, whose class was never appreciated last season by Graham Taylor, a Third Division full back who never played with a class player in his life.
ARSENE SAID LAST WEEK that he will never sign a target man.
He said that his players at Monaco, when in trouble, used to hit it long to Mark Hateley, even with Hoddle in the team, rather than playing to feet, as he wanted.
He sold John Hartson to West Ham for the same reason.
He wanted to remove that option.
He wants quick passing on the ground, which is harder on winter pitches.
I was very interested in this point when I was writing The Professor, so I talked to Mark Hateley about that.
If you have read the book you know that in 1998, after the FA Cup Final at Wembley, I asked Arsene if he was specifically looking for a striker who could head the ball.
He smiled and said, “That’s a good question.”
Now, at last, we have the answer to my question.
At Monaco, Arsene had had George Weah, and Klinsmann, and Hateley, three centre forwards who very good in the air.
So I asked Hateley, who is smarter than your average footballer, why Arsene had never signed that type of striker at Arsenal.
His reply was interesting.
Hateley said, “Perhaps he went through a phase. I think you’ll find that managers go in phases. There are certain aspects of the game that they concentrate on. And then they move on.They’re always changing, they’re always learning, they’re always maturing, aren’t they?”
During 2003 people often said to me, “Trezeguet is the one he wants” or “Mexes is the one he wants.”
David Trezeguet is a target man, a box player.
He is much slimmer and faster than Hartson.
And he is Thierry’s mate. And when Trezeguet is good, he is very good.
So I would like to see him at Arsenal. He is what Arsenal have needed for the last five years. He is far better than Jeffers,Wiltord or Kanu.
But Trezeguet is extremely rich. He is a Serie A star on huge wages. He would see Arsenal as a step down from Juventus.
And Trezeguet would tempt the team to kick it long, rather than play along the ground.
I DON’T THINK enough people have given Arsene credit for his style of play.
Even now, the style of play he has created is not widely understood.
A lot of The Professor is about how that style has been achieved over the last seven years. The evolution of a team, a squad, a highly original and bold style of modern football.
That is one of my main themes on ANR, and in the book.
The striker who fits in best with that style, the perfect foil for Henry and Pires, the ultimate piece of Arsene Wenger’s dream jigsaw, is Samuel Eto’o.
The Cameroon sharpshooter is very fast, very dynamic, very brave, very skilful, very exciting.
He is a young warrior who has never played for a big club and still has a lot to prove.
So I hope Samuel Eto’o does not have a spectacular African Nations. Because if he does, everybody will want him and the price will go up.
IT WAS A VERY interesting weekend in football.
Real Madrid were unbelievably lethargic against Real Sociedad and lost 1-0.
Juventus right winger Camoranesi scored with a fantastic diving header in Juventus’s 2-1 win at Sampdoria.
Milan beat Reggina 3-1 with young Kaka scoring twice.
Now that Crespo is out for a month, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink is important again. So he scored two goals in Chelsea’s 4-0 win at Leicester.
Ref Paul Durkin was superb on Sky after the Man United 0-0 v Newcastle.
He said he was not 100% sure that Tim Howard had clipped Shearer, so he could not give a penalty.
Silvestre hooked the ball into the net, while holding a defender down.
He wasn’t holding him that much. And it’s a contact sport. And I might have given the goal, even after seeing the replay from a good angle.
But Durkin saw a foul and disallowed the goal.
I can’t argue with that. Neither can you. And neither can Sir Alex, who has bigger worries.
Maybe Rio’s 8-month ban should have been 4 months. But I do not feel sorry for him or Man United.
That fiasco, to me, is about two things : (1) Do footballers accept the consequences of their actions? and (2) Are Manchester United bigger than football ?
There have been a billion words written about Riogate. The whole thing is a huge bore.
As someone who thinks that footballers should accept the consquences of their own actions, and who further believes that football is bigger than Man United, I don’t feel sorry for Rio or his club.
A Sunday Times front page story accused Sir Alex’s agent son Jason of taking £190,000 from the Tim Howard deal through a Swiss agent and another agent, Mike Morris.
Who leaked those documents to The Sunday Times?
I’VE BEEN ASKED to contribute to a book about pop music.
The job is fun and should not take long.
But if I disappear from ANR for a while, that’s the reason.
13th January 2006.