By Myles Palmer
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SOL will be a vital player against Birmingham on Sunday.
He will be important for the rest of the autumn, maybe for the rest of the season.
Arsene has decided to trust his kids.
So it’s a gamble and a developmental season, a risky season of let’s see what Reyes, Van Persie, Flamini and Clichy can do.
He knows how good Fabregas and Senderos can be.
And its a unique season, since Irish bookies Paddy Power have paid out on Chelsea retaining the title – after seven games !
Arsene might not spend in January but he will spend megamillions in the summer of 2006.
He needs to buy precisely.
So he needs to be sure of what he has, what he lacks, what he needs.
After a World Cup, many big players change clubs, and Ashley Cole will be one of them.
ARSENE has talked a lot about Sol recently, saying that we are now seeing the real Sol Campbell, the defender he was in 2003-2004.
Arsene said, “It has been very important to get a fit and hungry Sol back. I feel he was frustrated the whole season last year, he was never completely himself. Maybe there is still missing something at the end of games, but for the first time for a long time we see him sharp and dominating in the fights.”
Sol is 31 now and it’s cost him a lot to get from where he was to where he is today.
He comes from a family of 12. His parents were Jamaican immigrants and he grew up in Stratford with nine brothers and two sisters and Mum worked in the canteen at Fords in Dagenham and Dad worked nights as a labourer on the railways.
Sol is a very determined character who, I’m told, did not tell any of his brothers that he was leaving Spurs to join Arsenal in 2001.
He needs to be very fit and focussed to hold Arsenal together because he knows that Dennis and Robbie won’t be there next year, Patrick’s gone, and Arsene has decided to rely on his kids.
That means the big man has to hold Arsenal together through October, and, maybe, get Kolo out of jail in every game.
LIKE SOL CAMPBELL, Bob Dylan is misunderstood, and will continue to be so, since he is so clever and evasive.
No Direction Home, the two-part documentary shown on BBC2, was 50 times more interesting than any football match I’ve seen lately.
The film was directed by Martin Scorsese at the instigation of Dylan’s manager Jeff Rosen, who shot a current interview with his star and, apparently, gave the footage to Scorsese to edit as he saw fit.
No Direction Home, like the autobiography – Chronicles One – is product which (1) makes money and (2) adds to his legend.
Clearly, Dylan and his manager want to sell CDs and DVDs and add to his legend. But they have to work within his legend. They cannot contradict his legend.
I have doubts about how hip Scorsese is, but he has access to hip people and I’m gonna give him credit for something quite subtle.
The clips he used, and the quotes from Sixties musicians and musicbiz people, suggest that Scorsese realises that Dylan is a myth-maker and always has been.
He has been toying with us since before his first album was made. He has never explained himself and he never will. Bob doesn’t do candid. He just gives us glimpses, to keep us interested.
He is not the first performer to create a fictional persona, but he is the first performer to create Bob Dylan.
When Robert Zimmerman changed his name he changed the rules about who he was and who he could be and what he could say.
HAVING SAID ALL THAT, Highway SixtyBob Revisited is fantastic.
It’s lovely to see the outtakes and the backstage stuff, even in a film that’s commissioned by his manager and which is therefore uncritical.
Look at the contrast between how he was at press conferences and how he was when meeting his fans.
With reporters he was a dandy, an artful dodger, sometimes a scorpion who answered a question with a question.
“Do you care about what you sing?” one guy asks.
“You ask me that? You’ve got a lotta nerve to ask me that!” says Bob, surprised and livid.
Near the end of this three and a half hour film we we see him coming out of a Glasgow hotel and getting into his limousine.
The shots from inside the car, with the half-open window framing the faces of three teenage girls, are pure magic.
Bob is relaxed with three or four fans at his elbow, he’s been there before, many times.
They want to be near him, see him, touch him, talk to him.
He can see the infatuated flush on their faces, so he jokes gently with them.
“Did you boo me last night?”
“I didn’t boo you.”
“We didn’t boo you, Bob.”
“I want the names of all the people who booed me.”
The car engine starts.
“Come back soon !”
“OK, I’ll be back in a month or two. Cheerio.”
But, a while later, perhaps in another city, he refuses an autograph to a lad reaching into the car with a piece of paper.
“You don’t need my autograph.If you needed my autograph, I’d give it you.”
The lad looks at the camera and says,”What’s the matter with him today?”
Backstage at another gig, Dylan looks burned-out and sick and he says his voice has gone.
You can see he needs to lay down his weary head. He says he shouldn’t be singing and reckons we should get a new Bob Dylan.
“Get a new Bob Dylan, see how long he lasts.”
September 30th 2005