By Myles Palmer
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“ALL THE BIG teams are there,” said Mourinho.
There were no surprises on Matchday 5 because teams know each other now.
They have played each other and measured each other.Top teams have seen what teams 3 and 4 have done in their mini-leagues.
I thought Liverpool would score against Betis but it finished 0-0.
Benitez starts Crouch because he is a keep-ball player.
He brings on Cisse as a sub because he is a lose-ball player.
Mourinho’s Chelsea won 2-0 at Anderlecht.
He might have said : All the superstar players are there.
Ronaldino scored a goal in Barcelona’s 3-1 defeat of Werder Bremen, Adriano got three tonight as Inter crushed Artmedia 4-0, and Shevchenko scored all the goals as AC Milan hammered Fenerbahce 4-0 in Istanbul.
His second, rifled in from 23 yards, left foot, no backlift, was an astounding goal by anybody else, but with Sheva we have got used to it.
Poacher, powerhouse, warrior, the best player of the last decade, an Olympic gladiator – and maybe the greatest footballer I’ve ever seen at Wembley.
At last Andriy Shevchenko will play in a World Cup, having missed France 98 and Korea/Japan 2002.
JOHN CAREW is six foot six and played for Rosenborg and Valencia.When he’s not playing football in summer, Carew trains with sprinters.
Houllier signed him for Lyon.
You expect Carew to score breakaway goals, or headers, but he backheeled through the legs of Roberto Carlos to make it 1-1 in Madrid.
HERCULES, like Arsene Wenger, was a miracle worker.
But Hercules only did the business in Greek mythology.
The son of Zeus, he strangled the razor-toothed hound of Hades, whose tail was a snake.
Our champion warrior Arsene Wenger travelled north into the lair of ManUnitedMegastore and fired an arrow called Overmars into the eye of the monster and won the Double in 1998.
He won three titles, four FA Cups, sold a French striker for £22 million and built a £12 million luxury training ground AND signed a much better striker with the difference, made £3 million players into world-beaters, and never ducked a press conference or a question.
In short, Arsene Hercules has set his football club on the way to becoming the best in the world.
Not London, the world !
But, at the moment, the cool Alsatian looks vulnerable.
At the moment, he’s digging out results one by one and enjoying the luck that a son of Zeus deserves.
Arsene said in Berne, after winning, that the hard work starts here.
His team faces a huge task over the next three months.
Make no mistake, it’s a MASSIVE challenge this winter.
I’m not a neurotic, not a worrier, but I’m concerned about the size of the challenges facing the Arsenal squad.
From what I’ve seen since August, there isn’t enough steel or organisation in the side.
The team is only 60% of what it was two years ago.
The squad looks thin, although some young players are improving quickly.
Six Champions League wins in a row, but AFC is flying high in a pretty paper kite that could be torn apart by a gust of wind.
The best team Arsenal have beaten this season is Wigan.
How many players are as good as they were two years ago?
How many?
Count them and tell me !
My scorecard?
LEHMANN is playing well.
HENRY is better than two years ago,
SENDEROS will be captain one day, I hope.
FABREGAS is classy playmaker.
VAN PERSIE, ebullient and direct, is scoring regularly.
EBOUE is very lively and exciting.
HLEB is a marvellous asset, but injured.
COLE and CLICHY should come back from injury and be, again, two vital arrows in the arsenal of Hercules.
On the other players, I won’t say anything.
And they won’t say anything about me.
It’s a pact of “mutual consent”
IN BERNE the team was lucky to win after getting a soft penalty in the 88th and Pires took it perfectly and Arsenal have now won five out of five and top their group with Ajax at Highbury left to play in two weeks time.
VAN PERSIE got centreback Deumi sent off, won the penalty, and slipped a killer pass to Henry, who almost scored a trademark goal, shooting low across the keeper but just past the post.
So Arsene saw his team beat ten men with a soft penalty, after Thun had a good goal wrongly disallowed.
Taken together, Wigan, Blackburn, Bolton, Newcastle and Chelsea is a crucial sequence of games.
The best thing about playing Blackburn on Saturday is knowing that Jason Roberts does not play for them.
But Bellamy, Pedersen and Dickov do.
It’s a gigantic task now.
It’s the Labours of Hercules twice a week with a ref to give yellow cards to the many-headed Hydra.
November 23 2005