EVERY team needs goalscorers.
Bottom line, Arsenal didn’t have enough goalscorers this season.
Van Persie did well with 13 before he got injured scoring his 13th, Gilberto slotted 11 goals including penalties to keep his team going, but the other players didn’t score often enough, although their league total was decent.
Spurs and Liverpool, who were fifth and third, scored 57 goals each, while fourth-placed Arsenal scored 63.
Chelsea scored 64 and Manchester United got a mighty 83, proving that they were the best team in the Premiership by far.
Chelsea had the strongest squad and the strongest method and should have walked the league and got to the Champions League Final.
But Jose Mourinho was too concerned with keeping his unbeaten home record, so he drew seven games at Stamford Bridge.
My rule-of-thumb, starting a season, is that you are looking to win at least 26 games if you want the title.
Arsenal won 19.Liverpool won 20, and Chelsea won 24.
Man United won 28 games.
They lost five, two more than Chelsea.
JULIO BAPTISTA is on his way, after David James saved his penalty in a 0-0 at Fratton Park on the last day of the season.
A miserable day for the unpopular Brazilian, missing chances on a wet, cold afternoon. The poor guy never settled. Let’s wish him well in a warmer climate.
Baptista has been a disaster at Arsenal and the scale of his failure makes me wonder what Arsene’s 26 scouts are doing. Looking for 14-year olds, probably.
Arsene’s team selection was strange, a 4-5-1 with Eboue wide on the right, Djourou in midfield, Baptista up front. I didn’t think that team could score.
But Eboue can’t defend, so maybe he could play wide right. He was the player fouled by Primus for the penalty that Baptista missed.
Overall, a 0-0 was the appropriate scoreline for Arsenal to end the season, as others have noted.
Toothless. You need goalscorers in your team and you need goalscorers on your bench as well.
PORTSMOUTH (4-4-2): James; Johnson, Primus, Pamarot, Traoré; O’Neil (Mvuemba, 77), Davis (Mendes, 65), Hughes, Kranjcar; Mwaruwari (LuaLua, h-t), Kanu.
Subs not used: Ashdown (gk), O’Brien.
ARSENAL (4-5-1): Poom; Hoyte, Touré, Senderos, Clichy; Eboué, Diaby, Djourou, Fabregas, Hleb; Baptista.
Subs not used: Mannone (gk), Connolly, O’Cearuill, Randall, Gibbs.
Referee : Graham Poll, who now retires.
I discovered recently that Graham Poll went to my old school in Stevenage. My friend Nick, who lives in San Diego, came over a few weeks ago with his Japanese wife and we took the kids to feed the ducks and climb on a wooden whale carved from a storm-flattened tree. Nick isn’t into sports at all but as we were walking back to the house the subject of football somehow came up and he said that Poll was in his class at Alleynes.