By Myles Palmer
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THE NEW, PATIENT ARSENAL beat PSV by 1-0.
AC Milan flew to Donetsk and won 1-0 against 10 men.
Chelsea went to Paris and thrashed PSG 3-0, with Drogba getting a couple, as predicted.
CSKA Moscow drew 0-0 in Porto, not bad for a team that has never won a Champions League game.
Their lively Brazilian striker Vagner Love might change that sad bit of history.
Adriano banged in two for Inter against Werder Bremen.
BARCELONA won 3-1 at Celtic, but I loved Chris Sutton’s stabbed equaliser.
Zidane dislocated his shoulder in the 3-0 defeat in Leverkusen,where Beckham was at fault on the first two goals.
Franca scored one and made one.
Nedved, who replaced Zidane at Juventus, scored a wonderful winner against Ajax after a tricky Czech improvisation by del Piero and Camoranesi to set him up for a first time shot which went in off the post.
Del Piero and Camoranesi are not Czechs, but this kind of improvised short-passing exchange among ball-players is something I associate with their style of play.
Those little moves, among players with their backs to goal, or side-on, are awkward and very hard to pull off. I call it Czechostyle.
Poborski can also score that kind of goal. So can Zidane, of course.
Juventus have replaced the old men at the back with not so old men like Thuram and Cannavaro, Emerson can control the tempo of a game, and nobody in their team is as potty at Totti.
Juve look so strong that I had a bet on them to win the trophy at 12-1.
THE MATURING ARSENAL decided to play more patiently, but could easily have scored twice in the first half.
If they had, we would not have heard much talk about patience.
PSV knew how to crowd Bergkamp out of his favoured spaces.
Van Bommel chopped Gilberto down with a violent tackle that made 30,000 Gooners go “Ouch!”
Gilberto had not played for Brazil against Germany last week and had a fine game, looking fresh and full of running. You need that threat against defensive teams.
Keeping it tight when 1-0 up means that Arsenal are having to learn a new language.
That is not easy, as we saw when PSV outplayed them in the last 25 minutes and gave Arsenal too many nervous moments.
LIVERPOOL impressed me a lot, even before Cisse’s explosive shot flashed between the post and keeper Flavio Roma in 22 minutes.
Benitez has got Liverpool doing something they did pre-Houllier : passing the ball.
But it’s still dynamic because Gerrard is the main man.
Their tempo is his tempo and he is forceful, fast, penetrating.
But Benitez, a team-builder, will gradually reduce their dependence on Gerrard
Liverpool are currently a bang! bang! team who will gain fluency through November and December.
Harry Kewell is raving about how well the three new Spaniards are playing.
Kewell will have to raise his game to be a regular. One brilliant shuffle and pass through to Cisse showed what Harry can do when he pulls his finger out.
Benitez’s old team, Valencia, knew how to keep clean sheets.
If Liverpool can do that, the sky’s the limit.
AC MILAN are what Real Madrid should be : a stylish, balanced team which has a good defence, a solid midfield and an exciting attack.
Stam looks a judicious signing, Dida might be the world’s finest keeper, and Shevchenko was the best £16 million that Tony Blair’s buddy will ever spend.
SIR ALEX used to have an astonishing authority in the way he controlled his football machine, but now the vehicle is like a racing car that’s spinning round and round on the track and the driver’s thinking : “What’s my best back four? Who should be in midfield? Should I have played Fletcher in Lyon?”
WES BROWN was good in that 2-2 draw, but Silvestre and O’Shea were abysmal.
A great header by Van Nistelrooy got United back into the game when all looked lost at 0-2, and he knocked in a second which left the Premiership with three winners and an away draw.
CAN ARSENAL WIN 1-0 against better teams than PSV?
Are they ever gonna be comfortable running down the clock by playing keep-ball?
Yes on the first question, no on the second.
They need a talker at the back, and while Sol will tighten them up he wil never be a tactical talking leader like McLintock, Adams or Baresi.
ON SATURDAY at 12.45 pm, Arsenal will beat bogey team Bolton and score goals as well.
Why do I say that?
Because Jose Reyes will cut through Bolton’s back seven.
I agree with Thierry, who was talking about Reyes’s bottle this week.
He said,”It’s still early but José is a tremendous player. He certainly knows where the net is and everything he does he does with guts. When he has the ball you feel that something is going to happen. He’s an exciting player and people will enjoy the way he plays for many years.”
Back on February 3rd I wrote a piece here that some felt was over the top :
JOSE REYES is a natural.
Amazingly, Reyes looks like a composite of every electric footballer I have ever seen.
He is a compact predator with an instinctive games-sense, so he won’t run offside every two minutes.
He can dance through puddles like Jimmy Greaves.
He has a low centre of gravity, so he can ride tackles like Paulo Futre.
He looks as resilient as Kenny Dalglish.
As fast as Claudio Lopez.
As combative as Jurgen Klinsmann.
He looks like a lethal Latin who is testing you all the time, like Maradona, always ready for a preposterous slalom.
He’s got the sexual charisma of George Clooney and the endorsement charisma of David Beckham.
Crucially, Jose Reyes is a warrior. And you can never have too many of those.
A man with a boy’s birth certificate and a boy’s fiery enthusiasm.
He’s 20 and he’s so hot his boots might burst into flames any day now.
I went on like that for 800 words.
If you missed that piece, you can go to the home page on www.anr.uk.com and scroll down to :
Natural gladiator Reyes is the real deal.
17th September 2004.