By Myles Palmer
0-0 against Valencia and 1-1 at Spurs.
What did I think?
A story of respect, dinner jackets and camaraderie.
Arsenal are still top but they won’t be top for long if they don’t improve.
Performances are fluctuating hugely, swinging from great to awful on a huge pendulum.
The team has only scored two goals in open play in the last four games.
Pires and Henry against Aston Villa on November 30th.
The attack kept consecutive clean sheets against Man United and Valencia.
Only one goal at Spurs, a penalty after Henry went into
overdrive and surprised diving keeper Kasey Keller.
Freddie’s not doing the business, Wiltord’s gone off the boil,and the manager says Henry is due a rest because he’s played every minute of every game.
VALENCIA respected Arsenal because they scored twice against them two years ago and Arsenal respected Valencia because they reached two Champions League finals.
That mutual respect killed the spectacle. Let’s face it, they did not need to turn a league game into a fight to the death.
That comes later. In March.
What we saw was the beautifully structured organisation of the visitors, for whom Albelda and Baraja worked tirelessly to cut off passes into channels which might expose their back four.
Watching the first half at the Lane, when Spurs seemed to have 14 players, I remembered that remark by Vicente, the Valencia winger.
Before the Champions League game Vicente had said that Henry often “lacks character at key moments”.
Vicente added,”I’ve seen him play lots of times and he tries to be so elegant that he might as well go on to the pitch wearing his dinner jacket. He’s too laid back. If you keep him tightly marked he hardly makes a contribution.”
The winger said what English reporters know, and are happy to quote, but will not write themselves.
On his own showing at Highbury, Vicente isn’t much of a winger.
But he’s not a bad judge of a player.
And if Vicente had seen the first half at Spurs he would have said the same about Bergkamp, who had his worst game of the season.
Henry and Bergkamp both wore dinner jackets as Tottenham out-tackled and out-passed Arsenal, whose best players were Pires and Cole, who cleared two Robbie Keane efforts off the line.
Spurs pressed and buzzed and hustled and knocked the ball wide very well and Anderton once slalomed round Gilberto near the centre circle.
Having said that, all the Spurs chances came from Arsenal’s mistakes.
Sol fouled Poyet 30 yards out.Avoidable! Not a danger situation.
Seaman wrong-footed himself behind his wall, as he often does,and Ziege beat him with a shot round the wall and low into the corner.
The equaliser came just on halftime.
Kasey Keller almost reached the ball before Henry, who got a toe to it and the Yank brought him down.
Henry was looking to be clattered. And he was. And he handed the ball to Pires.I was sure Pires would score and he did, comfortably.
My main memory of the game is the marvellous camaraderie between Steve Carr and the Arsenal players, who all patted him on the head after challenges.
It was hilarious to see Sol and Steve, good mates,tangling by the touchline.
They fouled each other,knocked each other off balance, fell over together and wrestled on the ground – and got up laughing.
If body language means anything, Steve Carr will be Arsenal’s right back in the summer.
But,at the moment, the team is turning it on and turning it off, so performances are fluctuating wildly.
ARSENE must be worrried by that. Because he must think that, the longer the team keeps doing that, the harder it will be to turn it on again when it matters.
They can beat Middlesbrough. If they improve by 15% they can beat Middlesbrough.
And if they improve by 30%, they can beat Chelsea.
But they MUST throw away those dinner jackets.
Look at Veron !
Veron tackles now. Veron tackles like a tiger now.
Since the Man City debacle(3-1), Juan Sebastian The Harlem Globetrotter has thrown away his dinner jacket.
Thierry and Dennis must do the same.
18th December 2002