By Myles Palmer
Arsenal 6 Leicester 1
Amazing! Extraordinary! Revolutionary !
Arsenal scored two goals from corners and two from crosses.
Thierry Henry had two headers on target. Five of the six goals were scored from INSIDE the penalty area.
And this revolution has happened overnight. How?
Arsene Wenger, the coach who never shouts at his players, says they have not had time to work on anything recently.
He also said that the way the game panned out, with Leicester defending narrow with seven or eight men around the box, meant that the flanks were the only area where Arsenal could find space.
But that does not really explain the aggressive, dynamic and varied football that we saw on Boxing Day.
Previously, Arsenal have been athletic, skilful and surgical in their attacks, but one-dimensional.
This, suddenly, was a team mixing it up, playing with variety : forcing the play, flooding the box with men eager to get on the end of crosses,but also looking for the lightning breakaways that scare opponents into
establishing a knot of defenders around the box in the first place.
Still playing down avenues, as they have during the
Bergkamp-Wright-Anelka-Overmars years, but also hitting crosses from both flanks.
ANR never does statistics, but consider the stats from this incredibly one-sided game :
Arsenal had 26 shots : 15 on target, 11 off target.
Leicester had 3 shots : 2 off target.
Arsenal had 14 corners : Leicester had none.
Arsenal out-fouled their opponents 14-11, mainly because Leicester could not get near them.No yellow cards were shown.
The next job is to beat Sunderland by keeping that dynamic mixture of crossing, pressing and fast counter-attacks.
Meanwhile, Thierry Henry is still hopping mad that some hack said he is not a natural goalscorer.
Brian Marwood said on Sky that, “Henry in that mood is almost unstoppable.”
This humble hack admires the ten years of work that have taken Thierry from where he was to where he is now, trusts he doesn’t stop being a nice guy, wants to see him in that mood more often, and hopes he will score with a header on Saturday.
The guy SHOULD score hat-tricks.With his skills, pace and jumping ability, Thierry Henry should score three hat-tricks every season.He should also score more goals away from home, but he cannot do that if the team is not playing well.
He should be aiming to score Arsenal’s winning goal in the final of the Champions League in 2001 and 2002 and 2003.
27th December 2000.