Arsenal don’t have enough big players.
And they don’t have enough British players.
At Stoke they had Sol Campbell and he made the difference.
A big guy with presence. Sol was aggressive and he rattled Stoke.
He got angry after Ramsey’s leg was broken, then Fabregas got angry. Then Clichy clenched his fist and spoke to Vermaelen and said something like, “Come on, let’s beat these bastards!”
Dixon, Winterburn, Keown and Parlour were guys whose attitude was superb in every game. Game for game, ball for ball, those players were wonderful competitors.
And so was Patrick Vieira. When Vieira left in the summer of 2005, teams immediately started to bully Arsenal. In the first 15 games of 2005-2006, most teams kicked Arsenal black and blue because Vieira wasn’t there to whack them back. They took advantage of his absence. Opponents had respected a scary warrior who went eyeball-to eyeball with Roy Keane.
That Stoke game made me think. Arsenal now have the bottle for the job and the signing of Sol Campbell turns out to be a big part of that.
Sol is a leader who has won things. He captained Spurs to a League Cup Final victory over Leicester in 1999 and he captained Portsmouth to an FA Cup Final victory over Cardiff in 2008.
Early in the game, Stoke players were complaining to the ref about Sol Campbell shoving them around in the penalty area. Nothing like that has happened since Vieira left five years ago !
An interesting weekend of football.
Craig Bellamy was hilariously rude about John Terry after City won 4-2 at Stamford Bridge. Has a footballer ever talked like that about another player on live television?
After Manchester United beat Aston Villa 2-1 to win the Carling Cup, Wayne Rooney was interviewed on TV and said, “I’d like to thank all the young players who got us through the early rounds.”
That was nice. Shows how mature Rooney has become.
The best manager in the country isn’t too snobbish to win the Carling Cup. And the best footballer in the country isn’t too superstarry to forget that he did not kick a ball in the Carling Cup until the semi-final.
As previously mentioned, I’m going abroad.
A friend will write some stuff here while I’m away.
He’s a very knowledgeable sports journalist and one of my favourite people. He’s also a lifelong Arsenal supporter.