TOTTENHAM was my last game at Highbury.
On Friday, Spurs were fourth and Arsenal were fifth, four points behind, so Arsene Wenger said, “Tomorrow is our biggest game of the season in the Premier League. You want to combine both, not killing your chance in the Champions League and beat Tottenham. There was never a game where there was so much at stake for both teams.”
A big game, a 12.45 kick-off, plenty to play for, a lot to look forward to if I wasn’t a cynic who believes that 90% of all big events are disappointing.
Arrive in Gillespie Road, chat to Mitch’s partner Martin at the progamme stall, see the Spurs team bus roll slowly round us, and then stroll up Avenell Road, where mounted police are clearing the road for the Arsenal team bus to come down to the front door.
Sentimental fans are taking photos and videos of the Art Deco stadium front as I stand by the barrier and watch the door of the team bus open. The first man out is tall and grey-haired and wears a black suit and carries a huge black attache case of the type favoured by CEOs on long-haul flights. What’s in his case? ProZone stats on every Premiership player?
Out come the staff, Pat Rice, Bora Primorac, then Thierry in black tracksuit trousers, redcurrant top and big headpones, then another player, then Lehmann with iPod earphones, and Fabregas, who looks fourteen.
I’m early, so I sit on a wall opposite the club shop, by the gate at the Clock End, look for a friend, can’t see him, talk to an American guy.
Reserve keeper Mart Poom arrives in his black Jeep, signs an autograph, goes in, followed by a green Range Rover with black windows, a grey BMW. The steward closes the gate. It looks as if no more vehicles will be admitted, that everyone has been ticked off.
There are scores of police and stewards, a quantity which seems OTT to me as I walk up and round the corner and down the hill and bump into Amy Lawrence, whose flat is only about 100 yards away. Amy is going to Villarreal and she’s optimistic.
Then I wander down Highbury Hill and a Spurs fan gets the team news via a phone call from a friend watching Sky. A big, friendly middle class lad of 24, he tells me and a skinny Gooner the Arsenal team.
FIVE CHANGES !
Five changes for our biggest game of the season?
Henry, Fabregas and Eboue are on the bench. Hleb and Freddie are not on the bench, fair enough. Djourou at right back, Reyes in as expected, Diaby for Fabregas, Gilberto captain, and Adebayor and van Persie in a 4-4-2, an alien system that Arsenal cannot deploy without Henry and Fabregas.
I’m sure this eleven cannot beat Spurs.
“You can’t lose this game now,” I say to the big lad.
He smiles.
“It’s been a long time coming.”
Arsenal’s style of play depends on the football brain of Fabregas and the finishing of Henry. Without them, it’s not Arsenal. And he has rested Eboue, who is tired after starting seven Premiership games.
I’m annoyed, it’s a ludicrous team selection, but it’s a sunny day and I’m quite philosophical and I meet Ian Grant at 12.15, and we go in and watch Spurs warming up far less casually, less nonchalantly, than Villareal warmed up.
Spurs have Dawson and Anthony Gardner at centreback because Ledley King has a metatarsal, and Tainio is in for Jenas, who got a stress fracture in training on Friday.
At first Arsenal are playing OK but then Tainio has a range-finding header off a Lee cross. Their right winger Aron Lennon looks fast on TV but looks even faster in the flesh as he beats Senderos twice, and, from his pass, Defoe shoots when he should pass to the unmarked Davids.
Michael Carrick’s dinked pass finds Defoe, who smashes a shot which hits Lehmann in the face. Seaman would have ducked, as he did with Batistuta and Giggs.The German’s defiance brings new meaning to the old phrase “face-saving”.
Van Persie and Adebayor are not combining because van Persie plays for himself. It is usually turn & shoot with him. RVP is not a team player. He has one touch in the box where the ball squirts nine feet away from him.
First half, without five crucial players, Arsenal look like any old mid-table Premiership side having an end-of-season run-out. They could be Blackburn, Newcastle, Middlesbrough. They are being thoroughly outplayed and Carrick emphasises the point by slaloming past Gilberto, Toure and Lehmann, only to hit the side-netting. Maybe Carrick IS good enough to play for Arsenal !!!
It’s 0-0 at half-time and Arsenal are lucky not to be 2-0 down. Spurs have looked good because Arsenal did not threaten them.
“When will he bring Henry on?” asks the young blonde. She is with her mum today, not her boyfriend.
“After Spurs score,” I reply.
Second half starts, Senderos tweaks his knee, Eboue comes on for him, then Henry and Fabregas come on at last. The game changes, radically and immediately, because Spurs don’t dare push up as much now.Suddenly, Arsenal have shape, fluency, width, menace, potential
But then Carrick cruises forward, Gilberto and Eboue try to tackle him and collide with each other, Carrick hesitates to see if referee Steve Bennett will stop the game, as two Arsenal players are on the floor, and when Bennett allows play to continue, Carrick passes to Tanio, who finds Davids on the left, and he crosses low to the far post, where Flamini has stopped and not covered the run by Robbie Keane, who taps in from two yards.
65 minutes : Arsenal 0 Spurs 1.
Sure, the protocol is to put the ball out, but in a vital game like this you play to the whistle
Arsene Wenger goes ballistic, goes eyeball-to-eyeball with Martin Jol, like Vieira and Roy Keane used to do.
It’s the most emotional we’ve seen him since Bolton in April 2003, when his team lost a 2-0 lead and blew the league title. Afterwards on TV he calls the Spurs bench liars for saying they didn’t see his players on the ground.
In 84, Adebayor breaks down the left with right back Stalteri, kicks him on the back of the leg as they tangle, and slips a sweet pass forward for Thierry Henry, who takes one touch and jabs it past Robinson.
Seen later on TV, in detail, it’s even better : a world class goal scored from a half-chance. From a bad angle, under pressure, a beautifully timed flick-shot with so much power that it gave the keeper no chance at all. That equaliser would be a great goal in any game, but in the context of this game, 1-0 down at home to Spurs, it is a colossal goal, one the ten best Henry ever scored for Arsenal.
Davids is sent off for kicking Fabregas, but Arsenal cannot score again and it finishes 1-1.
I’ll remember the last goal I saw at Highbury because it was a fabulous finish, I’ll remember talking to Amy Lawrence on a sloping sunlit street full of parked police vans, I’ll remember my dismay when I heard Arsene had rested five players, I’ll remember Eboue and Gilberto going for the same ball and injuring each other.
CAME HOME at 4.30 and heard music from upstairs, where Michael was working his decks, and Jan was drinking tea on the patio, which was sunny, so I joined her.
Michael, a Gooner who had watched the game on Sky, came down and said, “How unbelievably pisspoor was that?”
Then we watched the Chelsea-Liverpool FA Cup semi-final, where Jose Mourinho also picked the wrong team and Liverpool beat them 2-1.
On Sunday morning my pal Ian Pollock emailed from Thailand : Jose and Arsene both got their team selection wrong and both were too late in putting it right.
TODAY MITCH told me there was almost an ejection from the director’s box, where a short, bald man jumped to his feet when Robbie Keane scored. The man, allegedly, was Spurs associate director Ray Fine. Amy mentions the incident in her Observer match report, saying that MD Keith Edelman told the offender to cool it.
It looks as if AW has rotated himself into fifth place, but you never know. Fourth place isn’t over. Spurs play Bolton, who are chasing seventh, and West Ham, who care far more about their FA Cup Final against Liverpool, having just beaten Middlesbrough with an excellent Marlon Harewood goal.
Arsene Wenger, the club’s greatest manager, their most visionary leader, their French miracle-worker, has only himself to blame. His team is fifth because they’ve lost eleven league games, not because Carrick didn’t put the ball out. Arsene did not learn the lesson of Portsmouth, when he made seven changes and drew 1-1.
He has put all his eggs into one basket called the El Madrigal, which is no surprise, since has been signalling this for several weeks now. Senderos is out, so Sol or Djourou will come in.
However, I firmly believe that beating Spurs at Highbury is easier than beating Barcelona in Paris. Spurs don’t have Deco, who has won the European Cup, or Ronaldinho, who has won the World Cup, and although they are coached by a Dutchman, he is not Frank Rijkaard, who has won the European Cup twice as a player.
TUESDAY NIGHT and Wednesday night will be fascinating. Milan might turn Barcelona upside down on Wednesday night, although I reckon it’s more likely that Dida, Nesta and co will be swept away.
And Villarreal might knock out Arsenal on Tuesday, which would make nonsense of resting five regulars against Spurs.
I’m still predicting a 0-0 in Villarreal.