By Myles Palmer
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ARSENAL WILL BEAT BOLTON on Saturday because they have had a week to prepare for the game.
Arsene enjoys that.
He loves having a fit squad and thorough preparation.
If you have a Formula 1 machine, you like to tweak and tinker and test, to make sure the vehicle can produce maximum performance on the big day.
In the last few weeks Arsenal have played marvellous and solid football and enjoyed that bit of luck they needed last season, when it all fell apart against Bolton and Leeds.
Yes, it was a jammy free-kick that Henry got when Blackburn’s Craig Short connected gently with him.
Football is a contact sport and if Short fouled Henry it was the mildest foul imaginable by a six foot three inch centreback.
Henry scored the free-kick and Pires made it 2-0 late on.
Graeme Souness had the hump with the ref over that one, as most managers would over that decision.
CLEARLY, every incident is slightly different.
Back on December 20 there was a small uproar about a Bergkamp-Gardner clash in the 1-1 draw at Bolton.
Many people said that was a foul by Dennis.
What happened was this : It was a wet and windy day at the Reebok and the ball was cleared by the Arsenal defence and it bounced towards Bolton left back Ricardo Gardner and he was hoping the ball would come towards his stomach.
But the ball bounced nastily and was flying past Gardner, who stuck out his right leg to stop it.
That meant two things.
One, the ball hit the inside of Gardner’s right knee and bounced about six feet away on the wet pitch.
Two, in stretching to make that sudden movement to his right, Gardner’s legs were momentarily too far apart.
At that moment, Dennis Bergkamp got between the ball and Gardner and turned his body against his off-balance opponent and played the ball through to Henry, who passed to Ljungberg, whose shot was parried to Pires, who made it 1-0
That’s football. The goal was fair. It was not a foul.
As I say, it’s a contact sport, and every incident is slightly different.
When Cygan failed to win a late long ball, it broke for Pederson to make it 1-1.
I wasn’t too surprised by that Bolton result.
After the 1-0 win at Blackburn on December 14, I’d noted that, “Arsenal won’t beat Bolton with Henry, Vieira and Gilberto playing like this.”
That result made it three draws in the last four Prem games.
Fulham was 0-0 and Leicester was 1-1 and Bolton was 1-1.
It looked as if Arsene was being too loyal to Gilberto.
Gooners were thinking : The goals have dried up. Is December the new November?
LAST SUNDAY I WENT to see Spurs play Newcastle with Mark Jacob and his cousin Adam. His uncle Zac had dropped out.
We walked up to our seats behind the directors’ box and then Mark started looking at the programme, studying the Spurs fixture list.
Mark rarely uses the word “Arsenal”.
He said, “With any luck your mob will have won the championship before they come here.”
This is the secret nightmare of every Spurs fan : Arsenal winning the title at White Hart Lane.
Pleat started three strikers and it did not work. I knew it would not work.
I was talking to a mad geezer at Seven Sisters as we waited for the overground train. He told me he had travelled to Southend to buy a ticket to see Engelbert Humperdinck.
Then his mobile rang :THFC had texted him the line-up and he showed it to me.
I saw : Defoe, Keane, Kanoute.And I thought : Nah, that won’t work.
It was 0-0 at halftime and I would have taken Kanoute off and brought on Dalmat.
When Dalmat did come on, things improved immediately and his low cross into the six-yard box was reaching Robbie Keane when Andy O’Brien got there first to score an own-goal.
Newcastle were shattered after their 4-1 win over Mallorca on Thursday night.
First half, the old soldier Shearer was masterful, nudging off balls with chest, head and foot, feeding Bellamy, Robert, Jenas.
But Big Al faded and so did the whole team.
Newcastle often manage a surge of energy in the last 20, but not this time.
Mark kept saying, “The way this game is going, we’ll nick one. Newcastle have had 90% of possession, but there’s no final ball – we’ll nick one.”
And that’s what happened.
I’VE BEEN UPDATING my Gooner daughter with fragments of Arsenal news.
On Saturday, February 21st, Caroline phoned from Bangkok, just after Arsenal had beaten Chelsea 2-1 at the Bridge.
“How’s the league table looking?”
“We’re seven points above Man United and nine above Chelsea and I’ve just seen on Sky that the bookies have Arsenal at 3-1 ON for the title. Man United are 4-1 against.”
On February 25 she emails from Brisbane: “World news doesn’t exist in Australia – let alone bloody soccer news.”
When she phones from Byron Bay, I tell her the draw for FA Cup semi-final is Man United.
She says, “I can’t believe it’s that time of the year already.”
Halfway though a 17-week trip, the girls are still having fun, but missing London a little bit.
On March 13th she emails from Byron.
“We bought the Guardian Weekly ! So lovely to read The Guardian I can’t tell you. And they had a good section on development and fair trade so I got lucky !
“I read Amy Lawrence’s report on the Arsenal Portsmouth match and saw Arsenal are 8 points clear or something.
“In the last few days I have decided to be all geographical and start making some notes on this odd country – especially in terms of attitudes and public awareness of the environment – will keep the back of the milk cartons etc! May come in handy for case studies at Sussex. Also started writing a film with Melita today.”
Abi and Mel are not geographers, so they glaze over when Caroline raves about the seven sand dune formations on Fraser Island and the miracle of the local water-table .
They are lucky kids. We would all like to fall off an elephant into a river in Pai, northern Thailand.
The river was shallow and Caroline cracked her head on the bottom and hurt her side.
After that episode they went to a meditation centre to chill out and met a triathlon coach who examined Caroline. He said it was only bruised ribs.
When I was 18, I had a week in Bournemouth with my mate Ted and his parents.
18th March 2004.