By Myles Palmer
Winning the six-pointer at Fulham was a vital result for Arsenal, but Chelsea’s 3-2 win at Spurs might be a sign that they are a real team now.
I was there and watching Hasselbaink carefully.Why?
Because nobody made the obvious point about his clash with Keown last week.
It wasn’t an elbow that hurt Keown’s face. It was the back of Hasselbaink’s head. And it was NOT accidental.
How do I know? Body language.
If you snap your head back two inches and catch a defender in the face, and you do it accidentally, you rub the back of your head.
You feel a pain that you’re not expecting, you’re surprised, and you make a reflex movment. You touch the part of your head that hurts,to see if there is blood.
Hasselbaink did not do that. He walked away as if nothing had happened. That was what gave the game away.
Yesterday he accidentally clashed with centreback Bungecevic off the ball.
Such freak accidents occasionally happen when players are watching the ball more carefully than they are watching each other.The Croatian was stretchered off with a suspected fractured cheekbone
I didn’t see it from the press box and later replays were inconclusive. If he had not butted Keown the week before I would have thought no more about it.
Chelsea had more skill, pace and ideas, so I was not surprised that they won 3-2.
Petit sprayed the ball out nicely to the flanks. And completely bottled a 50-50 with Thelwell near the end.
The Chelsea team has an impressive balance now. And I like Claudio Ranieri, whose English is improving.
I saw commissionaire Jim outside the front entrance. Jim is an Arsenal man has worked at virtually every Highbury home game since the war.He works inside the Arsenal director’s box now, after doing the press entrance for years when George Graham was manager.
“Myles,I want you,” he called out.”When’s your book coming out?”
When I got home my Palestinian pal Gassan called and said he has bought the book at Books Etc at the O2 Centre in Finchley Road.
So that was a good moment. The nicest thing about writing a book is that you share it with friends in various ways.
Yesterday’s Sunday Times Sportspages chart brought two shockers.
Shane Warne is no longer No 1 and The Professor has moved up one place to No 8.
Can Arsene Wenger go above David Batty ?
You can figure that out. Here is the chart :
SPORTPAGES BESTSELLERS 16th SEPTEMBER 2001
1. Survival Of The Fattest 6 Dave Jenkins ed.
Robson Books, pb, £9.99
2. Shane Warne – My Autobiography
Hodder & Stoughton, hb, £18.99
3. John Eales – The Biography Peter Fitzsimons
ABC Books, hb, £16.99
4. Head To Head Jaap Stam
Collins Willow, hb, £16.99
5. 1966 And All That – My Autobiography Geoff Hurst
Headline, hb, £18.99
6. The Official RFU Club Directory 2001-02
Stephen McCormack
Queen Anne Press, pb, £17.99
7. David Batty – The Autobiography
Headline, hb, £17.99
8. The Professor – The Biography Of Arsène Wenger
Myles Palmer
Virgin, hb, £18.99
9. Madiba’s Boys – The Stories Of Lucas Radebe And Mark Fish
Graeme Friedman
NAB, pb, £15.95
10. Ghosts Of Manila Mark Kram
Collins Willow, hb, £14.99.
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It’s impossible to say how the book will do from now on, so I’m not worrying about it.
I haven’t been to any shops to see if it is stocked in Borders and Waterstones and so on.My wife tells me it’s in W.H. Smiths in Brent Cross.
We shall see what happens. I think word-of-mouth is important. It’s a book for Arsenal fans and especially for Arsenal fans who have loved the club for years and who already know a lot about what the club was like in 1996 when Wenger arrived.
It’s really a before-and-after book.
It describes Wenger’s early career, his personality and his ideas about football,and then it describes the state of English football in a chapter called BOOZE AND IGNORANCE.
Then it explains what the Frenchman did with his team month by month and season by season, how he handled his players, how he made his team younger and better.
There is lot of space given over to the glamour games against Manchester United, Spurs,Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Valencia and so on.
And a lot of space devoted to the performances of key players like Bergkamp, Wright, Adams,Overmars and Anelka, among others.
If that’s the kind of book people want, The Professor should do well. That’s why I think the word-of-mouth from the first 1000 readers will be important.
If they tell their friends it is a really entertaining, passionate book that tells Arsenal fans a lot of things they do not know,it has a chance of overtaking Batty and Stam.
We shall see.It’s early days. At the moment it’s doing OK.
Virgin tell me it’s the No.6 sports book on Amazon UK.
But I’m old-fashioned, so I take each game as it comes.And I know that this week isn’t about my book.
It’s about beating Schalke, which will be my next piece here.
17th September 2001.