By Myles Palmer
Tremendous team news!
No Andy Cole and no Damien Duff?
That’s the best result Arsenal have had since PSV drew 1-1 with Borussia Dortmund!
If Bergkamp is back he will give shape to the team.
Wherever he is, the others know where they should be in relation to him.
Freddie missed him on Tuesday night, so did Patrick, so did Wiltord.
Bergkamp adds a lot to everybody, especially Vieira, so it’s a great shame PV4 is suspended for the Blackburn game, after Arsene decided not to appeal.
Serve the ban, get it over, forget about it. The right call.Appeals are rarely upheld.
BUT TONIGHT I DONT WANNA TALK ABOUT THE TEAM.
I wanna talk about the crowd.
The side is wobbling, shaken by two defeats – and the boys need support,noise,passionate encouragement.
Not the apprehensive silence of people waiting for their heroes to sparkle – or fail.
Last 15 minutes against Auxerre, 2-1 down it home, it was like a morgue.
So I hope the fans, for once, stop sending text messages, stop talking about what was on TV last night(Gerald Kaufman said on Have I Got News For You that he would rather see Saddam Hussein as mayor of London than Ken Livingstone), stop waving at the TV cameras, stop passing round bags of sweets, and doing all the other dopey TV-generation things that so many fans would rather do than concentrate on the game and GIVE THE TEAM THE VOCAL SUPPORT THAT THEY NEED AND DESERVE!!!!!
The Everton and Auxerre defeats are, I firmly believe, a temporary drop in form.
The team has not played as well as it can do and should do in the last two games.
It’s a shame,and a long-term worry, that Arsenal can’t draw the games where they play badly.
They did that at West Ham and Chelsea, two game they could have lost.
If they don’t turn on the style against Blackburn, they must at least stop the rot by drawing the game.
But they need 30,000 people to show loyalty and passion this time.
The fans must have the brains, the instinct, to figure out that this is a moment when the team really needs them.
Gooners should turn Highbury the Library into a cauldron of sound tomorrow. And inspire the team.
If Dennis starts, and Thierry pulls his finger out, and Freddie scores the first goal, and Robert Pires comes on for half an hour of keepball when Arsenal are 3-1 up, it will have been an entertaining day.
LOSING TO BLACKBURN IS UNTHINKABLE – the team would be scarred for months if they lost three in a row.
Football, as we know, is a game of sequences, of confidence.
And Blackburn are a decent outfit.
Tugay is a terrific playmaker,like Dunga, like Mauro Silva.
But Keith Gillespie won’t get much change out of Ashley Cole.
Dwight Yorke is well past repeating the two goals he scored here for Villa on the day that Bergkamp also scored two goals, one a 35-yard Exocet.
It was one of those,”Jesus, he’s not gonna hit it from there is he?” moments.
And, to the amazement of everybody in the stadium, DB10 DID hit it from there and the ball flashed into the net. An awesome moment. He was special then and he is still special.
If he comes back from that Achilles injury tomorrow, Dennis will give everyone a big boost. Every fan, every player.
25th October 2002