Arsenal 2 Basel 0
In a few short weeks young Alex Iwobi has become the oil in Wenger’s new machine.
He’s the missing link, the one who has added so much fluency.
Like Ozil, he;s good for Alexis Sanchez.
As Wenger has often said, sometimes the solution is already at your club.
Walcott is now getting the ball where he can do damage. He’s always been a strong boy who does a few things very well. The 20-year old Iwobi has helped the team to simplify the 27-year old’s style, so now he can just shoot or assist.
Iwobi has fitted in beautifully to the manager’s preferred style of play. He makes a speed team faster and more accurate.
Reminds me of Paul Merson and, funnily enough,Ronnie Whelan.
He’s a two-footed forward whose class allows him to do a lot of things sweetly. In 11 minutes, Sanchez lobbed across the goal and Walcott raced in and jumped for a bold header that made it 1-0.;
A stylish exchange of seven passes ended with Walcott being played in by Sanchez and firing home off the far post.
My best friend Doug phoned on his way home from the game and said Arsenal should have scored five goals in the first half.
On ITV, Roy Keane said they could have scored six or seven.
Lee Dixon shocked me by saying that Walcott is thinking about his game.
Wow! That would really be something: Walcott thinking about his game?
On Theo, Keane said,”He’s got to do it over the next year or two.”
Roy also said, “Judge him over the next few months when there’s big games coming up for the club.”
Without Giroud, Arsenal have improved by 30% in only two months.
That is because Giroud, being quite static, is a space that nobody else can run into.
Elsewhere my old mate Rod Stewart was having a ball as Celtic took the lead three times against Manchester City.
Final score 3-3.
I haven’t seen Rod since a 1975 party at the American Embassy, where I asked him, jokingly, to get me a ticket for the upcoming England-Scotland game.
Rod’s hero was Denis Law. We had that in common, and our taste in music overlapped in places. But we lost touch when he moved to LA and I haven’t even read his book yet.
Delighted to see Atletico Madrid beat Bayern Munich with a scorching shot by Yannick Carrasco that went in off the post in 35.
Diego Simeone has created the finest 1-0 team in the short history of the 21st century.