By Myles Palmer
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ARSENE took Colney to Birmingham on Saturday.
London Colney is his kitchen and Highbury is his restaurant.
He creates banquets at Colney, and serves them up at Highbury.
But he also takes his haute cuisine on the road, so other audiences can share it.
The Aston Villa players were in the audience on Saturday when Arsenal could have scored six goals in the first half.
Arsenal kicked off 13 points behind Chelsea with 13 games to go.
LEHMANN was back in goal, as I said he had to be.
Why was he dropped?
Maybe because he wanted to go on the German national team training camp during the Bundesliga winter break.
Did that ridiculous notion infuriate the manager and senior players ?
EDU was back for Flamini.
Senderos was in for Sol, Reyes for Pires.
The front 6 were so dynamic that the back 5 were rarely tested.
Arsene likes his team to strike a damaging blow early in the contest.
After 3 minutes, Vieira fed Bergkamp and Sorensen spilled his well-placed shot, but Henry could not reach the rebound.
After 8, Vieira half-volleyed wide from near the penalty spot after a typical slicing move.
After 10, an Edu first-time pass was drilled into a huge gap and Ljungberg scooted through to score off the keeper’s toe.
After 12, an Edu rocket rebounded of the post but Henry shinned the rebound over from five yards.
After 14, Henry made it 2-0.
Djemba-Djemba’s pass was far too obvious, so Vieira intercepted and split the Villa defence with a 25-yard pass.
Henry killed the ball with his right foot and buried it with his left.
It was his first goal since Fulham on Boxing Day, after 7-game drought.
The second goal was similar to the first, same position, left foot, across the keeper and inside the far post
Suitably energised, Henry then evaded three defenders on the right and found Bergkamp with a sweeping cross field pass and Bergkamp volleyed perfectly into Ashley Cole’s stride and he half-volleyed thunderously into the far corner, leaving Sorensen helpless.
Cole hit the ball after it had bounced twice.
Luigi Riva could not have buried that chance any better.
Riva was a Italian left winger who scored a somewhat similar goal against Argentina in the 1978 World Cup.
LEHMANN was excellent, the total professional.
He took two crosses capably, made a save or two, dived out fearlessly for a two-fisted punch, and didn’t snarl at anybody.
Senderos read situations very well with only one lapse, so it was a big breakthrough for him
This team display was the football of auteur Arsene that I spent so many pages describing in The Professor, a style which uses turbo-paced support running and killer diagonals.
A MASTERCLASS?
Yes, men against boys. The boys spent 45 minute watching the men.
You thought : the difference between Aston Villa and Arsenal is huge.
But also: the difference between Aston Villa and Manchester United is huge as well.
At this point, watching on PPV, I’m joined by Caroline and her pal Abi, back from uni for the weekend.
They sit on the sofa and chatter, distracting me from the game
Abi has come round for dinner as her parents, Ann and Ham, are travelling in Peru, Chile, Patagonia.
SENDEROS switches off for a moment and Villa score.
Cole is beaten on the left as Solano and De La Cruz combine and De La Cruz crosses low for Angel to fire past Lehmann.
Edu sees the danger, chases back, but can’t get to Angel in time, so its 3-1.
Senderos reacted too late.
FABREGAS comes on for Reyes, whose passing has been dodgy
Caroline is reading the Travel section of the Telegraph.
“Look at this photo of Andorra. That hill looks familiar. I’m sure we’ve skied down that one. Well, tumbled down it.”
“Let’s go to Thailand at Easter !”
“We can’t !”
“We can ! If we time it right, we can meet Mum and Dad in Bangkok.”
At that point we moved next door to have dinner and I’m dismayed to hear the girls talking about American football.
“We’ve got a Super Bowl party tonight, we’ve got a bar extension till 3 o’clock.”
“You don’t give a toss about who wins the Super Bowl !”
“I do ! I’ve got my Philadelphia Eagles top. The Americans all support the Patriots, it’s gonna be a wicked night !”
LATER ON I watch the rest of the Arsenal game on tape.
Basically, the front six were devastating, led by Vieira, who was more than a 45-minute warrior in this game.
Edu roams a lot, and Pires roams a lot, and playing both can be problematic, as I pointed out in the last chapter of The Professor.
Here, Edu coming back into a team without Pires meant Arsenal had more balance when they didn’t have the ball.
Reyes was racing back to keep in contact, collecting simple passes from Cygan
VERDICT : PV4 can still be very good as an interceptor, raider, playmaker.
Understandably, he will never be the supreme warrior-technician he was in his first five seasons at Arsenal.
At Villa Park it looked like a case of, “I’ll show my critics that I’m still The Man.”
But I wondered : Did Vieira leave too much energy in the tunnel on Tuesday night?
Or was it just that Man United are far better than Villa ?
Can Vieira be as influential as this against Bayern Munich ?
MAN UNITED v Birmingham was a tale of two Irishmen, again.
Keane scored in 55, his 50th goal for United after being on 49 for 53 matches.
Rooney knocked in a rebound off keeper Maik Taylor after Ronaldo challenged for silly Cunningham backpass.
Make that a tale of three Irishmen.
MIDO, the Egyptian striker who was once at Ajax, scored twice as Spurs came from behind to beat Portsmouth 3-1.
MORIENTES glanced in a classic Peter Osgood header to set Liverpool on their way to a 3-1 win against Fulham.
JIM WHITE noted in the Telegraph that Martin Tyler was doing some PPV games, while Andy Gray was partnered by boxing man Ian Darke at the Arsenal-Manchester United game.
White wrote : Maybe Sky anticipated a punch-up, so thought it best to have Darke on hand. Whatever the reason, it is unlikely that Sky’s long-standing No 1 would have informed us, as Darke did on Tuesday, that “Dennis Bergkamp is named after Denis Law, but there are two ns in Bergkamp and only one n in Law.” The bring-back-Tyler campaign starts here.
OBVIOUSLY, Martin Tyler knows, as you do, that Bergkamp Senior was a big Denis Law fan and wanted to register his son as Denis.
But the Amsterdam official would not accept that spelling.
Darke is OK, but he does not know the game inside out.
More interestingly, you cannot help noticing that Andy Gray has little digs at Darke during commentary.
Sky’s football coverage has demonstrated terrific teamwork since 1992.
Tyler, a consummate team player, is a major factor in their collective expertise, helping, in a hundred different and often subtle ways, to keep the broadcasts flowing smoothly.
I’ve never met Andy Gray.
OK, he once sat next to me in the press box at Arsenal and he was chatty and friendly. He was fine then.
But that was before he became God.
Bottom line?
Even God should not undermine his co-commentator. Darke’s job is hard enough without that.
February 6th 2005.