By Myles Palmer
LAST SUNDAY was the first day of the rest of Arsene’s life.
He has realised that Tony Adams is right :You can’t play both Pires and Ljungberg in away games.
That is what Tony told him privately when he was club captain and that is what he said in The Observer last season.
Tony reckons the midfield balance is vital.
This week’s games, like all games, are part of a sequence.
Pires played rubbish against Portsmouth.The whole team was rubbish.
And Pires played rubbish against Inter. And Pires dived against Portsmouth and created a controversy.
On his last two performances, Robert Pires deserved to be dropped, along with Wiltord.
So Sunday was a big moment, a historic trauma for the four French musketeers.
Two of them were chopped from the team.
Arsene, for the first time ever, dropped two Frenchmen who were not performing.
And he rested Sol, whose father had died at 72, bringing in Keown, who should have played against Inter.
In Saturday morning’s papers, Mikael Silvestre said that the Arsenal team is too French.
Absolutely right. Why did it take so long for someone to say it?
Arsene knows exactly what Silvestre is talking about.
He decided to be pragmatic and go for a draw at Old Trafford.
So he picked a George Graham team, with Freddie on the left.
He brought in Parlour and Bergkamp.
In the Inter game, Bergkamp and Kanu came on after 63 minutes, for Pires and Gilberto.
Dennis made a couple of passes and then clattered Materazzi.
He went in for a tackle on the touchline as the big defender cleared the ball and trampled on Materazzi’s standing foot.A foul the ref did not see.
A while later, Henry played a ball through for Bergkamp and it was a 50-50 with Materazzi.
Dennis went in very hard, jammed his foot on the ball, turned his backside into Materazzi, knocked him over, and had a shot which was deflected off Cannavaro’s toe, Toldo saving.
Arsenal had needed that aggression, that competitiveness.
But it was too late.
They needed that bite at 7.45, not at 9 pm when they were 3-0 down and the game was over.
AT OLD TRAFFORD, Arsene made sure it was a tight, scrappy game and Arsenal earned a 0-0 draw without having one shot on target.
His approach was realistic, not idealistic.
He did what he had to do.
If he had kept the same team, United might have won 3-0 and then Arsenal might have lost the next two games as well, so Obafemi Martins would have done what Wayne Rooney did last season : burst their bubble.
Let’s face it, Arsene had a very bad night against Inter.
He picked the wrong team and when they were 3-0 down at half time HE SENT OUT THE SAME ELEVEN PLAYERS WHO HAD JUST LOST THE FIRST HALF 3-0 !!!!!!!
So Arsene Wenger had a bad game against Inter Milan. Every manager has them.He bottomed out.
His team produced a performance which was a shambles, a disgrace.
Ten minutes from the end, when Inter were 3-0 up, they were still racing into tackles as if were defending a 1-0 lead.
Inter were marvelously professional while Arsenal were feebly unprofessional
Next game, Arsene had to shake it up. And he did.
Kolo Toure was man of the match in Manchester and Ashley Cole was not far behind him.
Early on Arsenal had two scares.
A Giggs free-kick bounced and clipped the post.
Then Van Nastelrooy headed inches over the bar, a bad miss from three yards.
After that nothing happened until Vieira got two yellows in 78 and 80 minutes
The first card was harsh, for a tackle on Fortune.
PV4 thought he got the ball, and if he missed the ball by a whisker, it was a free-kick, not a card.
But Steve Bennett is a clueless referee
Then Van Nastelrooy jumped into the back of Vieira, knee-first,with no intention of playing the ball.
Vieira fell to the ground, then flicked his foot and pulled it back.
Van Nastelrooy was beyond the reach of Vieira’s boot.
Van Nastelrooy is too sly to ever put himself within kicking distance of a player he has just fouled.
Vieira knew he was too far away to be touched and Van Nastelrooy knew that Vieira’s fully-extended leg could not have reached him.
Players are aware of distances. Players are hyper-aware of distances.
That is what the game is about: getting your pass in before the other guy arrives, getting your shot in before you are tackled, getting your clearance in before it is blocked.
Players see distances, feel distances, smell distances behind their backs – their work is measured in metres and centimetres.
BUT VAN NASTELROOY CHEATED.
He jumped back, as if from a rattlesnake.
And he turned to the ref as if to say : Did you see that?
So he cheated three times.
He fouled, he faked alarm at a flicked foot from the player he fouled, and he turned to appeal to a ref who had just booked the same player two minutes earlier.
Van Nastelrooy tried to get Vieira sent off. And Steve Bennett obliged.
That infuriated the whole Arsenal team.
Sub Forlan and Keown dived together for a cross and both missed the ball.
The replays were NOT conclusive. We could not see a push or a tug.
But Bennett gave a penalty and then Lehmann psyched-out Van Nastelrooy, who slammed it against the bar.
When the final whistle went the Arsenal players taunted and abused Van Nastelrooy for his sly gamesmanship.
Then viewers were lectured on discipline by Sir Alex, who kicked a boot into David Beckham’s eyebrow in the dressing room.
The FA will fine Arsenal £100,000 and ban Keown for five games and Parlour for three.
And Arsenal should deduct the £100,000 from the wages of the first team squad.
Still, the signs are good for Newcastle, Moscow, Liverpool and Kiev.
I hope Arsene continues to be realistic for the next three years.
Until Ashburton Grove is built.
Then maybe he can go back to playing the beautiful game, home and away, every game, every competition.
Without a transfer budget, he has to be more pragmatic.
He has to compromise more. He has to modify his ideas. He has to realise that football is not about beauty, it’s about winning.
You can win Premiership titles by playing the beautiful game,but you will never win the Champions League by believing that Arsenal are Real Madrid in red shirts.
Real Madrid have five goalscorers. Arsenal have one.
22 September 2003.