By Myles Palmer
TONIGHT’S been like a football match at our house : 90 minutes of noise followed by a sudden silence.
Michael and his pal Alan came back from Sheffield and had dinner and went out to Fabric with Daniel, who dropped in to pick them up.
Fabric is a Friday night club favoured by students.They get the 5.10 a.m. train home.
I don’t mind dinner with teenagers, cos I don’t have to talk, just eat and listen.
ARSENAL to beat Spurs? I think so, don’t you? Doubt if it will be memorable.
I’ve seen many of the 131 Arsenal-Spurs derbies. But few were memorable.
The Graham-Venables games were often scrappy, boring in the extreme.
I hated it when George and Tel came in together, thus ensuring that the press conference was also a 0-0 draw.
The two derbies that stand out for me were both at the Lane.
One was the Littlewoods Cup semi-final replay in George Graham’s first season.
Steve Williams was suspended, Spurs went a goal up, Ian Allison equalised, Rocastle scored the winner, and when the final whistle went I was sitting about ten yards from Williams, who ran onto the pitch wearing a black leather coat.
He was ecstatic.If Arsenal had lost he would have blamed himself for being suspended when his team most needed him.
Now, he was in a Wembley final at last.
Steve Williams must have suffered agonies as that tense, pulsating match ebbed and flowed, knowing that Arsenal could lose without him, and there was nothing he could do to help.If he missed Wembley it was his own fault.
He said,”When I saw that Rocky was going to hit it with his left foot I closed my eyes. Because I know what his left foot is like!”
In the final against Liverpool, Steve Williams was world class and they won 2-1 with two goals by Charlie Is My Darling Nicholas.
The other game that sticks out in my mind was when Bergkamp took Spurs apart in May 1999.
That was one of the rare nights when George Graham got his tactics wrong, defended far too high up the field, and DB10 played out of his skin.
Bergkamp had the ball a lot and he was killing Spurs with almost every pass, feeding Anelka and Overmars.
Kanu flicked the ball over Luke Young’s head before scoring the third goal.
Luke Young was later sold to Charlton for £4.5 million, the same fee that Arsene paid for Gilberto Silva, a World Cup winner.
That 3-1 massacre at the Lane is one of the games I describe at length in the book.
It was the third last game of the season and Arsenal badly needed a win.
Goals by Petit, Anelka and Kanu gave them the points but they lost the next game 1-0 at Leeds after Alfie Haaland’s knee demolished Nigel Winterburn’s nose and sub Vivas lost the plot on a cross to allow Hasselbaink to head the winner.
That meant that Arsenal lost the closest title race of the Nineties by one point.
Glenn Hoddle is a good tactician who has had a week to prepare for this game.
His players aren’t as athletic as Arsenal’s, so he will probably tell his men to defend deep and pass the ball around in their own half for the first 30.
When Arsenal score early they blow teams away. Hoddle knows that and his approach will be based in preventing that scenario.They will try to keep their shape and feed it out to Redknapp and Sheringham.
I wonder if Robbie Keane will get much service, with Vieira and Gilberto being so strong in the middle.
Keane is cheeky,cute, brave, sparky, one of my favourite players.
He is also a useful Gaelic footballer. You need real bottle to play Gaelic, Mick McCarthy told me. Coming from Mick, a centre half who took no prisoners, that means it’s a very rough game
I wrote a section in The Professor titled ROBBIE KEANE IS FLICKING FANTASTIC where I suggest that AW might have signed him to replace Anelka.
That headline refers to a sensational goal he scored for Coventry against Arsenal.
Keeper Rami Shaaban might thrive on the atmosphere, might make a save or five from Simon Davies,Teddy, Robbie.
Shaaban might keep Seaman out of the team after tomorrow. We don’t know if he can seize this chance with both gloves, but stranger things have happened.
Ian Grant tells me that several readers have asked if I can do an analysis of the Champions League draw.
Have I got anything sensible to say about the Arsenal,Ajax, Valencia and Roma group?
Maybe, but I’m a bit dinnered-out, sleepy, deafened by the silence.
First, VALENCIA are the best team in Europe.
With Bayern Munich having made an early exit, Valencia and Real Madrid are now the establishment, the teams to beat.
John Carew, the rangy target man, still features, despite many stories that he would be sold.
Two years ago I said that Aimar was a year away from being able to hurt Arsenal.
Now Aimar hurts everybody. He scored with a diving header from seven yards againt Betis at the weekend.
Aimar is everything Joe Cole wants to be and should be and tries to be. He runs, he passes,he keeps running, he designs moves, he gets into the box, he scores.
The Argentinian is young,pretty and dangerous, a key player in a superbly balanced football machine.
Aimar could hurt Arsenal at Highbury on December 10th.
He is very bright and mobile, so you can’t man-mark him (and Arsene wouldn’t anyway), but you can muscle him out of it,perhaps.
Valencia have their own sensibility and unity, a vibrant club culture that seems to have been started by Ranieri and continued by Cuper, then Benitez.
The first Phase Two game is away to ROMA on Wednesda 27th November.
Fabio Capello is a top, top coach but we do not know how long he will be at Roma.
Does he want the Man United job? Would he be better than Martin O’Neill?
The more I think about it, Totti ain’t as good as Del Piero. Not by a long way.
Totti is chunky, strong, very skilful, and he can finish. But he lacks that spark of genius that Baggio has, that Del Piero has,that Raul has.
I’ve written before that Totti reminded me of Dalglish and+ Gascoigne, the composure of Kenny married to the power of Gazza.
But Roma are a more stable club than Lazio, so beating them in the Olympic Stadium is a tall order.
A win for Arsenal would be a big victory, a big scalp, even though Roma have no CL pedigree.
Arsenal are talented enough to draw in Rome and beat them at Highbury.
That makes February’s Ajax v Arsenal games crucial.
Ajax now have Litmanen and I’ve heard that he’s the best player in Holland this season. But I’m not sure if that is reliable information.
When Barcelona let Litmanen go to Liverpool, Marc Overmars said,”I don’t know why we sold him, he’s one of the best players I’ve ever seen.”
Ajax always played 3-4-3 and Litmanen took over the front-of-the-diamond goalscoring role when Bergkamp was sold to Inter.
Then the Finn went to Barcelona, then to Liverpool and back to Ajax.
Today’s Ajax are a low-scoring, low-conceding team. They may be better than Auxerre – or not as good.
My guess is that they are not as fiery, not as improvisational.But we shall have to wait and see.
Just as Valencia has a warm city climate, and they play in front of noisy stands as steep as the white cliffs of Dover, Amsterdam has a medium-cool temperate climate and Ajax have a more cerebral style of play.
If Dennis Bergkamp kept playing for Arsenal in Europe for long enough he was bound to end up playing against Ajax, his old club. It was going to happen one year.
So the 20th of February will be a homecomeing in Amsterdam, something DB10 will enjoy, as long as he can get enough tickets for his relatives and friends.
15th November 2002.