By Myles Palmer
Maybe Francis Jeffers has a future at Arsenal after all.
Managers don’t mean everything they say, so I took it with a pinch of salt when Arsene said recently that Jeffers could be an Arsenal legend.
But it is now clear that, in the last two months, the manager has changed his mind about Jeffers, who has moved above Kanu in the pecking order.
Saturday’s 2-1 win over Fulham was notable for how well the substitutions worked.
Jeffers and van Bronckhorst made a big difference when they came on.
And Jeffers looks different. He has changed physically.
When he first arrived he was skinny and weighed as much as a butcher’s thumb.
Arsene put 17 lb on Kanu when he came from Inter, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he has put 7lb of muscle on Jeffers.
Always thought that Jeffers was a better player than
Kanu or Wiltord, but during 2002 I believed that AW planned to sell him ASAP.
Jeffers came on and had a snap-shot saved, set up Gilberto for a strike which hit the post, and created the winner in the 91st minute.
An instinctive space-finder, he can work lots of positions all round the box – and in the six yard box,an alien zone to Henry and Bergkamp.
They never get in there.They treat the six yard box as if it is radio-active.
And since Arsenal have more good passers than strikers who know where to run, Jeffers gives most games a lift when he comes on.
The winning goal?
Robert Pires raced in to score from two yards in the 90th minute.
He saw Jeffers zip into the left side of the six yard box,when van Bronckhorst flicked on Vieira’s pass, and he took off on an optimistic run.
He knew that Jeffers jabbed shot from that narrow angle would either go in or hit the post or go wide.That gave him two chances of scoring, if he got there.
From some angles on the replay, the Jeffers stab looked like a pass.
From other angles it looked like a shot.
IT WAS A SHOT, but a crafty shot, underhit by a sneaky player who knew that the ball, if it was a fraction wide, was rolling into an unguarded area.
Pires had headed in the first goal from four yards in seven minutes and now he stabbed home the winner from two yards.
The game had been poised at 1-1 for an hour and Arsenal had not played as well as expected. Anfield had taken a lot out of them.
So will Jeffers still be a supersub?
Clearly, he is a good option to have on the bench if he can do what Solskjaer did for Man United.
But Arsene strikes me as a manager who would far rather win a game early than late.
Scoring the winner in the 90th minute is exciting, but too much of that is the kind of excitement AW does not need.
If Jeffers started, Arsenal might score two in the first half hour. Or score three in the first half hour.
ROBERT PIRES is now running very strongly. I thought,after five games back, that he looked stronger than before.
He must have done did tons of work, running
long distances, before he started kicking footballs.
The wastage of muscle tissue when you have your leg in plaster is quite shocking.
But a patient, scientific programme of rehab has built Pires up so that he is now, I think, a more powerful athlete than he was before his cruciate injury.
Clearly, Arsenal need his goals. With Freddie still out and SW11 off-form, they need a second goalscorer.
Pires has now scored nine goals in 17 starts and a few sub appearances.If he goes on like this he will get 15 this season.
Both his goals were scored on the right, at the far post, from crosses.
For the first one, Bergkamp flicked the ball to Henry and his early cross from a rather odd position (on the edge of the box) found Pires jumping to head home.
What’s French for Mr Versatile?
Then it was 1-1 after Steve Finnan measured a diagonal ball into the box and Steve Marlet nodded down to Malbranque,who scored with a clinical volley.
The cross was one that Keown could not have reached, and the shot was so well placed that no keeper could have saved it.
Sadly, Keown seems to be picking fights for no reason, creating silly scuffles- as he did here with Sava.
He is becoming a grumpy old man.
Let’s hope Shearer and Bellamy don’t wind him up at St James’s Park.
I know how Martin feels. I’ve had a few Victor Meldrew days myself lately.
I enjoyed Chelsea 3 Leeds 2 and Liverpool 2 Arsenal 2,but the football news after that started getting on my nerves.
Gazza playing for a Chinese Div 2 club in the Gobi desert? Ridsdale selling the crown jewels at Leeds? Sven thinking about his team to face Australia?
WHO CARES?
In 1991 when Gascoigne was carted off on a stretcher in the FA Cup Final against Nottingham Forest I said,”His career from now on will be series of comebacks.” Anybody could see that.
I knew Allan Leighton would sort out Leeds after Xmas.
Still, when Publicity Pete got 97% of the shareholders votes to stay as chairman it seemed bizarre.Even Saddam Hussein doesn’t get 97% of the votes.
But I reckon the real message from Leighton to Pete was : You got us into this mess, so take the flak now. You gave O’Leary, a first-time manager, far too much money, so we soon owed £90 million.You got carried away because you are a Leeds fan.You were Mr Rentaquote. Every hack had your mobile number.You borrowed £60 million from the bank and told everybody:We have £60 million to spend!You are Coco the Clown! You showed an appalling lack of judgement.
So now you must suffer.Flog players and become a punchbag.
As I understand it, Ridsdale wanted Steve McLaren but Leighton told him to hire Venables.
Now Tel finds that he loves the attention but hates the pain.He looks old now, sounds old.
IT’S NOT THE FUTURE HE PLANNED.
When Tel was at QPR in 1980 he was already thinking of owning the zoo, rather than cleaning out the cages.
He wanted to own QPR, like his mentor Jim Gregory, whose motto was,”Everything’s for sale if the price is right.”
The Venables-Sugar wars took a lot out of Tel, financially, emotionally.He was badly damaged. The DTI said he was unfit to be a company director for seven years.
But, incredibly, the FA hired him as England coach. The FA were as desperate in 1995 as Leeds are in 2003.
THE EX-ENGLAND BOSS who IS doing well is Bobby Robson, for whom I formed a deep affection over eight years when I saw all his games at Wembley and had a lot of fun at his press conferences after the matches.
Bobby is a great guy and I’m thrilled to see him doing so well.
Newcastle have players who can fly out of midfield as fast as arrows:Jenas…Bellamy…Robert…Dyer
Newcastle v Arsenal could be 7-3, with so much blistering pace and scoring potential on both sides.
Let’s hope Arsenal are Real Madrid.
And Newcastle are Eintracht Frankfurt.
If I was picking the team I would start Jeffers and race to a 2-0 lead ASAP.
February 3rd 2003.
PS
Did you see Jacko on ITV?
“Jackson’s behaviour had started to alarm me,”admitted Martin Bashir in last night’s Living With Michael Jackson documentary.
The behaviour must have alarmed 10 million viewers.Must have horrified them.
Jacko obviously allowed the intimate filming to cast himself as a victim, and begin a process of rehab with the UK audience.
Some hopes.
We knew Jacko was bonkers long before he said,”I want to adopt two kids from every continent around the world.That’s my dream.”