Arsenal won a spiky game to claim the Amsterdam Tournament on Saturday night.
With their league campaign starting on Sunday August 12, this game seemed to be a dress rehearsal for the Fulham game at the Emirates.
But when the starting X1 was announced the truth was revealed.
Hleb was in a Peter Beardsley role just behind Robin van Persie, so it was more like a Champions League away game 4-5-1.
First 23 minutes were drab but Arsenal were well on top and Toure should have scored but he volleyed van Persie’s free-kick straight at Stekelenburg.
Ajax hardly got a kick in the first 23 because they have three against five in midfield, so credit coach Henk Ten Cate for taking off a defender and putting Dennis Rommedahl on the left wing. The Dane soon swerved inside Toure and fired a terrific shot just over the bar.
Ajax had come alive, at last.
Both sides were pressing fiercely with abrasive tackles by hatchet-man John Heitinga, and by skipper William Gallas on Klaas-Jan Huntelaar.
0-0 at half-time and I was thinking : Rommedahl came on and a football match started.
Second half, Denilson was kicked, Hleb was kicked, Eduardo came on for the dire Rosicky, with Hleb switching to the left.
When Gallas powered upfield he found van Persie, whose blistering shot was well saved.
There was still tremendous pressing by both sides and after 85 a Huntelaar header hit the bar Then, after 87, Clichy made one of his 65-yard solo counter-attacks and swerved inside and passed to van Persie, who took the ball with his left foot and blasted in the only goal of the game with his right.
Immediately, a Heitinga “tackle” put van Persie on a stretcher.
Verdict : Arsenal deserved the tournament and had to work hard for it.
As a rehearsal for Sparta Prague, it was useful. Arsene will ask for the same again in that CL qualifier : keep it tight, fight for every ball, nick an away goal, and keep us on track for big money and global glory in a competition we have more chance of winning than the Premiership.
Overall, it was interesting to see Gallas, the former Chelsea warrior, set the tone. He gives Arsenal a bit of Chelsea and will be a very important player this season.
Since 2005, Arsenal have been a team of nice guys, captained by Mahatma Ghandi, a proponent of non-violence, who wore the No.14 on his kaftan.
Now, with Gallas setting the tone, with Eboue adding power in attack, with Eduardo adding razor-sharp touches in the box, they can finish above Spurs and Liverpool.
The new model is fairly obvious, even inevitable. If you lose three proven goalscorers, you can’t blow teams away, so you have to defend better. If you’re young and fit, and you don’t have Gandhi standing still for 85 minutes, you can press, you can attack when you don’t have the ball. Possession is the best defence but pressing is the second best : win the ball back a long way from your keeper, force mistakes.
But the $64,000 question is : can Arsenal defend consistently?
Can they get Martin Keown back to work with the back four and make them into a unit and teach them to attack the ball on crosses? Should they defend set-pieces man-for-man, rather than zonally ? Or will they still be an attacking team which defends stupidly and amateurishly ?
Arsenal’s new style is impressive and efficient. But their squad contains at least five hotheads. They might need a full-time anger management coach travelling with them.
ANR reader Sigvor has asked me to compare Ashley Cole and Gael Clichy.
He writes : Not in all his years could Ashley Cole give an assist like that. Would be interesting if you could compare the two now.
Well, Sigvor, Gael Clichy was good last season, although not everybody thought so. But Clichy doesn’t think like a defender and his overlaps lack a final ball. Nothing comes from them. He has to improve, just as Toure’s long game has to improve. Toure can’t pass the ball more than 20 yards. I’d have Toure standing on the centre circle with 50 balls for 20 minutes a day, trying to hit the corner flags, as Ronald Koeman and Jan Molby used to do.
Basically, Clichy doesn’t score and doesn’t produce assists and his game looks like football by numbers. So Clichy needed that assist. He really needed that assist. In truth, it was long overdue. Clichy needs another assist soon.
Still, the lad’s young and improving and promising. I like him a lot, always have done, and believe he will be in the team for many years.
Against Ajax, Clichy made a bionic run AND produced a very good pass, which RVP turned into the winning goal. Even if the Dutchman hadn’t scored, it would still have been an astonishing spurt and a great ball.
But Ashley Cole is the best footballer produced by Arsenal for 20 years. It’s just a shame that he’s a dimwit and sad that he behaved as he did.
I gather that his agent Jonathan Barnett and Arsene Wenger have not spoken since Cole’s infamous hotel meeting with Mourinho and Kenyon.
In Sunday’s Community Shield, Ashley Cole produced a wonderful chipped pass that allowed Malouda to power past Rio Ferdinand, who fell and grabbed Malouda’s shirt but was unable to prevent him shooting across Edwin van der Sar to make it 1-1 in 44 minutes.Van der Sar flew at Malouda with both feet and caught him on the knee after he had played the ball. Giggs had scored after 35 and van der Sar later saved three penalties by Pizarro, Lampard and SWP to give the Community Shield to United.
Ferdinand, Carrick and Rooney buried their penalties past Cech.
Without the injured Drogba, Chelsea weren’t very good.
And John Terry could be out for a month.