It’s a long time, seventeen days without an Arsenal game, but the last week has confirmed a couple of points in the football cosmos.
Alan Shearer is the ex officio chairman of Newcastle and has signed up his mate Michael Owen, who will earn £25 million over four years.
Also, David Beckham runs the England team and has turned himself into an enthroned emperor, firing 50-yard passes to junior sprinter Shaun Wright-Phillips.
He thinks he is Franz Beckhambauer, a strategic halfback.
Never mind that the Kaiser was a great player and Becks in his prime was only half a great player.
ENGLAND beat Wales 1-0 with a deflected Joe Cole goal in 53 minutes.
Another occasion where a deflected goal got lucky Sven out of jail. That shot was NOT beating the keeper.
Their 4-5-1 shape stunk, as we had all feared.
But Rooney and Beckham were England’s best players, as they had been in the 4-1 fiasco in Denmark.
At times Rooney reminded me of John “Budgie ” Byrne, a clever West Ham striker who played for England in the Sixties. Byrne was very neat, nimble and creative.
At other times, Rooney reminded me of Di Stefano.
OTHER CONCLUSIONS?
Firstly, Sven has his own peculiar arithmetic with Gerrard and Lampard.
In football, 1+1 can be 2 or even 3. But with Sven picking England’s midfield, 1+1 = 0.
Lampard and Gerrard cancel each other out.
If you play them both in the middle, you lose them both.
SECONDLY, the only effective partnership in that team is Rooney & Gerrard.
Sven has not created any other partnerships in that side. Not at the back, not on the flanks, not up front.
But Rooney and Gerrard like each other, see each other, make runs for each other, enjoy each other’s talents.
In Istanbul, in the second half against Milan, Gerrard was a one-man army. That is how England should use him.
THIRDLY, IN A TABLOID culture like UK, there cannot be a sensible debate about what the England team should be.
The press have hammered Sven so hard he doesn’t know whether it’s Sunday or Thursday.
So he is no nearer to balancing his midfield than he was in Portugal 2004.
Since Sven is not a tactician, since he can’t change a game, can’t affect a game after it has started, he has no chance of beating decent teams without a balanced midfield.
We pay him £4 million a year to balance the England midfield, but he doesn’t have the balls to choose between Gerrard and Lampard, any more than he had the balls to choose between Scholes and Lampard.
Lamps is off-form anyway. He wasn’t good against Arsenal in the Community Shield and has been average for a month.
If the England team had shape, it would then develop rhythm.
If it had shape and rhythm, we could give France and Argentina a game.
Defoe came on after the goal, just when Wales had started to attack and rattle England a little bit, which left Defoe isolated and wrestling with defenders.
Defoe looked mediocre because of how he was used and when he was used.
Sven wobbled and brought on Hargreaves for SWP, just as Beckhambauer had begun to find Shaun with those raking crossfield balls, one of which allowed Shaun to set up Joe Cole for the goal.
SCOTLAND’S KENNY MILLER played with the passion England lacked, scoring with a header and giving Nesta a nightmare evening.
It finished 1-1, but Italy got a fright.
Scotland were more than the sum of their parts, England were less than the sum of their parts.
DROGBA equalised twice for Ivory Coast but they lost 3-2 at home to Cameroon. Heartbreaking. A win would have taken them to their first World Cup.
Daft defending by Toure on the first goal. He let a diagonal ball bounce in the box and tried to hold off Webo with his body, but Webo stretched and flicked the ball over the advancing keeper.
Play the ball, son, not the man. If in doubt, kick it out. You were mugged.
JENS LEHMANN made two good saves from Vitek in a 2-0 defeat in Slovakia, where Klinsmann’s experimental starting eleven didn’t gell .
Lehmann had no chance with the first goal, a penalty where big blond Karhan sent him the wrong way, and no chance on the second, when the back four went AWOL and he was lobbed by the same player.
GILBERTO SILVA came on for Emerson in 58 in Brasilia.
By then Brazil were 4-0 up against a shambolic Chile and Adriano completed his hat-trick in the 92nd minute.
Brazil scored four in the first 28 and the best goal was the second, which turned the clock back 35 years.
It was a 1970 goal : an end-to-end move in five passes.
Big centreback Juan eluded his man on the goal-line, cleared upfield to Robinho, who released Adriano on the right. He zoomed past his marker and crossed to the far post, where Kaka volleyed back to Ronaldo, who was marked and facing the wrong way, so he killed the ball with one foot and played it square to Robinho to stab home as he raced into the six yard box.
Ronaldo looked almost redundant, a passenger in a luxury vehicle. Most of the liquid gold moves passed him by.
KAKA cruised elegantly, changing gear and gliding past opponents with centimetres to spare, as Robinho does.
Kaka has played better. But that didn’t matter and Brazil now qualify for their 18th World Cup.
Ronaldinho was suspended, but not missed.
In 1970, Bobby Charlton could have played in the Brazil team.
Rooney could play in this team.