By Myles Palmer
I THOUGHT Juventus, Arsenal and Manchester United would win. But none of them did.
Juventus lost for the first time this season – against Inter Milan.
Without Edgar Davids, with Trezeguet not interested, with Del Piero carrying a thigh injury, they gave the most feeble Juve performance I’ve seen in 20 years.
Davids is their spark-plug. He has energy, bottle, tenacity. Without the Pitbull, they were toothless, spineless and useless.
Trezeguet was so lazy that he made Kluivert look like Klinsmann ! Inter won 3-1.
ARSENAL had 24 shots against Fulham and failed to score for the first time in 47 Premiership games.
Van der Sar made three good saves and everyone raved and said he was the man of the match, fabulous, brilliant, awesome, and so on.
Mostly it was feeble shooting.Freddie and Dennis should have scored.
Arsene said, “I thought Edwin van der Sar played well, although we didn’t force him to make any exceptional saves.”
EXACTLY !
Man United have far more experience of pressure games than Chelsea, and their players know each other better, so I reckoned they would win 1-0 or draw at Chelsea.
When Ranieri dopped Damien Duff, I fancied Chelsea even less.
But Joe Cole won a penalty, Frank Lampard scored it, and Chelski went top of the table.
The best players on the field were Makelele, Silvestre and Mutu in that order.
Roy Keane says Fergie should buy a striker, but what they need is a Valeron or an Aimar or a Pires.
United have been a tempo team for a decade, able to keep their 4-4-2 shape by sheer hard work and move up through the gears, creating chances and scoring goals.
They did not do that on Sunday.
They badly missed Beckham and they also missed the runaway train momentum that Silvestre used to give them on the other side when he was doing all those bionic overlaps.
Also, Fergie got it wrong. He bottled it. He didn’t go for a win.
He should have played Giggs on the left and Darren Fletcher on the right and tried to score first.
But he picked a midfield full of hatchet men and that rarely works if you concede the first goal.
United were laborious, workmanlike, lacking flair, momentum and penetration.
You can go to Chelsea and try to sneak it, but if you go 1-0 down against an Italian manager who only needs one goal to go top of the table, you’ve got problems.
United never really looked like solving those problems.
PATRICK VIEIRA is back against Wolves tonight.
The team has done very well without Patrick, but they miss him badly.
They need his strength, his experience, his two-footed keep-ball skills, his tackling, his marvellous athleticism and versatility.
If PV4 can play 90 against Leicester on Saturday, he should be in reasonable shape for the all-important visit of Lokomotiv Moscow on Wednesday 10th.
December 2nd 2003.