THE SENIOR PLAYERS were pitiful at Goodison.
SOL CAMPBELL has seen the future and it doesn’t include playing in the World Cup.
He will be lucky to appear in any games in Germany.
GILBERTO had the worst game of his career.
HENRY was barely interested.
PIRES ditto.
LAUREN should be moved to midfield to add steel when Ashley Cole comes back.
LEHMANN has been Arsenal’s best player this season.
Had nothing much to do.Should he have come for the goal? If he had come forward two yards, would he have made Beattie shoot wide?
LJUNGBERG is past it. Such a shame. He used to be a fiery goalscorer.
KERREA GILBERT looks a very good prospect.Good pace to overtake Beattie, who had beaten Senderos. Beattie shoulder-charged him to the floor, but in doing that lost control of the ball and Senderos got it.
On his one overlap he produced a fantastic cross that should have been a goal, but Ljungberg missed the chance. One overlap, one cross – and it was quality.
Gilbert has played for England Under-17s, Under-18s and Under-19s.
FABREGAS is a fabulous player who was badly let down by the senior pros around him.
He lost his rag and pushed Cahill’s throat at the end and got sent off. He obviously felt as frustrated as I did.You can’t raise your hands in football.But we all do things when we shouldn’t do when we are young.
SENDEROS is much better on the left.Keep him there when Kolo comes back.
But James Beattie left him for dead on the goal and Beattie is a blunt instrument with no pace. He’s not fast, never has been.
One ball, lobbed by Cahill from the halfway line, should never beat two professional centrebacks.
It should never never never never never beat both centrebacks.
A ridiculous goal to concede.
REYES was running onto that ball behind Freddie, who hit Kerrea GIlbert’s cross into Nigel Martyn’s knee and onto then post.
HLEB has not been the same player since his injury.
On Match of the Day Alan Hansen hinted that Thierry Henry was hiding, so Lineker had to jump in.
It was quite a comical and revealing exchange.
Hansen said Henry was flicking the ball off, losing it.
LINEKER (interrupting): “This wasn’t a typical Henry performance -“
HANSEN (changing tack): “No, no, not a typical Henry performance.The thing is, when he has an off-day then Arsenal struggle. They rely on him too heavily. It’s surprising when you look at the brand of football that Arsenal were playing 15-18 months ago, which was better than anything we’ve ever seen in this country. They are surprisingly easy to play against now.”
I THOUGHT EVERTON WAS A BIG GAME.
But it was an utterly dire Arsenal performance.
One of the worst Arsenal performances I’ve ever seen.
The senior players were absolutely pitiful and that must worry the directors.
Alarms bells must be ringing.
Fiszman and Edelman must be thinking : How can we beat Wigan and Bolton if we play like this?
Has Arsene just signed three players who are irrelevant to the immediate challenge of beating Everton, Wigan and Bolton? Will we go into Emirates with an inexperienced and unbalanced team? Without Champions League football?
Did Arsene really say, “The sun was in our eyes”?
Did he really say, of Everton, “You cannot say it was real football, they refused to play in the right way. But they were efficient and when they went ahead it convinced them even more that they were doing the right thing.
“It is difficult because we face only that kind of game and we don’t seem to have a response. We must be more muscular to get a result against that style.
“And I expect it to be the same next week at Bolton in the Cup, I invite you all to come and see a re-run of this game.”
REFUSED TO PLAY IN THE RIGHT WAY?
More muscular? With Henry, Pires, Ljungberg and Gilberto in an away game?
Gilberto cannot tackle. He hangs his leg out rather than putting his weight behind his challenge. That is the best way to break your leg.
WILL ARSENAL get better or worse?
Or will they stay the same?
Can they beat Bolton In the FA Cup on Saturday? No.
Can they beat Wigan on Tuesday with Robin van Persie back in the side?
I don’t know.
AFTER THE GOODISON FIASCO I WAS SO DISGUSTED that I didn’t watch Real Madrid v Cadiz on Saturday night. Real won 3-1.
Sunday morning I wasn’t in the mood for football or newspapers.
We went for a walk down Brick Lane and through Spitalfields Market.
A large young Moslem woman stood at the top of Wentworth Street with her back to the wall and her hands in the pockets of her thick black overcoat.
She wore a tight-fitting headscarf. Tucked inside the headscarf was a flat grey mobile phone.She was chatting happily and looked as if she had been there for hours.
A sign in a window in Brick Lane made me laugh.
It was the Bengal Blues Restaurant. The sign said : RELAX IN A TRENDY ATMOSPHERE.
You would not see that sign in Fulham, Chelsea, or even Cricklewood.