By Myles Palmer
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FABREGAS WAS fabretastic !
And the interchange of the strikers was phenomenal, textbook stuff.
Henry, Bergkamp and Reyes switched around in the second half with a style we have never seen before in English football.
UEFA should circulate the video of Arsenal 4 Charlton 0.
Even though it was only a football match for 47 minutes, up to 2-0.
After that it was an exhibition.
Football should be fun to play and fun to watch and fun to talk about and when you see Henry backheeling goals, Vieira making runs into the six yard box, Fabregas grinning., Pennant hugging Reyes after 4-0, and Henry patting Reyes on the bum after a miss for 5-0, you know it’s fun.
After the tension of Trondheim, this was business as usual.
It could have been 6-0, but 4-0 was fine, since I had backed Arsenal to win by two or more.
They always score more goals when Fabregas plays.
AT THE START, the kid got a couple of hospital passes, and a couple of kicks, but Cesc Fabregas was brilliant, as he was in Cardiff against Man United in August.
In the whole game he only lost the ball twice and gave one bad pass !
First 20, they missed Pires.
Clichy made a couple of great tackles, but was less adventurous than usual.
Pennant was excellent, coming on for the injured Ljungberg.
JOSE REYES was below his best, but still got a goal and two assists.
First-goal Freddie popped up with ethe opening goal yet again, just before half time, stabbing in when the supercool Bergkamp played a killer pass to the near post after eluding the scrambling keeper Kiely.
Centreback Fortune was holding Henry and unable to see the ball or Henry’s feet, so Thierry took Reyes’s clever pass and backheeled in for 2-0, as you do in training.
Reyes fed Henry, who was not able to shoot, so Henry gave him the ball back, and when Reyes set him up again he sent a right foot screamer past the centrehalf’s head and Kiely’s glove for 3-0.
Then Reyes hit a perfect Bergkamp pass first time and leftfooted, a fiery shot that flashed across the keeper for 4-0.
A compact dribbler with a low centre of gravity, Reyes created a wonderful opening for himself,blazed over with his right foot, then had another shot blocked.
His appetite is huge !
Reyes will score hat-tricks, but not in very wet conditions like these.
So there it is : Arsenal still top and a 4-0 win in the club’s 4000th league game.
FABREGAS IS STILL 17 and the most precocious teenage midfielder I’ve seen since Alan Hudson.
He played behind Vieira, got forward four or five times, showed immense composure in keeping the game moving sweetly with simple passes, making it look like an indoor game of five-a-side as he cruises around, linking moves together.
Jim Baxter, the Rangers genius, was so classy that he used to pass the ball to a teammate’s best foot and Fabergas is like that : if his striker is marked by two or three opponents, Fabregas can play the ball precisely into the only small space where his man can play the ball and the others cannot.
That is extraordinary.
ARSENAL’S NEXT GAME is Aston Villa and after that they go to Old Trafford on Wayne Rooney’s 19th birthday.
Should Arsene play Fabregas at Old Trafford ?
Well, look at it this way.
Therre are very few things in football that you can be sure about, but you know that Arsene gives a lot of thought to which games Fabregas should play in and which games he should not play in.
The word is that Arsene would like to start him in every game, but worries about the reaction of Edu and Gilberto, who both need first team football to protect their places in the Brazilian side.
So the manager has to juggle a bit, share the games out.
He has to maintain competition for places while at the same time keeping everybody happy.
Sometimes, of course, the manager does not pick the team. Injuries pick it for him.
But Arsene fears injuries, as all managers do.
He does not know which players will be available for Aston Villa, let alone Man United.
A NICE CHILLED-OUT SUNDAY, no socialising, some lunch, watch Chelsea beat Liverpool, and tonight we go uphill with Michael Palin on BBC1.
The trailer clips of the Himalayas look stunning and Jan’s been telling me about Darra, where she saw the gunsmiths.
To me, as a kid, the Khyber Pass was a glamorous place.
NEXT WEEK we will have to suffer seven days of tedious chatter about Defoe and Owen.
Who should play against Wales?
Horrible.
It’s hardly started and I’m numb already.
October 3rd 2004.