january 1st 2003
18.12 – Welcome to a brand new year on Arseblog. Hope you had a good night last night and happy new year to you all.
What a way to start 2003. An extraordinary game at Highbury today.
Arsenal 3-2 Chelsea (Desailly OG, van Bronckhorst, Henry).
It looked as if Dennis had scored his 100th goal for Arsenal in the 9th minute, but it turned out to be an own goal from Marcel Desailly. The game then continued at 1-0 until the 81st minute. With Chelsea pressing for an eqauliser and dominating the game, Arsenal broke forward, Toure made a dummy run, Henry fed Gio who buried it past Cuducini. 2-0 Arsenal and I was thinking that was it – 3 points nice and safe.
Less than a minute later, Henry runs, turns Gallas, shoots and it’s 3-0 Arsenal. All the nerves are gone, and even my New Year’s hangover and ever loosening bowels felt better. Listening to football on the radio isn’t so bad after all.
Then Chelsea get a corner, Seamo doesn’t get it, Stanic makes it 3-1. Oh well, a small consolation is ok for Chelsea. Then, less than a minute after than, Seamo drops the ball, Petit is left with an open goal, 3-2. Now, the bowels are screaming, my headache is back, fingernails are being bitten, and I’m thinking it would be just typical if we threw away a 3-0 lead with 9 minutes go, especially as the moaners scored 2 in the last 9 minutes to nick their 2-1 win over Sunderland earlier.
But, we hang on. 3-2 to the Arsenal. 3 points to kick off the new year. But buggering jaysus, I could have done without it being so close…..
In other Arsenal news, Patrick Vieira says again he wants to stay at Arsenal, we’ve got a big, bald Bulgarian keeper on trial, The Sun says Leeds want £12m for Paul Robinson, and Arsene Wenger talks about transfer targets and the players being offered to Arsenal all the time here.
Right, time for a hair of the dog I reckon, and some dinner before I settle down to watch Liverpool get stuffed by Newcastle.
Oh, my new year’s resultion. To eat less grapes. It’ll be hard, but I’ll try. What’s yours?
