april 16th 2003
08.59 – Ahead of tonight’s game comes the rumours that the Ashburton Grove stadium project has beens scrapped. There’s been nothing official to confirm or deny this from the club yet, but on the Arsenal mailing list a spokesman for AISA (Arsenal Independent Supporters Association) said: “Up to now we’ve refrained from commenting on all the various rumours, including copy in the Standard and trade press. We don’t have any official access to information but very local sources now indicate that there is some bad news on the horizon. Expect an announcement of some kind tomorrow or very soon.”
All we can do is wait and see what the club say, so I’ll refrain from commenting on that, and move on to something far more important instead.
Arsenal v Man Utd tonight, at Highbury. A game that could go a long way to deciding the destination of the title. Pat Rice has dismissed any notions that Fergie’s mind games work on the Arsenal players. He says “The players just laugh. It doesn’t affect them one iota.” While the United manager and various players continue their mouthing off to the press, Arsene Wenger does the talking for the Gunners and says “We want to be a team which makes history and achieves great things. We have something in front of us where we can do that. We don’t have any fear. We are very positive about what we can achieve together.“
We need big games from our big players tonight. We need Henry, Bergkamp, Vieira, Ljungberg and Pires to cause them problems up front, and we need Sol and Martin to be strong at the back. Can Freddie continue his great scoring record against them? Will van Nistelrooy punch anyone in the stomach again tonight? Will it be Wiltoooooooooooooord?
Tonight’s performance will go a long way to convincing people that this Arsenal team is the real deal. A while ago people though the title was sewn up, there were Arsenal fans getting cocky. We only ever had a 5 point lead, and we all know what happened to Newcastle and their 12 points. Personally speaking, if we’d had a 28 point lead with 18 minutes of the season to go, I’d still be convinced there’d be some way of losing it.
I’m bricking it already.
