february 16th
Thought you might like a little bit of the coverage of Reyes from the main sports papers here in Spain.
“The first of Reyes’ goals was one of the most spectacular of the English season. With his potent shot from 25 yards, he made Chelsea goalkeeper Carlo Cuducini’s dive useless.” – Marca.
“Olé, Reyes, Olé – The ex-Sevilla player puts Arsenal into the 1/4 finals of the cup with 2 goals, one extraordinary, and wins a huge ovation at Highbury” – El Mundo Deportivo.
“Reyes smites Chelsea” – AS (Literally the translation was ‘Reyes thunders against Chelsea, but ‘smites’ works a lot better).
Spaniards, and Barcelona people in particular, tend to be a bit insular about their football, but Reyes is certainly going to raise the profile of Arsenal over here, and already I’ve educated my kids classes about football in England. “Arsenal good, everyone else bad, especially Manchester United”.
I’m sure if Thierry Henry had been fit, young José would have started on the bench against Chelsea yesterday. Maybe it’s a bit early to say this, but you can see the difference between this number 9, and the previous number 9. Jeffers just never looked like an Arsenal player, José has something about him that makes him look the part. Even Arsene Wenger is a bit surprised at how quickly he’s delivered.
I’m really looking forward to seeing a lot more of him in the coming weeks, and no doubt he’s given the manager a headache when it comes to selecting the team for the league game against Chelsea. I expect TH to be fit and ready for that one, and normally you’d expect Dennis Bergkamp (who was in fine form yesterday) to get the nod. But when a player cracks in a goal like that first one, you have to think about giving him another go. A tough one, but that’s why AW gets paid all that money to make those decisions. I suppose it’s a better problem to have to choose between Reyes and Bergkamp than it is to choose between The Dead Snake and Kaba Diawara.
Sol Campbell is out of England’s friendly against Portugal on Wednesday with an injury that threatened to keep him out of the Chelsea game. Obviously he’s had a post-match …er…reaction…*cough*…and won’t travel. Good news for us though. International friendlies at this stage of the season are nonsense anyway. More good news for us is that Sol is in talks with the club about extending his contract. Bad news though that Ray Parlour could be out for up to 6 weeks after damaging medial ligaments in his knee, the same injury that’s keeping Jeremie Aliadiere out of the side.
Don’t forget the 1971 DVD competition, you have until tomorrow night to enter, the winners will be announced on Wednesday. This week is the start of Carnaval here – processions, days of flinging eggs and flour and meringues at each other, costumes, and most importantly, beer. Olé.
