september 30th
Another mediocre night in Europe for the lads as we played out a 1-1 draw with Rosenborg.
The signs were good when we took a 6th minute lead through Freddie Ljungberg, but the performance didn’t live up to the early promise. At times it looked as if we’d struggle to pass water let alone a football and when we did make some chances the decision making was a bit poor. There were a couple of occasions when Freddie was put in and I was screaming at him to shoot but he chose to pull it back and the defenders got their before our forwards. Strangley we started with Pires and Henry up front, with Pires playing the Bergkamp role. José was out wide and he continued where he left off against Manchester City and didn’t really have as good a game as we know he can.
Every pass went to them, his control was off and in general he wasn’t having a good night.
The second half started and Rosenborg came at us. We got lucky when Sol Campbell’s poor clearance fell to one of their strikers and Ashley Cole blocked the shot, but when Edu got caught in possession the Norwegians found our right back spot completely vacant and from there they crossed and it was a very tidy finish to make it 1-1. We came out of our shells a little bit then, there was more drive and ambition to our play and we nearly made chances but the final ball often fell short or the ball just wouldn’t break for us.
Now I know people are going to moan about this result, but at the end of the day it’s an away point against a team that has 12 years of Champions League experience having won their domestic league every year since 1992. No, they’re not Barcelona or AC Milan but they’re nobody’s fools either. Sure I’d expect us to win a game like this but it’s not the end of the world that we didn’t.
The only slight worry is the way we’re playing although it is hard to complain when we’re grinding out results. I would wonder about playing Pires centrally though. If AW sees José as a central striker, why not play him there? We know what Bob can do from the left and previous attempts to play him in the Bergkamp role haven’t been a roaring success. In mitigation though we have Sol Campbell, Patrick Vieira and Edu playing their way back to match fitness and those are players in key positions. Vieira in particular looks miles off the pace but I suppose the only way he’s going to regain his sharpness is by playing games. As for our corners, well, I sincerely hope there’s some practice to be done on the delivery because for a team of our ability they are sub-standard.
Afterwards Arsene Wenger conceded we weren’t positive enough and we tried to hold onto the 1-0 scoreline. He said “You want to take the points when you can, and tonight we should have had three. That is where we can learn, I feel, that we were a little bit too comfortable at 1-0 maybe.”
Anyway, with Chelsea and United winning handsomely this obviously means we’re completely shit and the meeja can focus on somebody else for a while, which suits me fine. This playing badly and not losing thing might not be everyone’s cup of tea but it’ll do.
Finally for today Leopold was in touch yesterday, a little too late for his assured prediction on last night’s game, but according to his intermediary the Mendacious one ‘got himself a houseboy this summer and has been smoking hashish and recounting his tales to him about how he met the Prince of Wales in Morocco in ’47.’ Anyway, you can check out his latest offering on the real ANR.
