february 2nd 2005
Arseblogger’s internet connection is fucked so I (Tom) have the dubious pleasure of writing today’s entry. Still, at least it’s an easy one after the team won 11-0 at Highbury against the cunts from Surrey!
Oh.
Well, at least we played well in the first half. Patrick Vieira’s goal – a header from a corner no less – gave us the early lead before Ryan Giggs’ got a deflected equaliser ten minutes later. Dennis Bergkamp nutmegged Roy Carrol with his shot from a tight angle to re-take the lead ten minutes before half time and we should’ve had a penalty after Bob was obviously brought down. We’d played well and deserved to be ahead, if not by more.
Then, in the second half, we stopped playing. Ronaldo equalised again and we seemed shell-shocked, before the same cunt scored again from a Giggs cross after Alumnia came charging out to the edge of his area and Lauren stopped tracking his man. That was pretty much game over; we lost all momentum and seemed out of ideas. Not even Silvestre’s sending off with 20 minutes to go could spark us and John O’Shea chipped in late on to give them a 4-2 win.
It was a tense game and there were some shennanigans in the tunnel even before the match when Roy Keane accused Vieira of having a go at Gary Neville. Whatever the truth of it, Vieira said the right thing: “I had a talk with Roy Keane and that’s it. Gary Neville is a big lad, he can handle himself. They just played better than us and deserved to win.”
And that’s about the size of it.
It’s difficult to know how we’ll react to this loss. The game had been talked up for a long time with Sol Campbell admitting this week “it’s personal” with United, so losing 4-2 is going to be tough to take. If anyone was in any doubt before the game, the league is well and truly gone now. Barring a massive collapse Chelsea will win it. Deciding whether you’d rather they or United won it is a bit like asking whether you’d like to be deep-fried to death or cut into very tiny pieces bit by bit. I hope they both lose.
Arsene Wenger has to have a serious think about how to strengthen the squad in the summer, starting with the goalie because Almunia showed last night he’s not up to it. Christ knows what he was thinking for one of Ronaldo’s goals and he was in a strange position when O’Shea lobbed him. We need someone proven too. The defence in general needs strengthened – you only have to look at how many goals we’ve conceeded this season to see that.
Positives? Cygan played well, Flamini was good in midfield and Dennis had a good game and scored an excellent goal. We scored from a corner – when was the last time that happened? We contributed to an extremely entertaining game for the neutral? Okay, scraping the barrel a bit with that last one.
Anyway, hopefully Arseblogger can come up with something more meaningful when he gets his internet sorted. My head hurts and I know I’m going to have to deal with some cunt at work talking shit. I hope your day is better than mine!
Update: I’ve just checked my email and regular arser and forumer Jawsh kindly sent me his thoughts on the game after I was complaining last night that today’s blog was going to be hard to write.
