december 19th
I think it’s safe to say that three mistakes cost Arsenal the game yesterday. Two of them were blindingly obvious, one of the them was a small mistake but very costly.
Mistake 1: After about 20 minutes, just after Thierry Henry had hit the post, Freddie Ljungberg played in Robin van Persie and he finished quite clinically to make it 1-0 to Arsenal. However, for some reason the linesman disallowed the goal for offside. There is no disputing the fact that Thierry Henry was offisde but he did not touch the ball, the pass was not made to him and the goal should have stood. It should have been 1-0 Arsenal but soon it was the other way around.
Mistake 2: Kolo Toure allowed Arjen Robben to get away from him for just second but that’s all a player of his pace needs when he’s being played onside by Sol Campbell. He raced through and scored off the post to make it 1-0 to Chelsea when it should have been 1-0 Arsenal.
Mistake 3: The ball came across the pitch and Lauren tried to take it down but only succeeded in playing the ball into the path of Joe Cole. He still had Sol Campbell to beat but he didn’t have to do much to make Sol look silly and finish with a left foot curler low past Jens Lehmann. From 2-0 down there was never any chance of coming back against a team as defensive as Chelsea and the three points were always destined for West London. What a shame.
For me there is no question that van Persie’s disallowed goal was the pivotal moment. We had weathered Chelsea’s early storm, Henry had hit the post a minute or two before and then we scored a perfectly good goal which meant Chelsea would have had to come out and play instead of scoring themselves and then sitting back and showing everyone – AGAIN – how strong they are defensively. It was a really poor decision by the linesman and it cost us the game. Arsene Wenger was not at all happy, making a comment that could land him in hot water with the FA. He said “We scored a regular goal but the referee made a very bad decision. I associate the referee and linesmen in the same team – the Chelsea team.”
Not long after that football’s ambassador for fair play, Michael Essien, knocked out one of Lauren’s front teeth with an straight arm while fending off the ball. For me the replays were inconclusive, maybe I need to see them again, but given his form he was lucky to escape with a yellow card. Moaninho said Arsenal were picking on him because of past events where he has tried really hard to break somebody’s leg and said Philippe Senderos should have been sent off twice which would be an achievement even for Rob Styles. Robin van Persie was booked for bouncing the ball in an agressive manner and it really does show the terrible disparity between mild indiscipline and dangerous, violent play. Why should bouncing the ball merit the same punishment as knocking somebody’s teeth out?
In the second half we huffed and puffed but didn’t create very much. Henry was very quiet, Cech made a good save from Lauren and with about 20 minutes to go we brought on Pires and Bergkamp for the ineffectual Ljungberg and Alexander Hleb who looked promising but still without enough end product. A couple of minutes later Chelsea scored their second after Lauren’s error and that was game over.
I said yesterday that we needed big performances from the likes of Henry and Campbell and unfortunately we didn’t get them. Thierry, his shot against the post apart, was really quiet while Sol continues to be a terrible worry. He was beaten to a header by Joe Cole (up there with Drogba for hideousness), for God’s sake, and at one point took a free kick with his left foot, skidding the ball straight to a Chelsea player. He’s right footed. What the hell was he thinking? I know we’ve got too many kids playing and that we lack experience but it’s the experience that’s letting us down this season not the kids and Sol is one of the main culprits. He never even got close to Joe Cole for Chelsea’s second goal. Lots of people were talking about the duel between Drogba and Senderos but Big Phil defended like Tony Adams. He made everything difficult for Drogba and maybe he skirted the edge of yellow cards and so on but he was there every single time. His tackle on Robben just at the start of the second half reminded me of Steve Bould.
Elsewhere Jens played well again, Cesc and Flamini did ok in a midfield against two sly cunts and Lampard, Helb was ok, Freddie anonymous, Robin was good but playing on the left and Thierry was quiet again. It seems like we played a 4-5-1 but I really would have preferred the boss to play a good old 4-4-2. Despite the bad luck we had it’s fairly obvious again that this squad needs some strengthening come January because without it the 4th place we need to get into the CL qualifying rounds could be out of our reach.
Finally, let’s talk about Jose Mourinho. At the final whistle he disappeared down the tunnel and didn’t even have the basic decency and manners to shake hands with Arsene Wenger. Lots of managers have problems with each other, can’t stand each other, can’t abide the methods/face/sight of their rival, but to a man they always have enough manners to shake the hand of their rival. Not Mourinho though. He’s as ill-mannered, as arrogant, as childish as they come and for a manager of a team to come to Highbury and not have the consideration to shake hands with his opposite number says everything about Chelsea and the way they have come to be at the top of the English game. They’re owned by a cunt, managed by a cunt, supported by cunts and staffed by cunts. I already have my tickets on order and I am praying that Barcelona rape them when they come here. Afterwards Mourinho said “Do you think that’s important for the game? I don’t think it is important for the game. What is important is 90 minutes of football on the pitch.”
A fairly pathetic attempt to take away from the fact that he couldn’t have put aside whatever his feelings are about AW for 2 seconds in order to shake his hand.
Classless. And what’s more, if you or I had all the money in the world to sign whatever players we wanted – and make no mistake that those are the resources Mourinho has available to him – I’m pretty sure we’d try and build a great team which played great football. No matter what Chelsea win they will never be regarded as a great team because of the negative football they play. It might sound rich coming from an Arsenal fan but there were times Arsenal won things with a style of play that was never pretty. We’d never have been compared to a 94 vintage Milan though and neither will this Chelsea side. Defensive, negative, dour, without beauty – just like their coach. His paranoid ramblings about Arsenal’s plot to get Essien sent off really makes you wonder about what world he lives in. He really does think everyone is out to get him and always has an excuse for his bad manners.
Anyway, that horrible cunt apart the fact remains we’ve lost 3 in a row, lost our home record, failed to score for
3 games and sit 8th in the table at Christmas time behind the obvious teams as well as Wigan, Man City and Sp*rs. Arsene Wenger says “We have to show our strength now and come back, and finish as close as possible to the top team.”
Amen to that. You’ve got to make them show their strength though, Arsene, and you’ve got to bring in the new players we need in January to make us strong enough again.
