Well, it wasn’t to be yesterday as two goals by a hideous cunt won the trophy for Chelsea but the lads can look back with their heads held high and know that this was a game they could have won against the billionaire assembled blues.
It had started so well too. We came out of the blocks flying and put Chelsea on the back foot straight away with our passing and movement. After we won a corner when Julio Baptista’s great shot was saved be Cech, Theo Walcott won the ball from the clearance, fed it to Abou Diaby who showed neat footwork on the edge of the box before playing Theo back in. He took a touch and curled a great shot past Cech for his first Arsenal goal. Brilliant.
About 10 minutes later Chelsea were level. Didier Drogba looked offside to me, and based on the decisions that went for the rest of the game Arsenal can feel rightly aggrieved by the linesman’s failure to raise his flag, but play went on and he seemed to have a lot of time to fire his shot past Almunia. We didn’t let our heads drop though and continued to play good football for the rest of the half.
Afterwards Arsene Wenger talked about us lacking a bit of maturity in front of goal and early in the second half we could have scored twice. Abou Diaby was played through and tried to curl one to the right hand side of the goal but Cech made another excellent save while Cesc had a great run and his shot just went wide by inches, if that. Then came the moment which changed the game, in my opinion. From a corner Abou Diaby kicked John Terry in the face and the Chelsea man was unconscious before he hit the ground. Not nice to see and thankfully he was all right although the fucking Candle in the Wind shit from Alan Parry and Andy Gray was a bit much. As he was being treated there was a shot of Peter Kenyon in the stands – was I alone in wishing what had happened to Terry had happened to him instead?
After a lengthy delay we then lost Diaby (here’s hoping the metatarsal rumours aren’t true), who had been excellent in midfield – not sure if he injured himself when he kicked Terry – and Armand Traore who was likely to be subbed anyway. Hoyte moved to left back, Eboue came on for Traore and Hleb for Diaby. We seemed to lack some of the drive and purpose that we had previously. As well as that Chelsea’s experience came to the fore a bit too. Lampard hit the bar with a long range shot and then on 85 minutes Chelsea got the winner.
Denilson gave the ball away when we were playing it out of defence, Essien spread it to Robben and Drogba beat Senderos to the cross to head home the winner. Gutting but then Drogba is having the season of his fucking life, the enormous, hideous cunt. We had brought Adebayor for Aliadiere and with 7 minutes of injury time Arsenal were pushing forward looking for the equaliser when Kolo Toure took exception to Mikel trying to pull his shirt off and the pair scuffled in the midfield.
Frank Lampard came running over to get involved and got swung around the place by Cesc, who I cannot love any more than I already do, and soon everyone was at it. Not nice to see but sadly not unexpected given the hapless performance of the referee and his inability to keep control of the game. When everything had settled down a bit Kolo and Mikel got red cards – which I thought was harsh – Lampard and Cesc got yellows and Adebayor got a red too which sent the Togonator completely mental as he couldn’t understand why he’d been sent off.
I completely understand his frustration. It’s injury time in a cup final, you’re looking for an equaliser and then you get a red card for absolutely nothing. Of course players should keep their calm as much as possible but tell me who wouldn’t react in that situation? Replays later showed that Emmanuel Eboue, who previously had been booked for a foul on Robben and got unnecessarily involved with him on the touchline, came over and hit Wayne Bridge on the back of the head. Now, to me it didn’t look like anything more than a little slap but it gave Bridge the chance to go down and for the officials to send Eboue off. Except it wasn’t Eboue.
Adebayor was sent off after the linesman came over and told Howard Webb what he’d seen. This is the same linesman who didn’t see the offside for the first goal. In retrospect it’s understandable that he can’t get something like a difficult offside decision correct when he can’t tell the difference between a stocky 5’10 black guy and a lanky 6’4 black guy. Absolutely farcical all round. Given how well we played and how exceptional the lads were all day I don’t want to criticise anyone but you have to ask questions of Eboue – why did he feel like he needed to do that to Bridge? Maybe with Adebayor on we might have nicked a goal. What he did was utterly stupid and pointless and it’s not the first time we’ve said that about him.
No doubt there’ll be more coverage of the handbags, but let’s face it, that was not a brawl by anyone’s standards. As Arsene Wenger said that would do a disservice to the overall quality of the game. It was, all things considered, a very entertaining cup final and we’ve now had a man sent off in our last three finals. Not that it’s relevant to anything but it’s worth mentioning. Is it some kind of record?
So in the end we couldn’t do it and the Carling Cup dream was over. I’m not going to talk about the ‘moral victory’ or anything like it. The history books will show Chelsea as the winners but the lads can take great heart and credit from their performance. The kids outplayed a Chelsea side, which cost hundreds of millions to put together, for the vast majority of the game. As Arsene Wenger said the difference between the two sides was Drogba, who despite being a hideous cunt, is probably one of the best strikers in the world right now. Had we had someone so capable up front then there’s no question we’d have won it.
Still, there’s so much to be proud of from this team. From the way they play, which is fearless and swashbuckling at times, to how they stand up for themselves in the face of provocation from experienced opposition professionals and there’s no doubt whatsoever they’ll learn a huge amount from the cup run and from the final itself. It’ll hurt because losing always hurts but these boys want to win so much. You can see it in them and pain like this can act as a great motivator.
We’ve seen Theo come of age, I hope – that goal will do so much for him. Abou Diaby, if he can get through 90 minutes, looks just awesome and Denilson is so clever, so composed and people forget that the cup final was only his 10th appearance or something ridiculous like that. Our midfield pissed all over Lampard and Ballack and Essien and Makelele and to see Lampard giving it the clenched fists like they’d just beaten Brazil at the end was maddening but completely in character for him – the actions of a deluded cunt. Then they showed why they really are the most despicable football club on earth as they went to collect the trophy.
They all changed into ‘Winners 07’ t-shirts before going to collect their medals. To me that showed a lack of respect and an arrogance that I’m sorry we weren’t able to stop. To see Ashley Cole up there dancing with a medal around his neck may have justified, to him, his decision to move but money and nights out with ‘JT’ and Fat Frank aren’t worth a shit to what he could have had at Arsenal. Sad cunt.
Anyway, the crux of the matter is this. Chelsea’s players are cunts, their manager – although he was mildly gracious for once because not even he could not see how outplayed his team were – is a cunt, their knuckle-dragging, celery throwing fans are cunts and that fat, red faced cunt who is always there standing around the tunnel area or, as yesterday, on the pitch at the end, is a fat, red faced cunt. Who the fuck is he anyway?
On the other hand the Arsenal boys have done us proud. They play great football, they’ve given us a lot to look forward to because if you think about how well someone like Denilson or Diaby played with so little experience of English football, how good are they going to be next season or the season after? Credit too to the manager who did the right thing by playing a young team. Maybe nobody expected them to win but nobody expected them to make Chelsea look as one-paced and pedestrian as they did. Chelsea may have won the trophy but the Arsenal boys were not losers. The Carling Cup has been a brilliant competition for us this season and the run and defeat in the final will do more to bring us silverware in the future than any amount of reserve games they could play.
Quick links: Arsene Wenger reaction post-match, Adebayor says “I’ve been stitched up, m’lord”, Arsene delay Theo’s surgery because of Diaby’s injury, Wenger on possible FA action.
Obviously as disappointing as all this is we’ve got lots of football to play in the days to come so we need to find our focus again very quickly. No doubt there’ll be changes ahead of the game on Wednesday but we can wait till tomorrow to go over those.
What did you make of it all?
