may 17th
20.15 – Arsenal 1-0 Southampton (Pires)
Cup final alcohol intake = 11 cans of beer, 3 whiskeys. Please don’t expect anything insightful, coherent or anything spelled correctly.
Despite Southampton being as threatening as a newborn kitten for most of the match, I was convinced for a long time that the chances we missed would come back to haunt us. Henry could have opened the scoring in the first 30 seconds, when Lundekvaam tried to pull the shirt off his back, but Henry stayed on his feet and Niemi made the first of many good saves.
Keown looked fucked, and Lauren figured the best way to last the 90 was not to tackle, so I was concerned. I said to my missus who had thought Keown was out of the game ‘Whatever part of him hurts before, he can’t feel it now.’ In the aftermatch interview Keown said “I had an injection before the match and I couldn’t feel my leg at all”. I laughed.
We had much more going forward that Southampton, Henry had a number of good chances, then after the half hour mark some nice Arsenal build up saw Bergkamp cut the ball back to Freddie, his shot was blocked, it fell to the feet of Bob who then drilled it home. 1-0 to the Arsenal.
In the second half I was up on my feet shouting ‘OH WHAT A GOAL!!’ before Niemi saved brilliantly from Bergkamp and Freddie hit the side netting with the rebound. Niemi then injured himself taking a kick-out, they brought on Paul Jones who made a great save from an Henry chance.
Our defence might have been stretched today with injuries etc, but we coped really well with everything Southampton threw at us – which was mainly long ball after long ball aimed at James Beattie.
He’s had his critics, but my man of the match today was Oleg Luzhny. He handled Beattie really well, played a top game, went on forward runs and overall was just superb. For him as much as anyone I’m delighted we won today. All hail Oleg. But what a save from Seamo near the end as well…
4 minutes of injury time became something like 6 minutes. That was nail-biting, and in that time Ashley Cole cleared of the line. Graham Barber was lucky and roundly booed when he went up to collect his ref’s medal.
Eventually though the final whistle went.
Anyone see Kolo back-flipping? Edu dancing with Gilberto? And for the first time I heard Bob speaking English…
Fair play to the Southampton fans too – they stuck around to give their team a shout. Most times the losing fans bugger off fairly quickly. It looked like there was a great atmosphere, we’ll get some reports from those at Cardiff later on no doubt.
Anyway, it’s all godd stuff when you win the cup. Now is the time to celebrate with more booze.
Tomorrow there’ll be more reaction – hopefully with some match photos, and I reckon it’s time we made a couple of changes to how the site looks now that the season is over.
“One-nil, to the AR-SEN-AL, One-nil, to the AR-SEN-AL, One-nil, to the AR-SEN-AL, One-nil, to the AR-SEN-AAAAAAAAAAAL“
