september 15th
I watched the game last night in an Irish bar called Scobies on Ronda Universitat here in Barcelona. The majority of the people in the bar were there for the Celtic v Barça game and when that game was delayed for a while the bar decided to play music as loud as the could.
Sadly the music was utter shite. Gerry and the Pacemakers doing ‘You’ll never walk alone’, The Pogues ‘Fairytale of New York’ and of course a number of U2 songs accompanied the first 15 minutes of the match. Still, I watched the game in the fine company of a Swedish football journalist and a very secret special guest star and there was beer, so it wasn’t that bad. I lie. It was fucking terrible listening to that shite and thankfully they put on commentary when the Celtic game kicked off. It wasn’t much use for the 3 of us interested in the Arsenal game, but it was better than the music.
As expected PSV took their cue from Ajax last season and played with 11 men behind the ball whenever we were in posession. This lead to very few chances and it was late in the first half when we took the lead. A Pires goal had been wrongly ruled out for offside when an Henry corner was turned on by Vieira and then scooped into his own net by some PSV chap. 1-0 Arsenal.
In the second half PSV were determined to preserve that 1-0 defecit no matter what, so the 11 men stayed behind the ball pretty much all the time. I don’t really remember any chances for either side, although the Dutchsters had me biting my fingernails in the last couple of minutes as they at last realised they needed to score to get something from the game. In the end the mad ref blew the whistle and we started our campaign with a highly satisfactory 3 points and an utterly forgettable game.
Dennis Bergkamp summed up PSV’s tactics perfectly when he said “In my opinion they had no intention to get anything out of this game.” And they didn’t. So their plan worked perfectly. That Guus Hiddink is some coach, let me tell you.
The boss reckoned we were haunted by the demons of last season’s opening game. When you consider that the players had to cope with the 11 PSV players plus the ectoplasmic manifestations that the TV cameras didn’t show it makes it a very good 3 points.
Wiltord to get the winner for Lyon against United tonight.
game drier
