Arsenal vs Blackburn Rovers. 13/12/97

Arsenal (1) 1 - 3 (0)

Highbury, Saturday 13th December 1997

FA Carling Premiership

Scorers:
    Overmars 18        Wilcox 57, Gallacher 65, Sherwood 89

Arsenal:
                Seaman
Dixon  Adams  Keown  Winterburn
Parlour (Boa Morte)  Platt (Vieira) Petit Overmars
    Bergkamp  Wright

booked:  Wright, Parlour (?)

Another disappointing day at Higbury, and one which had started so positively. Arsenal had plenty of the play in the first half, and took the lead after 18 minutes when Petit lobbed the ball forward from inside our half and Overmars beat the offside trap. Flowers came out to meet him outside the box but Overmars got to it just in time to side-foot the ball high and slow over the keeper. Hendry was only able to follow it into the net. Moments beforehand Flowers had come out to meet Wright in a similar position, and had just done enough to stop him.

Blackburn's chanes in the first half were mostly gifted by us. A scrambled cross from their right saw the ball bounce around a bit then Adams, narrowly avoiding giving the penalty away chasing Sutton into the box, slid in with a dangerous but perfect tackle. The ball went to Wilcox outside the area and although it fell perfectly for his left foot he could only blast it high and wide. Adams had a poor game overall, most noticeable in the incident where he dallied with the ball just inside our area before attempting a clumsy pass back (I can only assume...) which fell perfectly for Gallacher. He ran into the area and it was a certain goal. But Keown showed his pace and just did enough to take the shot wide. Not the only time he came to Adams rescue and on today's performances the watching England manager will surely be thinking about his options when it comes to Arsenal centre-backs.

The other outstanding defender for us was Nigel Winterburn who pulled off lots of important tackles. He made a good chance for himself too, when he robbed Ripley, turned towards goal, and hit a sweet shot which just didn't curl in towards the far post enough.

We had a few other shots in the first half. Overmars did some great harrying in the corner, forcing them to give the ball away. Overmars Winterburn and Petit then combined well to create a shooting opportunity for PLatt from outside the area, but it was a poor shot. Parlour hit a shot that went far enough wide to make it look like a cross. That was after Bergkamp brought the ball out beautifully, skipping over tackles with grace - one of those early moments that made the Arsenal crowd pretty optimistic. And they were enjoying the baiting of Chris Sutton too - something that went on throughout the match, natch.

Wright was having a good game - much more like his old self. This included a second half booking (for a wild challenge on Henchoz) when it was too late to save the match anyway. Unfortunately this takes him to 5 cards and a suspension (I reckon it might be Port Vale and Leeds). If he'd survived today, the rumour is that he'd have been played in a reserve match which would have given him the 5 clean matches required to apply for a card to be knocked off (assuming he'd survived the reserve match of course). But he certainly looked more lively with his game, much more up for it. His control let him down a bit though.

We had a great moment early in the second half. After a cautious period of Arsenal possesion Bergkamp came back to collect the ball from Winterburn, and flicked a pass behind him which split the defence. Overmars ran onto it and pulled it back to Wright whose left foot shot was too weak, and too close to Flowers. Hopefully, once Overmars has settled in a bit more, we'll see lots more of this kind of understabding between him and Bergkamp. He always looks great running onto the ball but all too often we see him receiving from Winterburn with his back to goal and two defenders right on him.

But after that things started to go wrong and Blackburn got a real grip on the game. Their first goal came from a dreadful Adams clearance from our left hand corner. The cross came in from that wing and when Sutton went up for it with a couple of our players it appeared to catch Dixon ont he elbow and fell for Wilcox. On his own on the far side of the box, he was able to pick his spot and Seaman could only get a finger to the drive. One all and the Blackburn fans woke up. They only seemed to have one song ("Roy Hodgson's blue and white army") but made up for it with a band. This consisted of a drum and a triangle! Anyway, they soon had plenty to sing about, after Gallacher scored a breathtaking goal to give them the lead. The build-up wasn't pretty: Flowers hoof, Sutton flick. Gallacher chased the ball to their left and hit it first time with his left foot, back across himself and dipping over Seaman into the far corner. Adams could possibly have made more of his chase, and may have chosen not to challenge (as Hansen pointed out on MotD). It's hard to blame him too much though. It woouldn't have been smart to commit himself and give Gallacher a free run from there. Often forcing someone into a speculative first-time shot from a bad position is surely the right thing to do.

Once we'd gone behind, Wenger brought on Vieira for Platt, and then Boa Morte for Parlour. Overmars switched to the right wing. Tony Adams started spending a lot of time up front as well. We had a couple of decent penalty shouts. Bergkamp was brought down in the box - nothing given, and then Dennis sgain found himself on the edge of the goal area and tried to lob it into the danger area past Kenna, whose arm came up to deflect it away. This time Bergkamp got a booking, from the ref's gesticulations (the International hand-signal for "you need glasses") it was apparently for dissent.

Rovers had a couple more good chances, forcing last ditch clearances and once Sherwood having two easy chances in quick succession, one of which came back off the bar.

It was Sherwood who got the killer goal with a couple of minutes left. He beat the offside trap (I'd like to see it again) and Seaman came out to meet him just inside the box. He got to it but only managed to knock the ball to the left of the area where Sherwood was able to get to it first and hit it under Seaman just as he'd scrambled back into position. All there was left time for was the daft Wright tackle that got him booked.

According to Ceefax, Ian Wright was said to have come to the window of the drsssing room afterwards and abused the Arsenal crowd for not being supportive of him. The Police are said to have talked to him. I hope it's not true. I thought the crowd was pretty positive to Wrighty today.

Elsewhere, Tottenham managed to keep Coventry down to 4 goals, and with the other results at the bottom they've consolidated their 3rd from bottom position, with the teams below catching up and the team above (Bolton) 3 points ahead with a game in hand. There, that made me feel a bit better.

Meanwhile, at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea and Leeds commemorated the life of the late Billy Bremner (RIP) with a well-observed silence followed by a 90 minute scrap which saw 2 Leeds players sent off and most of them booked (plus plenty of Chelsea thuggery as well, to be fair). In fact, enough players were booked to make it statistically unlikely that only two of them got booked twice which according to an unreliable source proves that they were doing it on purpose. George Graham's 9 man defence did enough to keep it to nil-nil, so their point takes them above us, with Liverpool catching up and Blackburn and Man Utd getting further away. See table.

Rupe.

Other reports

I'll compile a list next week sometime. Till, then, check out AFCi and the other Arsenal sites. Strangely, both AFCi and CarlingNet give the result as 2-1, even though they both list 3 scorers for Blackburn. CarlingNet's table is updated as if it was 2-1 to them as well. Here's hoping it was all a bad dream.

If you find a web page with a report of this match that's not listed here, please send us the URL. Thanks.

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