Arsenal (1) 1 - 0 (0)Highbury. Saturday March 28th 1998FA Carling Premiership
Arsenal (1) 1 - 0 (0)Highbury. Saturday March 28th 1998FA Carling Premiership
scorer: Bergkamp
Arsenal:
Seaman
Dixon Adams Keown Winterburn
Parlour (Grimandi 70ish) Hughes Vieira Overmars
Bergkamp Wreh (Anelka 60)
A very tense match but I guess that's going to be the norm for
the rest of the season. Arsenal dominated a very poor Wednesday
team, but lacked the finishing touch to put the game beyond their
reach. Alternatively, and more positively, one could say that
it's good that Arsenal were able to shut up shop. Better to play
it this way than to go all out for the second goal and end up
with only a point. It didn't feel so great at the time though.
There were some great Arsenal performances and some indifferent ones. Parlour's was one of the latter, although he still had a couple of superb runs and shots and a couple of moments of skill where he tricked his way past the defenders with touches that a couple of years ago one would only have been able to attribute to accidents. But of course Parlour had been injured, and might well not have started because of this, if Petit had not been unavailable. Hughes also had a poor one by his standards, and our full-backs were fairly quiet. Up front Wreh failed to make much of an impression, apart from a header that hit the bar in the first half and a difficult shot on the turn in a crowded box which went just wide. There seemed to be far too many long high balls towards Wreh which hardly looks like playing to his strengths, or dimensions. At the back Adams played a blinder, no apparent injury problem there. And he stormed up front plenty of times and nearly got a couple from far-post headers. But the stars of the show were Bergkamp and especially Overmars. The goal was created by a wonderful touch from each of the Dutch masters. Overmars chipped the ball over the defence and found Bergkamp perfectly. He coolly side-footed the volley past Pressman, it was just like watching Holland a few years back. Nice of the Wednesday defence not to bother marking Dennis that time. But then, they were all busy marking Ovemars weren't they. Marc set the tone for the afternoon early on, giving Barrett the roasting of his life, especially after the right-back had committed the most outrageous lunging foul on him, earning a barely-adequate yellow card. Overmars repeatedly raced past any of (or all of) several Wednesday defenders, but his crosses never found adequate support. In the Arsenal goal Seaman made his long-awaited return. Long-awaited but certainly not so longed-for as we would have expected at the start of the season. For the first time since he arrived at Highbury, the thought of hearing that he's injured doesn't fill me with dread, such has been the impact of his understudy Alex Manninger. Seaman had little to do in this match, and one of the few times he did, it went wrong. He came out to stop a striker who'd been put clear wide on our right, but the resulting cross, which Seaman was nowhere near, made it through to Barrett on the far side. Winterburn made a superb block to stop a certain goal. I'm not sure Seaman could have done much else. He had to come, he had the goal blocked which is why the guy crossed it, as a result Barrett got a shot which Nutty blocked. Who's to say things wouldn't have worked out worse for us if Seaman hadn't done what he did. Time will tell. It's not Seaman's fault he didn't have much to do in this match! What was nice to see was the way the North Bank crowd greeted the 2 keepers. When they came out to warm up Seaman got a big ovation. He then pointed to Manninger and applauded him so the crowd gave Alex an ovation too. The Clock End's relationship with Seaman seems a little different. When he came to that end at the start of the second half he was greeted with "we all agree, Manninger is better than Seaman", which he took as intended with a mock hurt expression and thumbs-down. This was followed by "England's number 1" which he put thumbs up to. Some of us tried to follow that with "Arsenal's number 2" but it didn't really get going. One can take these jokes too far, I always worry that he's going to get caught out one day and concede a goal through being distracted by such jolly tomfoolery. Wednesday hardly ever threatened. Theer was a dodgy spell when Dixon went off for Garde but a bit later Parlour went off too. Grimandi came on for him and took over from Gared at right-back. The BFR said at times it was like we had 15 players on the pitch and the stats showed something like 20+ attempts on goal. Without Wright we just don't have the finishing power, and without Bergkamp we wouldn't have finished Wednesday off. We'll be without Bergkamp for 3 matches now. The other bad news is that Dixon is out for a few weeks (hamstring) although hopefully Grimandi will be able to pick up where he left off last time Lee was out. Petit is doubtful for Tuesday's trip to Bolton. Wright might play a reserve match that day but is still rated doubtful for the FA Cup semi next Sunday. It was a decidedly dodgy day in the other matches. Man Utd won thanks not to the most blatantly offside goal of all time but to the TWO most blatantly offside goals of all time. Liverpool scraped through against 9-man Barnsley (8 at the final whistle) thanks to (admittedly slightly less dodgy) sending-off decisions and some bizarre reffing where the official left the pitch for 5 minutes, leaving the players on it, without telling anyone what was going on. Tottenham beat Palace 3-1. But at 0-0, and already on a yellow card, Chris Armstrong blatantly punched the ball into the net. The ref disallowed the goal so presumably saw what happened, but somehow failed to award the obvious yellow card. Other reports
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