Chelsea vs Arsenal 09/09/98

(0) 0 - 0 (0) Arsenal

Stamford Bridge. Wednesday 9th September 1998

FA Carling Premiership

morning of the day of the match...
The AFCi preview is now up
Bould is out with an ankle injury - so let's hope Adams plays better than he did against Sweden at the weekend. Mind you, this time he'll have sensible instructions from an intelligent coach, and be playing in a 4-man defence. Anyone else bemused by the suggestions that Hoddle would have played 4 at the back if Adams injury had kept him out? It's a bit weird given that of all of them Adams is the outspoken critic of Hoddle's 3 at the back tactics...!
In his Southampton debut last night (a 3-0 thrashing by George Graham's Leeds), Scott Marshall scored an own goal with his arse.
Scandalous (lack of) TV coverage of Champions League If you'd like to be able to watch Arsenal's first ever Champions League match live on the telly in London, please read this page
Info for US gooners
The match will be shown tape-delayed by Fox Sports World at 5pm EST/2pm PST (Setanta are just showing Man Utd vs Charlton live 2 hours earlier). (thanks to Lawrence for this info, and apologies for earlier error)
There's always the RealAudio radio feeds (see Arsenal Live page, and according to a correspondent you can get a feed from the Chelsea site. The URL is http://www.chelseafc.co.uk/chelsea/fr_radio.htm. (thanks to Kevin for this).
See New ArseWeb ArseWeb vs Chelsea page for Head-to-head stats and Chelsea links.

(0) 0 - 0 (0) Arsenal

Stamford Bridge. Wednesday 9th September 1998

FA Carling Premiership

Arsenal:
         Seaman
Dixon  Adams Keown Winterburn
Parlour Petit Vieira Overmars (Garde)
   Bergkamp Anelka

sent off: Dixon

Arsenal were stretched towards the end as Chelsea took advantage of their numerical superiority. But we held on despite a couple of reasonable penalty claims by Chelsea to take another hard-fought point home from a match at one of our main title rivals.

Arsenal had a chance early doors when De Goey did well to get down to save a flick-on from a corner. AFCi reckons it was an Adams effort but TV replays suggest it was Michael Duberry who tried to head a ball that was just a bit too far behind him and nearly scored a great og.

Seaman made a superb save from a wicked Zola shot that curved towards the far post. Seaman scrambled across and just managed to punch it round with his "wrong" hand.

Arsenal's best effort was perhaps Bergkamp's shot which bounced awkwardly in front of Goey (something of a "Yorker") but the big Ogron did well again.

It was a typical English derby match, played at a high pace and with crunching tackles. Maybe not what some of the continental players on show prefer! But some of them are well up for it. Petit a bit too much sometimes, although one can hardly blame him for reacting a bit angrily when Le Saux tried to spear Manu's ear into the ground with his studs. Le Saux had already been booked for a tussle with Dixon and was lucky to stay on the pitch. Dixon was laso booked in that earlier encounter and was not so lucky when after 15 minutes of the second half he was fairly booked again for a bad tackle on Le Saux. After Dixon walked, Garde was brought on for Overmars.

Dixon will miss a match because of this. It'll be interesting to see whether Wenger sticks with Grimandi or goes with new-boy Vivas. It could be an indicator as to whether he sees Vivas as a replacement for Lee or as a squad player.

Other reports

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