Time to admire Arsenal
By Paul Hayward  (Filed: 03/03/2004)
Tantalising, indeed, in another game.

According to the song, there are 4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire - and this time last year Arsenal fell down one of them. Their 2-0 defeat at Ewood Park on the second weekend in March started a sequence of two League wins in seven matches, as Manchester United sped by on the outside to reclaim the championship.

clickable picture has, from left: Campbell, Cole, Pires, Henry, Touré, Bergkamp, Vieira, Lauren, Ljungberg.

Legends in the making: (from left) Lauren, Vieira, Ljungberg, Bergkamp and Thierry Henry. Click on the thumbnail to see a similar shot, with more of the side

Try this for symmetry. On Saturday week, a victory or a draw at Blackburn will leave the Gunners one win short of the record for the number of games unbeaten at the start of a League campaign. Leeds United (in 1973-74) and Liverpool (1987-88) were both 29 matches into a campaign before an 'L' appeared on their statistics page. This Arsenal team will equal that record if they avoid defeat against Blackburn (away) and Bolton (home), and then scorch yet another mark in the history books on March 28 if they defeat or draw with . . . Manchester United.

Roman Abramovich, and the various eruptions at Old Trafford, have diverted our attention from the incredible breadth of Arsenal's accomplishments. OK, so the sports pages are full of hymns to Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry. But behind the fascination with Arsene Wenger's audacious capture of three of the four best French players at work today (Zinedine Zidane being the unchallengeable master), we tend to tire of the statistics now gushing out of Highbury.

Jealous fans of other Premiership clubs have no room in their hearts for the realisation that Arsenal have lost only two of their last 48 Premiership games, and have gone 20 matches without conceding more than a single goal. Two seasons ago they became the first team to remain unbeaten away from home since Preston North End in 1888-89. Facts and figures can't be boring when they are sprinkled with the stardust from Henry's boots, or when an afternoon at Highbury has you ordering yourself to cherish every moment in case you never get another chance.

Come to think of it, this is probably the best barometer of excellence in sport. Do you sit there feeling lucky, punk? Do you smile at the thought of boring your grandchildren with tales and ticket stubs from the great days unfolding on the grass in front of you? Let's not forget that United have also bestowed that same sense of privilege in the past. But while United's raison d'etre is now harder to define (all those agendas, all those distractions), we see, in Arsenal, the eyes being fixed on The Thing that lends meaning to an essentially ludicrous pastime. And The Thing is? The talent, the team, the game, and nothing else.

Sometimes the possible is more scary than the impossible, which is why Arsenal's nine-point lead has suddenly assumed a psychological dimension. Until the weekend, the Premiership title was there to be won. Now it's there to be lost.

Wenger's men have the absolute knowledge that they are capable of surviving all 38 League games unbeaten - even though three defeats is the minimum so far in Premiership history. The enemies are all internal: arrogance, complacency, sheer disbelief that the unbeaten record can hold in a League where Abramovich and Manchester United trade financial blows with the ferocity of Middle Earth.

"I don't need to remind the players about last season, because what you feel in your body or in your soul is stronger than any speech," Wenger said this week.

There are echoes here of the England rugby team's rock bottom moments in Grand Slam deciders before the catharsis of Dublin last spring and the brutal conquest of Ireland. Without Dublin, there might have been no Sydney for Sir Clive Woodward's men. Without last year's stumble, Arsenal might not be so alive to the danger that United will regroup and march again.

Wenger is already pointing his pitchfork at that enemy within: "What is important is what we do here, not what other people say. We are intelligent enough to know that."

You will notice a reduction in the number of Wenger's verbal flourishes and fewer sardines being tossed to the gulls. Mind games and propaganda no longer seem to amuse him quite as much. It is as if he knows the see-saw game with United is over for the year, and that all he has to do to maintain Arsenal's hegemony is face inward - to organise and inspire numbers one to 57 in his tightly wrapped first-team squad.

Neither Chelsea nor United can compete with the new Arsenal post-match huddle. In the North, Roy Keane pontificates about United team-mates slacking and then gets himself sent off in a crucial Champions League game. Every time Claudio Ranieri walks into Chelsea people say he is auditioning for his own job. If you stood Ranieri's players on a tube station platform, you sometimes get the impression that they would each board a different compartment of the same train.

Yesterday Dennis Bergkamp, one of the most artistic gap-spotters to have graced the English Premier League, spoke of the value of unity in the Arsenal squad. "I have a feeling that this team is really gelling together," he said. "There are a lot of friendships that only come after a year or two. We have been a team for some time and it really shows."

Like share prices, the value of these comments can go up or down according to accidents and injuries. But how telling it is to hear Henry brush aside - in the French paper Le Figaro - the suggestion that he would be better off hooking up with Zidane at Real Madrid.

"When I came to Arsenal no one believed in me any more. Arsenal and Arsene held out their hands," Henry told his French interviewer. "Things are moving forward, I am part of those plans and I don't want to leave."

Some think the Premiership is packed with mediocre teams, toiling to survive, but players will tell you that games are harder to win than six years ago because fitness, agility and sheer physical strength have all improved. So perish the thought that Arsenal had only the four Chelsea and Manchester United games to worry about at the start of the current campaign.

With his team now performing creditably in the disciplinary league table, about the only service Wenger has left to perform for football in these isles is to send his French musketeers to Euro 2004 knackered for the game against England.

Tantalising Arsenal hit the heights
By Patrick Barclay at Highbury  (Filed: 29/02/2004)

Arsenal (2) 2 Charlton Athletic (0) 1

For half-an-hour or more, beginning with a two-goal burst that must have taken Charlton to the brink of despair, Arsenal played football as fine as you could wish to see, football upon which no team in the world could have improved, football that would have had the Bernabeu purring with pleasure. And yet the majority at Highbury were enormously relieved to hear the final whistle, which came a minute after the Charlton substitute, Jonatan Johansson, had struck a post with an overhead kick that would have given Alan Curbishley's team a point.

A strange match it was indeed, one that went some of the way towards explaining why managers tell you they worry when their teams begin too well. But you could not have accused Arsenal of complacency after the flying start provided by Robert Pires and Thierry Henry. Perhaps a little narcissism - for which such a handsome side could hardly, in truth, be blamed. And Arsene Wenger's men certainly roused themselves after the excellent Claus Jensen had reduced the deficit around the hour mark, making several chances but failing to finish off this remarkable Charlton side, whose spirit turned a prospective rout into a thriller.

But the better team won and Arsenal, nine points ahead of Manchester United and Chelsea with 11 matches to go, are surely destined to secure proof that they are better than anyone else in the Premiership. Unbeaten in the competition all season, they are also on course to be confirmed as one of the best ever. And, disturbingly for challengers, they are built to last, for Wenger, through his brilliant management, has bought the most precious commodity in the game: time.

He has used it to allow players to grow naturally and a prime example of this is the midfielder Edu, who came from Sao Paulo more than three years ago and has adjusted to the Premiership's demands away from the gaze of scepticism that has followed, say, Liverpool's more recent signings. Edu is just about all left foot, which made his second goal last Tuesday in Vigo all the more admirable: having swayed this way and that, he shot with his right, but gently, knowing the curl the weaker foot would naturally impart would take the ball round the goalkeeper's dive. If a Brazilian had done that, we would be talking about it for years.

Yes, yes; I know. Edu is Brazilian. But he does not play for the national team and an indication of his progress is that Wenger kept him in the side here at the expense of Gilberto Silva, who remains a first choice for the world champions. Edu was involved at the beginning of the long and luscious move that culminated in Arsenal taking the lead. The ball was crisply moved around for what seemed an eternity and it was a surprise to learn that only about 90 seconds had been on the clock when Freddie Ljungberg cut in from the right and fed Henry, whose languid roll of a return pass let the Swede square for Pires to score from a couple of yards.

Two minutes later, Arsenal scored again, Patrick Vieira this time probing the danger area with a low cross from the left; it bisected Charlton's central defenders and fell, to their horror, to Henry, who calmly tamed the ball before stroking it wide of Dean Kiely for his 20th league goal of the season (24th in all). To say that Arsenal proceeded to put on an exhibition would be misleading; they had done that from the kick-off. With a cushion of two goals, of course, it was even more tempting to try the generally unfeasible and Ljungberg, with an acrobatic overhead attempt to hook in Henry's driven cross, nearly brought it off.

Charlton were just chasing and hoping most of the time, although Paulo di Canio did provide some relief by orchestrating a break that ended in Jensen cross's finding the Italian unmarked. But he shot wide.

On another occasion Di Canio sallied into the Arsenal half but had the ball taken off his toe by Dennis Bergkamp, who had tracked him all the way; mind you, Bergkamp, at 34 years and nine months, is nearly a year younger than Di Canio.

There was, then, next to nothing for Jens Lehmann in the Arsenal goal to do. Kiely was kept busy, fingertipping over an effort from Ljungberg, denying one from Vieira and accepting a stroke of luck when Henry, after a neat flip that had taken him clear of Jon Fortune, shot into the goalkeeper's midriff. But in the second half it was a more varied story and Jensen, after Di Canio had been fouled by Lauren, bent a lovely free-kick over the wall and in off a post. Ultimately, the woodwork was to be less kind to Charlton.

Match details

Arsenal: Lehmann, Lauren, Campbell, Toure, Cole, Ljungberg (Silva 74), Vieira, Edu, Pires (Cygan 88), Bergkamp (Reyes 74), Henry.
Subs Not Used: Taylor, Kanu.
Goals: Pires 2, Henry 4.
Charlton: Kiely, Kishishev (Johansson 78), Fortune, Fish, Hreidarsson, Young, Holland, Jensen, Stuart, Di Canio, Cole.
Subs Not Used: Bartlett, Konchesky, Turner, Royce.
Goals: Jensen 59.
Att: 38,137
Ref: G Barber (Hertfordshire).