Stocktaking after loss to Chelsea

Stocktaking after loss to Chelsea

By Myles Palmer

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Verdict on Arsenal 0 Chelsea 2

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Sometimes I think Arsene should sit in the directors' box for ONE GAME and look at it and see what we saw against Chelsea.

Other times I think he knows very well how weak his squad is.

And Arsene realises he can't do much about it right now.

Even in the transfer window, who can he get?

My own audit of Sunday makes grim reading.

FREDDIE ? His little stepover fools nobody. It is laughable. He has no pace, can't beat people, can only get clipped or win a throw. Without passes from Dennis, Freddie is average.

GILBERTO? Without Vieira, average.

VAN PERSIE is not a team player.

I like him a lot because he's fiery and a great finisher, but he is not a team player.Arsene has given him a six-year contract, so he thinks he can become a team player.

FLAMINI is a fringe player who will never be half the footballer Ray Parlour was.

SOL, like Flamini, had a shocker against Chelsea.

HLEB was the only Arsenal player who was composed on the ball.

Lovely pass to Henry, who hit the post on 20 minutes.

SENDEROS might be another John Terry. I hope so. He shows signs of being a Premiership centreback, but it's early days.

And he could have been sent off for that tackle from behind on Robben.

LAUREN played well but gave away the second goal in the left back position where Gilberto boobed recently.

He wanted an extra touch to get the ball on his right foot and he let Joe Cole rob him and score from the edge of the box.

I was very surprised that Joe could score from there with his weaker foot. Shows how much he has improved.

FABREGAS is exceptional. We all know that.

TOURE is a versatile gladiator who reads the game well but was caught ball-watching after a throw.

Drogba's pass gave Robben a one-on-one with Lehmann for the first goal. A sucker punch.

HENRY was interfering with play on van Persie's wrongly disallowed goal.

By being there he divides the attention of keeper Cech.

The keeper cannot give 100% attention to protecting his near post while he knows Henry is eight yards from the middle of his goal.

HENRY should NOT be captain. That is ridiculous, as I've said from day one.

Sol should be captain. If Sol's injured, Lauren.

If both are out, Senderos.

Yes, Arsenal competed well for most of the game.

But 4-3-3 was not the way to go.

CHELSEA are a billionaire's commandos who win games by hard defence, by midfield intimidation, by using Drogba as a battering ram to wear defenders down.

They knew they could not lose.

After scoring first, they knew they would win.

And Chelsea know how to kill a game.

In the Seventies I used to say that there were three ways of playing football : possession, kick& rush, and controlled kick & rush.

Chelski play possession at the back and then Carvalho measures 60-yard passes to Drogba. And Henry and van Persie stood there and watched Carvalho do that again and again.

Until Henry ran behind Carvalho and tripped him and got booked.

Why was he running behind him?

Can anybody tell me why Henry was running BEHIND him?

ESSIEN looks like a psycho to me.He was lucky not to break Didi Hamann's leg and lucky to get only a two match ban from Uefa.

It was the worst tackle of the season.We will not see anything half as bad in the 5,000 matches that remain.

He should have apologised after the game. Failing that, he should have apologised the next day.

By apologising FOUR DAYS after the game he showed that he does not have a clue.

ESSIEN will soon end somebody's career.

His karate blow on Robin van Persie's mouth came only five minutes after the Dutch kid had scored the disallowed goal : what a coincidence that Essien just happened to smack the striker in the mouth then.

Like the X-certificate assault on Hamann, it was a calculated foul. Essien knew exactly what he was doing.

That was on 26 minutes,

On 37, he elbowed Lauren in the chest and his arm simultaneously smacked his mouth.

Lauren had to be heavily restrained by Gary Lewin and another Arsenal player while he was on the ground, although TV pictures did not show that.

IN ONLY TWO YEARS, CHELSEA have become the world's most hated team.

If Barcelona beat Chelsea, five continents will throw a party.

You must read Jim Lawton's demolition of Mourinho in Tuesday's Independent.

PREDICTION : Chelski will be around for 4 years and then self-destruct.

The hardest trick is to survive success. Few do it.

Arsenal is a long-term project, based on different values.

We will probably never know if MasterCard approached Arsene Wenger.

He must have been offered many deals. But he would never say what companies he has turned down.

And whatever I say about him, or you say about him, Arsene is Arsenal's greatest manager and he remains one of the three most sought-after managers in the world.

December 20th 2005.