Pain in the Arsenal

There were many laugh-out-loud moments during Manchester United’s win over The Greatest Team In The History Of Football at Villa Park on Saturday, not least the increasingly clueless John Motson wondering aloud if We’ll Never Die‚ was “a Chelsea song”, or the sight of Burnley and Celtic reject Ian Wright sobbing into his sleeve at the final whistle.

Best of all was the moment in the second half where a Gunners’ fan with a face like a smacked arse materialised behind Gary Neville as he was about to take a throw. Don’t tell me you missed it. The guy runs down to the front of the seating, screaming god only knows what at Neville, who is walking along the touchline, ball in hand.
Still yelling abuse, the Arse fan follows Neville along the line, then goes past a group of stewards near an exit, who promptly pounce on him and bundle him out of the stadium.
It could have served as a metaphor for Arsenal’s performance on a day when, instead of professionally concentrating on the basics, they got stupidly sidetracked into all the spiteful shite that they do almost as expertly as their football.
Arsenal are an excellent team, with several wonderful players, who are deservedly going to win the league by a street. They are also an extremely temperamental and often flakey outfit who tend to become inordinately rattled and pissed off whenever a team has the temerity to stand up to them, hustle them out of their elegant stride and give them a proper game.
Their disarray on Saturday was exemplified by Patrick Vieira, who proved once again why the football historians of the future will always bracket him one level below the likes of Keane and Souness. In his eight years at Arsenal, Vieira has frequently displayed an unfortunate habit of being dominated in big games against United, not just by Keane, but often by players far inferior to himself. Last season, it was Phil Neville. On Saturday, it was Darren Fletcher, one of United’s least impressive players all year. Vieira could offer no more than a ridiculous swan-dive for a non-existent free in return, in between regular eruptions of whinging in the general direction of Graham Barber.
With Pires and Henry offering nothing whatsoever, Bergkamp trying to outdo his skipper by flinging himself to the ground in even more ridiculous fashion, and Jens Lehmann suffering another one of his increasingly commonplace mental meltdowns, the surprise was that Arsenal didn’t get picked off on the break at least once more.
Had the game come down to a mere test of footballing ability, Arsenal would have won by a couple of goals. It’s not as though they were playing a particularly wonderful Manchester United team. Or were they? United have gleaned one win and three draws from their four meetings with Arsenal this season, being the better side in three of those four games – to say nothing of twice playing Arsenal off the park in the league last season.
Is it actually possible that Wenger, the cerebral coaching master, the Gallic guru, keeps being out-thought and out-witted by a man who we all know doesn’t have a bull’s notion about things like tactics? Nah. It couldn’t be.
Arsenal are still a stronger and better team than United’s current shower, and there is still the rebuilding job required at Old Trafford in the summer. Indeed, it is entirely possible that Saturday’s game may come to be seen as the final explosive gasp of the Ferguson years, the last little defiant flourish before the big sleep, just as Ireland’s rousing win over Portugal in 1995 served as the valedictory fusillade of Jack Charlton’s era.
For now, though, this will do. After all, it’s not every day your boys put one over on The Greatest Team In The History Of Foot-ball. I’ll drink to that – trebles all round, please…