EPL: Arsenal 6 – Southampton 1

Posted by Pierre Igot in: Football
May 8th, 2003 • 5:58 am

What better way to to recover from the nasty blow of losing at home to Leeds and losing the Premiership title four days ago? A hat trick by Robert Pires, including one of the goals of the season (ironically, right after FoxSportsWorld had finished showing its selection of the Top 10 goals of the season… silly buggers), and a hat trick by Jermaine Pennant — his first three goals in the Premiership, all in less than 15 minutes.

Phew! And that was almost a reserve team playing… Granted, there was very little at stake in this game, except for the scoring records of James Beattie and Thierry Henry, neither of whom scored. But still, it was the same for both sides, and Southampton could have easily exploited the fact that we had a significantly hazardous combination of players in our defence.

The only thing missing was a couple of goals by Thierry Henry, although he contributed directly to most of the goals scored. The game featured the whole of Thierry: the brilliant, the magical… and the slightly ugly (his yellow card was fully justified). But hey, perfection is not of this world. He gets mightily close at times, though!

Thanks, lads. I didn’t think you could top the thrashing of Manchester City a while back, but you did.

The FA Cup tie against Southampton will be a different story altogether, however. This was not a “dress rehearsal” by any stretch of the imagination. Only two players in the starting line-up are reasonably guaranteed to be included in the line-up for the final (Thierry and Robert). And surely Beattie will not start the final on the bench, as he did this game.

It should be an exciting game. But first, Sunderland on Sunday. Henry hat trick, please :).


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