Betalogue

Not a very exciting game. Scruffy goal by Robert, a handful of chances for Thierry Henry, a few yellow cards. Mmm. Rather boring :). Could be the impact of the choices made by the Southampton coach to not let Arsenal play the way they like to play. He did warn us about the strategy possibly making for a boring game.

The problem with the strategy is that it didn’t work :). They lost just the same, and in the process weren’t able to impress anyone. It seems to me that, after HAVING waited for over 2 decades to get another chance to win the Cup, they should have been bolder. As it was, it was very similar to a regular Premiership game.

But the Arsenal lads were obviously pleased with the result. They’ve won something, and fully deserve it — not based on today’s game, but on what they did to get there (beat Man U at Old Trafford 2-0 and then tie with Chelsea at Highbury and replay won at Stamford Bridge). Those games were the most exciting in terms of palpable tension and the final release.

While it is true that the reversal in the balance of power mentioned last year by Arsène Wenger didn’t quite happen this year, the fact of the matter is that, over the past 2 years. Arsenal won 1 Premiership and 2 Cups while Man U only won 1 Premiership. So we’ll see. The decade is far from over.

(And remember Man U talking about winning a “quadruple” at some stage this season? Not quite…)

This entry was posted by Pierre Igot on Sunday, May 18th, 2003 at 5:59 am and is filed under Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.