Derby Report + Time’s up, Matty
Add comment April 30th, 2008
The game with Derby was one of the strangest Premier League matches you’re ever likely to see. The gulf in class between the sides was astonishing. Not only are Derby the worst team in the Premier division, but potentially one of the worst in the football league. Of course they have the odd decent player, but the defensive disarray and obliterated confidence has rendered them spectacularly useless.
The first half resembled a cup tie against plucky Fritheringham Town (don’t bother checking – they’re fictional). Despite the huge gap in ability, Derby were clearly keen to make a name for themselves with one big result before their looming return to the Championship. However, just when things were looking up for County, Darren Moore inexplicably passed the ball to Nicklas Bendtner, who played a one-two with Van Persie and fired into the corner.
Derby then managed to equalise after Lukasz Fabianski and William Gallas both failed to deal with a free-kick and Jay McEveley fired in at the second attempt.
However, the first half ended with Robin van Persie (who’d already missed two big chances) bringing down a Kolo Toure ball and smashing it into the top of the net with his weaker right-foot.
The second half started, however, with Robin van Persie going off with his latest injury – just a precaution, Arsene claims. So presumably that’ll be about six months on the sidelines.
The introduction of Van Persie’s replacement, Emmanuel Adebayor, signified the end of the contest. He became the first player to score hatrick’s home and away against the same club in Premier League history, in turn taking his goal tally for the season to 30.
It’s a remarkable achievement. In the past fifteen years, only Ian Wright and Thierry Henry have matched it. If somebody told you the day Henry left we’d have a thirty goal striker anyway, I think you’d have been pretty chuffed, if not a bit disbelieving.
Amidst the flurry of Adebayor goals was a Rob Earnshaw strike in consolation, and a fantastic effort from Theo Walcott. The Englishman had missed a great chance shortly before, but kept plugging away and curled in an Henry-esque effort. For all the goals, check yesterday’s post.
It was pretty entertaining stuff, but not a great advertisment for the Premier League. If this is the fate that awaits this season’s play-off winners, they may as well not bother.
Today is the unofficial deadline Arsene Wenger imposed on Mathieu Flamini’s contract negotiations. On Monday night Arsene was still expressing his hope that Flamini will stay. The silence from the midfield, meanwhile, is ominous. Arsene says:
“I’m waiting for him to come back to me and tell me whether he’s going.”
Here’s an idea: ask him.
Modric joining Spurs is evidence that clubs are already hunting down players for next season. If we’re going to need to replace Flamini, as seems very likely to be the case, we need to get going straight away.
In the meantime, rumours suggest our new left-winger might be 20-year old Bulgarian, Nikolay Dimitrov. Hardly the most inspiring news, but you never know.
Last night I watched United drag themselves over the line to reach the Champions League final, and I realised the critical difference between them and us. Some of their players are almost as exhausted as ours. But when they ‘hit the wall’, they pulled out that extra 10% of effort that you can only summon when it’s absolutely neccessary. I despise United, but watching them defend against superior Barcelona players, it was clear they were reaching very deep to pull those performances out.
A large majority of our squad have never had to do that. This season, our fantastic football meant we had it pretty easy for a good while. However, when the going got tough (and boy did it), none of our players had had to go to that place before, where you feel like you can’t run another yard but you do because you know the ends justify the means.
Still, we’ve learnt a lot this year. If we’re in the same position in 2009, it’ll hopefully be very different.
Tomorrow, I’ll have another suggestion for a possible Flamini replacement. ‘Till then, tata.
