Is Overmars back to his best?
AIK Solna 2 Arsenal 3
by Myles Palmer
FEATURES
THE ARSENAL AGM - FULL WRITE UP
FIVE REASONS: ARSENAL COULD WIN IN BARCELONA
CARLTON AND ITV UPSET US AGAIN
JEKYLL AND HYDE PLAY THE NOU CAMP
On this particular Tuesday night ten minutes of ITV highlights was just right.
Highlights are magical. In those ten edited minutes Arsenal players made four killer passes.
They say that goals win games, but killer passes win games as well, and this slice of action from Bob Wilson showed us Petit, Kanu and Overmars all producing goalmaking passes, assist passes, penetrating thrusts into the heart of the enemy.
And three of the four chances were converted. Bang!Bang!Bang! Ten minutes was all I wanted to see anyway.
The other 80, with Oleg Luzhny as an emergency centreback, would have been too harrowing.
The Ukrainian is a fine player and a smashing character but he has barely adjusted to playing right back, let alone centreback.
This was only the second time Kanu and Suker have started a match together. The first was at Chelsea, which they won by the same score, 3-2, two weeks ago.
From the first killer pass, by Petit, Overmars scored after 17 minutes.
Petit was wide on the right and his long curling crossfield pass went over the entire defence and found Overmars all alone eight yards out. The ball came to him a foot of f the ground and he coolly volleyed it, left-footed, back across the keeper for 1-0.
Arsenal have badly missed Petit's long passes while he has been out with his knee ligament injury. The main beneficiary has always been Overmars, even though Petit usually supplies through passes rather than crosses.
Andreas Andersson missed a one-on-one with Alex Manninger, hitting his leg. Overmars had two shots saved by keeper Mattias Asper, and when Petit found him with an identical pass Asper was on top of him to prevent a repeat volley.
Then Adreas Anderssson broke away on a clever long pass from Novakovic, turned Upson, went round Manninger, and scored from close range, a fine goal which levelled the game at 1-1.
King Kanu then made two goals with two passes in 52 and 56 minutes.
Maybe tall men see more, and see more quickly. Tall geniuses do, anyway.
As Petit and Nordin contested the ball in AIK's half, Kanu deftly touched the ball beyond the defence and Overmars scored again to make it 2-1.
The finish was tidy, first time and left footed, just like the first goal.
Then Kanu bamboozled two defenders with a shuffle and crossed low to the far post and Suker stabbed in from two yards, with his right foot, to make it 3-1.
Suker juggled the ball three times and cleverly lobbed Overmars
in down the right. He crossed low to give Ljungberg an open goal
from three
yards. The Swede, a racing in behind a defender, somehow failed
to
make contact for 4-1.
Ljungberg is due a goal. We all expected more goals from him. He scores for Sweden and he should score for Arsenal.
Solna then scored their second goal. Winterburn played the ball
up to
Kanu, and his pass backwards was sloppy. Ola Andersson picked
it up, eluded Petit neatly and put Adreas Andersson through for
another one on one.
This time he slid it past Manninger's legs for 3-2.
That was after 68 minutes. No idea what the last 20 minutes was like. But who cares?
Sunday at Tottenham is what matters.
Last month, or two months ago, I said, and probably said here, that Arsenal's season would start when Overmars starts scoring goals. Make that :when Overmars starts scoring important goals.
Tottenham matters on Sunday because it always matters, and because Arsenal need a repeat of that 3-1 demolition on May 5th to finally shake off the gloom of being bounced out of the big time by Fiorentina.
Sparky Marcy needs to score against Spurs to convince us that what we saw in Stockholm was a genuine return to form.
In 1998 Marc Overmars was a new winger whose jet-propelled scuttle, tidy passing and razor-sharp finishing won the Premiership and the FA Cup.
He was the difference between winning the Double and winning nothing. So Overmars had as much claim to be Footballer of the Year in 1998 as Bergkamp, and maybe more.
But since then, zilch. He scored against weak teams and relegated teams last season, not against the top sides, as he did the season before.
Wenger said, Marc is back to his best. He has had so many injury problems in the last year and that has affected his confidence.
But tonight he looked as sharp as he has done for a long time. Hopefully those goals mean we will now see a different player. When he is in this form he is always dangerous.
Let's hope Wenger is right. I have been waiting for 15 months to see Overmars play as he can do and should do. I had virtually given up hope that he would ever be the same force again.
Obviously, without being there, it is impossible to say how well Matthew Upson played, but he looked OK in the highlights, even if he was beaten far too easily when Andersson swerved inside him for Solna's first goal.
But Luzhny had gone AWOL, and that did not help.
Manninger was beaten rather too easily on both goals. Having heard
a
rumour last week, via a goalkeeping coach, that Manninger is not
going
to get the job, it was interesting to read in The Sun that Wenger
wants Gabor Kiraly, 23, of Hertha Berlin and is lining up a £3
million bid.
Maybe Kiraly is brilliant. But is he better than Richard Wright at Ipswich, or Nick Weaver at Manchester City ?
Do Arsenal really look at players in Britain any more? If they do, how the hell did they miss Robbie Keane at £6 million?
There were only two good players in the Nationwide: Kieron Dyer and Robbie Keane.
They did not need Dyer, but they knew Anelka was leaving and a red-hot, fast, tough, two-footed young international was available and wanted to leave Wolves.
Keane will not be at Coventry for more than another season.What will he cost then?
Last week I predicted that Batistuta was made to measure for the Barcelona defence, but, alas, he was rested by Fiorentina.
But Balbo played and scored twice in a 3-3 draw.
So the game in Stockholm had six goals and the game in Florence had six goals.
A total of eleven goals in two games that did not matter. Further evidence that Matchday Six games in a mini-league will usually be scrappy high-scoring affairs or low-scoring draws.
Teams will usually have qualified or gone out. Or need one point, as Man Utd and Bayern did a year ago in that dull 1-1 draw at Old Trafford.
AIK SOLNA: Asper (Baxter 72), Nordin, Kaamark, Corneliusson (Aslund 72), O Andersson, Lagerlof, Gustafsson, Kjolo, Tjernstrom, Novakovic, A Andersson.
ARSENAL: Manninger, Dixon, Luzhny (Vivas 78), Upson, Winterburn, Ljungberg, Vieira, Petit (Malz 78), Overmars, Kanu, Suker (Hughes 78).
Wednesday 3rd November 1999