Arsenal v. Fulham

YES, THIS IS TOP OF THE PILE!

Why? Because FSC is showing it as their "classic match" this afternoon.

I am "home sick" today, so I had FSC on and fell asleep after my cup of tea to discover that it was the beginning of the season and Fulham were at the Emirates. It was interesting to watch the match with the entire following season in my memory banks. I was tempted to turn off the television at the 80th minute, but I stuck with it, and I'm glad I did.

The first thing I did after the match was to pull up this thread and read all the post-match entries.

My, the slanging of Baird started early, didn't it. As I remembered, he got skinned pretty good a half-dozen times in the first 20 minutes and then had a very good match. I was right. He had a couple of high quality interventions in the penalty area, and while he was the closest defender on what turned out to be the winning goal, the scorer wasn't his man. He was trying to make yet another last-ditch save and didn't quite get there. But it was NOT his poor marking.

I thought the best players on the day were Smertin, Bocanegra, Knight, Warner, and Davis. What do they all have in common? :shock: Yep, bye-bye.

In hindsight, I could see the rest of the season playing out for us. We were doomed with Sanchez because of two of his baffling preseason coaching decisions:

1. He wanted the defense to take a very high line to try and keep opposing strikers well clear of our penalty area. Okay, maybe; but we didn't have particularly pacey defenders -- especially wing defenders. You could see that there was a severe tactical dumb-ass attack here. We almost got away with it on the day, and we did several times in the early season. But then the worst thing happened: Antii Niemi suddenly got tentative disease and stayed hugging his line. Time and time again the (a) high line, the (b) lack of pace, and the (c) passive goalkeeping led to a leaky unconfident defense.

2. Despite starting the season with midfielders who liked to stroke the ball along the ground -- Bouazza, Davies, Davis, Smertin -- Sanchez had his defenders long-balling to McBride every time. In my comments after the match, I had great things to say about the linking between our midfield and strikers, but "upon further review" I can see that this was happening only when we won the ball in midfield or in their half. As the season wore on, we long-balled more and more. Once Macca went down in the third league match, we lost our aerial ballwinner, but had no other attacking philosophy to fall back on -- until the last 5 matches of the season.

We wuz doomed under Sancez, and I, for one, didn't recognize it. It was an exciting day at the Emirates, but you have the feeling that a Roy Hodgson side would have given the Arsenal players a little dose of the flair that they gave us.

Anyhow, check your local listings for the inevitable replay of the match. Good day fellow Cottagers, and Roll On August 2008!