8 September 2001, Saturday
On 8th of September 2001 the number one song in the UK was the contemptible “Too Close” by the boy band Blue. This was a trying time for humanity, untalented boy bands sprung up all over the earth and polluted the culture with sickly sweet songs about sex and love. I hope we will never live through another period like this but given that the USA is doing a speedrun cosplay of Nazi Germany 1933 any disgusting thing seems possible.
None of the people in this band seem worthy of mention. Most of them are normal blokes, one is apparently an alcoholic racist.
The number one film in the UK was Moulin Rouge!. That exclamation mark is in the title. Decent film. It was one of the first films I bought on DVD because my wife at the time loved the movie. Directed by Baz Luhrmann, who went on to direct The Great Gatsby and Elvis. This is probably his most popular film? Do I have to look that up?
Moulin Rouge! is the story of a poet who falls in love with a dancer and is set in Paris France. The film stars Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, 18 Aussies, John Leguizamo, Ozzy Osborne, and zero French people. It almost seems like a conscious decision to not cast a single French person. I mean, literally none.
Over in the States, the number one film was The Musketeer a film which is also set in France and starred the great Catherine Deneuve, who is French. Apparently, everyone loved France on September 8th, 2001. France would enjoy popularity in the USA until they opposed the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. The USA’s response to France’s opposition of the illegal and morally reprehensible invasion of Iraq was to rename French Fries to Freedom Fries. I think you can see how we got to where we are today.
Anyway, there was a football match and Arsenal made the short trip down to the car park in South London to take on Chelsea. The Blues at this time were a club that were trying to buy young talent but hadn’t quite found the magic formula that would make them a household name: laundering the Russian people’s money through a sports club for the benefit of the oligarch Roman Abramovich.
The September 2001 version of Chelsea were just tryhards. Some of the core players were already there: they had bought Frank Lampard from West Ham and they had promoted John Terry from their deeply racist fanbase to center back. They also had Gianfranco Zola and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, which was a powerful duo in attack: Hasselbaink would score 23 goals in 2001/02, which would be one goal short of Thierry Henry’s Golden Boot haul of 24 for the season. All told Chelsea spent around £40m (net) between 1999-2001 but despite some good spending, they were still light in many departments and wouldn’t win the League until Roman Abramovich came in and spent £330m (net) over two seasons leading up to their first ever Premier League title in 2005.
Finding a full video of the match is impossible (for me) so I only watched the highlights package. Interestingly, it’s probably the same highlight package I got to see back in 2001. Back then we didn’t get many full matches here in the USA, and some of them were even pay per view.
Thierry Henry opened the scoring for Arsenal after a blocked shot fell right to his feet. It was a combination of Lauren and Pires which opened up the Chelsea defense and Pires’ rasping shot was deflected by de Goey but only as far as the elfmeter spot where Henry fired the ball into the back of the net. Henry and friends then did a little shimmy shake dance. This was Henry’s 51st goal for the Arsenal. Man, think about it. He’s got 178* goals left to get.
Chelsea would respond fairly quickly and once again it was Tony Adams who was found out. Adams was simply not anywhere near quick enough at this stage of his career and probably shouldn’t have been in the center of defense. He was easily rounded by Zola, then Keown stuck out a leg, Zola started going down and Adams fell over backwards on top of him. Keystone cops defending from two of Arsenal’s most experienced players. Arsenal had a rocky start to the 2001/02 season and frankly Adams was a big part of the problem. He was slow and ponderous and offered very little going forward. He would play one more time for Arsenal in 2001 and then sit out until March 2002. He did play a pivotal role in the run-in for the Arsenal, however. So, maybe he was carrying an injury or needed some time to get to full fitness. I don’t know because news reports at the time are incredibly basic like “this person did this thing” instead of the wall-to-wall minute detail we get these days. There wasn’t even any Arseblog, that would come in February 2002.
The match was sort of ruined when Keown was slapped in the face (repeatedly) by Hasselbaink. Referee Mike Riley (who would later become famous for ending Arsenal’s 49 game unbeaten run by awarding a Wayne Rooney penalty for a dive and failing to even give out a single red card for multiple red-card worthy tackles) handed Jimmy Floyd his marching orders. Some folks didn’t like that Keown went down but I didn’t like that Hasselbaink hit and elbowed him in the face multiple times.
Against 10 men, Arsenal actually struggled and never really looked like scoring. William Gallas nearly set up Lampard but for some crazy last ditch tackle by Seaman. Kanu had two good chances, turning his defender for one and then juking everyone for a second shot but both were easily saved.
One player who has started to look like they are finally fitting in to the Arsenal defense and attack is Lauren. I know that when I looked at the stats package for the Invincibles season Lauren stood out as one of the most important players for the team from an attacking and defending perspective. He’s had a bit of a rough start to this season – his second season at Arsenal – but it’s starting to look like he’s settling in. I’m curious to see what role he plays in this title winning team.
Additionally, I feel like Wiltord was crucial to this team (I know, he scored the only goal at Old Trafford to win the title but I mean more than that) and while he played in this match there were no highlights for him, so I’m guessing he had a quiet match. The BBC report says he had a shot and that both Arsenal and Chelsea had some brilliant attacking play, so maybe the highlights package just sucked. Lol. Anyway, next match next week!
*If you’re doing the math, I’m counting Henry as having 229 Arsenal goals. I do not agree with the Premier League taking away his goal against Blackburn Rovers in 2012.
