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There's been much comment in the press regarding what Manu Petit
has been saying about Chelsea's chances of winning the league. Apparently he reckons that they are "...not sufficiently armed in
quantity or quality to claim to be able to win the premiership",
and ".. a long way from being able to rival Arsenal, Liverpool,
or Manchester United".
Liek that's news! We do appreciate the ordering of
that list though, Manu. Would just like to question that
quantity is lacking since the signing of Frank Lampard.
Anyway, what caught Arseweb's eye was Petit's comments on
last Sunday's Arsenal vs Man Utd game.
"I admit that I was surprised to see what happened to Fabien, but I was not surprised by his mistakes. "
"Everyone makes mistakes in their daily life as well as on a football pitch and one has to live with that. For more than an hour he was the man of the game and saved a few decisive shots."
All very reasonable, and we certainly concur with the "Man of the match" tag. :-) But Manu goes on to say...
"What surprised me was to see him embroiled a few minutes
before his two clangers with Arsenal defender Matthew Upson."
"It is one of the few occasions that I have seen Fabien get involved with an opponent and I think that unsettled him. "
"And we know what happened next in the game. "
Ok, as regular ArseWeb readers will know, we always advised caution in taking Manu's alleged interview proclamations too seriously when he was an Arsenal player. And the same
has to be said of this interview. The quotes above are taken from today's Mirror and to be frank I'm not convinced that
"embroiled a few minutes before his two clangers with Arsenal defender Matthew Upson" are Manu's own words (we're told
they are a fair translation of this article on his official website).
But the sentiment is well taken by us here at Arseweb and we're grateful to Petit cos it's a point we hadn't considered before.
Matty Upson's full blooded jump in the direction of M. Barthez,
and his "failing to discourage" Barthez from getting all
worked up afterwards, could indeed have had a significant
effect on the France keeper.
He clearly wasn't himself in the last period of the game, and
was soon reduced to gifting Thierry Henry a brace of goals,
and inflicting a painful-looking wedgie on himself.
We knew about Upson's tackling prowess and positional sense.
Now we see his fighting spirit and niggliness. He's been spoken
of as a new Tony Adams, but could there maybe be more of
the Martin Keown in him?
(Either would do very nicely)
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