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Thieves in the Temple - the Battle of Old Trafford

lewdikris

Established Member
THIEVES IN THE TEMPLE

It was always one of my favourite Prince songs, ‘Thieves in the Temple’, it always seemed to sum-up what the purple midget was all about. Doing what was unlikely, unholy, just when you were expecting something different. Like going from the glam of 1999 to the lunatic avant-garde circus music of Paisley Park to the social-soul of Sign O’The Times. Just being brilliant, but brilliant in a way you didn’t think he was capable of.

Arsenal surprised me today, and they managed to steal something more than just a point from English Football’s own highest temple. They stole back the right to be masters of their own temperamental predicament in the one place it would be tested most. They stole back a sense of being unbeatable that seemed lost after the capitulation of last season and the disaster against Inter Milan. And although nothing will be won for 9 more months, they stole a the decisive moral victory of a draw despite their own indiscipline, which, for once, undid that unquenchable authority United have had for far too long that if you give them a chance in the dying seconds of a match they will take it, and they will win.

It was, quite simply, the most satisfaction I can remember from a 0-0 draw. Certainly under Wenger. When the scattered West Ham fans in my Bow local applauded Inter off the pitch on Wednesday I felt sick, but knew they were justified. When the whole pub, 70-80 people, applauded Arsenal off the pitch today, I felt that we’d got something back that the media and the FA will only look sternly at, respect. That most East End of concepts. A concept that runs deep in my local where the Krays are still whispered of by the old guys at the bar. Respect that when it came down to a kind of fight whose very possibility FIFA have spent the last thirty years trying to erase, Arsenal still had the balls to intimidate another team out of the very idea of beating them.

The kind of respect Chopper Harris, Jack Charlton, Billy Bremner, right up and through to Graeme Souness, Paul McGrath and Stuart Pearce, Tony Adams and Juventus’ exquisite lunatic Pablo Montero know all about. The kind of respect someone as prone to amateur dramatics as Ruud Van Nistelrooy (and, let’s face it, Robert Pires) feel they shouldn’t have to give to others. Respecting others because they’re simply tougher, closer to the edge of football’s undercurrent of tribal conflict than you are. Van Nistelrooy could not stand up to giving that respect to Arsenal and blazed his penalty against the bar. He bottled it, was a 27 year old boy amongst men, and ran to hide behind a linesmen.

My local went wild.

Roy Keane should have taken that penalty. He knows more than anyone still playing about that ruthless urge to win. He would have scored, Arsenal would have lost, and a long and painful inquest would have begun. Keane knows what it is to fight and intimidate, how competitiveness stands close to thuggery. It’s a call you get in New York Hip-Hop’s most brutal players, in MOP, Pharoahe Monche, back to the Wu-Tang Clan: nasty men who can make a beautiful display of their skills, but who aren’t afraid to say, ‘I’ll annihilate you if you cross me’. I’m sure Keano’s brewing away in some Old Trafford backroom right now, cursing his crack forward’s lack of guts to finish off an opponent who were open to a killer uppercut. He’ll know what happened.

I’d worried in my last piece that we were on an edge, at boiling point. And just for a few seconds the game threatened to reach that same awful ferment the 1990 game did that scuppered another successive title win. It didn’t. Vitally, we stayed on the same edge of chaos throughout and held our line, never backed down, never shied away or hid, refused to get out of the United players’ faces.

Today we can thank those four players most at fault for Wednesday’s abomination. Cole, Lauren, Gilberto and Vieira, who disappeared into the London night were astonishingly determined. Vieira we know is capable of that - it’s what he should do all the time. He’s good enough. The other three, maybe with the possible exception of Cole, have only rarely looked that willing to attend to the most basic parts of their jobs before. I can’t remember once when they all did it at the same time. Against a talent like Ronaldo, who, in a few years is going to be an awesome player, or against Ryan Giggs, who’s nothing to prove, you are going to be beaten a couple of times per match. When you are you need to have two men there to recover. Patrick or Gilberto were there, every time, alongside Cole or Lauren, and slowly they drove both of them out of the game, drove them into the bad decision making and poor passing that comes when a player has been mentally beaten by sheer physical presence. Putting them in a corner and offering no way out.

Beyond all those four though were Martin Keown and Kolo Touré. If anybody doubts K-Lo is ready for the longhaul in our backline, forget it now. After a bad game like Wednesday he stepped up again. Looked hungry, looked twice the size he is. Van Nistelrooy had as quiet a game as Henry did at the other end, but he looked unnerved by the force he encountered. He missed three chances he would have taken were the pressure not so resolutely applied to him every other time the ball came his way. He missed a penalty. My local went wild.

The great heavyweight boxers always found a way to channel the most savage instincts they possessed into making sure they couldn’t be beaten. Think of Ali against Foreman, absorbing a whole tirade from the most brutal puncher ever to put on the gloves, mocking him, telling him, laughing at him, ‘Come at me, you can’t touch me’. Think of Joe Louis, or Tyson in his pomp. Boxers who scared their opponents out of taking them down. Arsenal were that good today. No-one out there felt fear, and knew that the result they wanted, a 0-0 draw we haven’t had for two years, was a reclamation of authority. A way of channelling the rage eating away at Arsenal football club into a cowing of the only team that stands in our way to win the league title we need back most of all, and making it into a chance to laugh in the faces of the opposition who didn’t have the balls to beat us.

Respect. Today’s thieves in the Temple of Old Trafford have got that back. Now we only have to keep it.
 

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