Capital gains

Blues have means to beat Gunners -- if they're used

By Brian Glanville, World Soccer magazine

THE importance of being Berkgamp. However well they can do at times without him -- such as at Portsmouth and Blackburn -- there is really no subject for the veteran Dutch international, who now says he wants to carry on -- which seemed improbable before -- for another season.

Find out more about World Soccer magazine's online subscription offer.

Arsene Wenger, who only grudgingly gave him a contract for this one, should bite his arm off. How many other players could have set up Thierry Henry's first goal at Highbury last week against Celta Vigo? First, with courage and strength, Bergkamp won the ball. Next, with sublime sleight of foot, he beat a couple of players in the narrowest space. Then he slid a perfect ball through for Henry to score.

Arsenal now must meet Chelsea yet again, this time in the quarterfinals of the European Cup, first leg at Stamford Bridge. The odds must very heavily favor the Gunners, who seem to have an Indian sign on Chelsea at the moment. Yet Chelsea have the means to turn the tables on them, if only they be used.

In a team whose parts are substantially greater than the whole, Joe Cole has been disgracefully underused. But last Saturday at Bolton he came on in the second half with enough time to play havoc with the Bolton defense, beating opponents with ease, setting up chances, playing a crucial part in a Chelsea success that had seemed unlikely before he came on.

What's good for Chelsea could still, I am sure, be good for England, who need his flair and capacity to surprise, but have used him as sparingly and irregularly as Chelsea.

As for Scott Parker, another potential England player; is he really happy to have quit Charlton where he played every week, for a club which uses him when Ranieri feels like it? I raised that point with Alan Curbishley, the Charlton manager a few days after Parker had moved.

"The man who runs the car park is a midfield player," I said.

To which Curbishley replied that had Parker not thought he would break into the Chelsea first team, he wouldn't have gone. Delusions of grandeur?

HARDLY surprising that David Beckham hasn't exactly gone native in Spain, not only failing to learn the language but even to carry on with taking lessons in Spanish. How much though does that matter?

"He'll never learn Italian," I remember Graeme Souness, who did well at Sampdoria, remarking to me of Ian Rush, when Ian had gone to Juventus. It was true. Ian was always a fish out of water in Turin.

"I hate the training," he once told me, there. "I'm like an outcast."

By contrast, players such as Liam Brady, Trevor Francis, David Platt and Gerry Hichens all learned Italian well and John Charles, Rush's fellow Welshman, idolized in Turin, got by well enough.

Yet Jesse Carver, who coached so successfully in Italy for years, instantly winning the scudetto with Juventus, going on to manage, among other clubs, Inter, Roma and Lazio, was still speaking pidgin Italian when managing Roma -- I was there -- in 1954-55.

But his players adored him.

YOU do sometimes -- well, quite often -- wonder about managers. Just in the past week, we have had a couple of strange examples, from a couple of neighboring London clubs.

At Stamford Bridge, I found it very hard to make sense of the tactical dispositions of Claudio Ranieri, which can have done his somewhat shaky hold on office little good.

Against Stuttgart, against whom Chelsea in the first leg of their European Cup tie had edged through in Germany on an own goal, the Londoners fielded what looked to the naked eye like a 4-5-1 formation -- just Hernan Crespo up front. It seemed excessively cautious against a Stuttgart side that, though well-organized and resilient, is certainly not among the European elite. And so it proved.

Not till Adrian Mutu was sent on to support Crespo up front, in the closing stages, did Chelsea look like scoring goals; and then they made several chances.

Yet after the game Ranieri insisted that he had been playing 4-3-3, three players up. Two of those, it transpired, being the initial pair of wingers, Damien Duff and Jesper Gronkjaer!

The following Saturday in the Premiership, Fulham were at home to Leeds United. Chris Coleman, after his operation caused by a metal rod in his patched up leg that had caused alarm, deployed in the first half a curiously unbalanced team. It looked like a 4-4-2 formation, with the midfielder, Mark Pembridge, hardly a speed merchant, uncomfortably on the left, and Steed Malbranque, so often the vital inspiration of the side, on the right.

After the break, however, Pembridge moved into the middle, where he normally plays, and was highly effective. Malbranque went out to the left and was instantly a threat to the Leeds defense. Fulham took control and won 2-0. After which, Coleman solemnly informed the press that he had in fact been playing 4-4-3 and had made no tactical changes at half time. He could have fooled me.

REFEREES, referees. Pierluigi Collina, purportedly the finest of them all, didn't even give a spotkick, let alone a yellow or a red card, when the Celta Vigo keeper, Argentine Caballero, ran needlessly into Dennis Bergkamp, injuring him in the throat and putting him out of Arsenal's next game.

When I asked Arsene Wenger about it afterwards, he answered that he thought it should have been a penalty, but that the foul was not deliberate, rather the result of sheer impetus. Pretty charitable.

Then what of the goal by Paul Scholes quite wrongly disallowed at Old Trafford, where it would have put Manchester United 2-0 up against Porto? Showing yet again how difficult and controversial the offside rule can be, how foolish to complicate it still more with the recent decision to distinguish active and passive offside.

Some reports had it that Porto, who got that very late equalizer, deserved their 1-1 draw, which wholly ignored the fact that had United gone 2-0 up, the whole character of the game would surely have changed.

Meanwhile, beaten 4-1 so painfully in the inter-city derby last Sunday by Manchester City, United yet again showed the defensive ineptitude that has followed the suspension of Rio Ferdinand. Making one think, yet again, of the utter folly of Alex (humble-pie-eating) Ferguson in getting rid so hastily of Jaap Stam, after Stam's revelation that he had been tapped up while at PSV.

Stam who, as we know, has played so well for Lazio that he is now off to Milan. Though why they need him when the indestructible Paolo Maldini and Alessandro Nesta, who seems to have recovered the form he lost at Lazio, are in office, who can say? Still, I suppose Maldini will have to retire some time or other.

Brian Glanville is Britain's most celebrated football writer. He also writes a monthly column in World Soccer magazine. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer. His latest book, a fully updated edition of THE STORY OF THE WORLD CUP is available in all good bookshops. Readers of worldsoccer.com can buy this highly acclaimed history of the World Cup and enjoy a 10% discount by clicking here.