Gunning for immortality?

Arsenal's manager has an inflated sense of accomplishment this season

By Brian Glanville, World Soccer magazine

IMMORTALITY? Oh, please. Could it just be that Arsene Wenger's Arsenal players have a better sense of proportion than he does?

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After their flukey, laborious 1-0 win at QPR against Fulham last Sunday, one heard him complain that he wasn't sure "the players realize what is at stake." Perhaps they do.

Perhaps they are more of the mind of the Fulham coach Chris Coleman, who has done so well in his first full season, when, following Wenger into the press room, he observed that if Arsenal were going to start calling themselves immortal they had to win back-to-back Premierships and the Champions League.

The latter surely being the true criterion of any claim to greatness, which Arsenal have scarcely displayed in their last four league games.

Three draws and a win gifted them by the ludicrous error of Fulham's Dutch keeper Edwin Van der Sar. What possessed him to dither on Djetou's back pass, then seemingly try to pull the ball past Jose Reyes, only to give the Spanish forward the most catastrophically ludicrous of goals?

Later in the game, I observed to Coleman, Van der Sar did it again successfully, when he sidestepped the advancing Aladiere. Coleman though that betokened confidence. I could think of a more opposite word.

The morning of that match, in the Sunday Times, I published a list of the teams I thought best ever in the league championship. I ranked another Arsenal team, that of 1930/31, a place above the present side. The reason being that Herbert Chapman's first champions, who won that league with plenty to spare, at least had some hard competition.

This Premiership has been mediocre to a degree, with Chelsea and Manchester United the only true challengers to the Gunners.

LAST week at Stamford Bridge, Jerome Rothen must surely have played himself into the French European Championship squad. It was as dazzling an exhibition of classical wing play as one has seen all season, Rothen on the left flank showing pace, power, supreme control and admirable determination.

Mario Melchiot, the big Dutch right back, could do nothing with him and was left for dead on the occasion of that crucially timed equalizing goal. Handball there may have been, but the fact is that a goal was in the air as soon as Rothen left Mechiot to dead cut into such a vulnerable area.

Later, I suppose Glen Johnson, who substituted that hapless Melchiot, paid a left winger a kind of left-handed compliment when he disgracefully chopped Rothen down and thoroughly deserved a red card, rather than a mere yellow.

BOBBY Robson has certainly made his mistakes this season at Newcastle, has surely given too much leeway to undisciplined young professionals, was daft to allow LuaLua to go on loan to Pompey when it was arguably clear he would have need of him the more so when he forgot to stipulate that LuaLua shouldn't play against the Magpies, enabling him to score against them on his debut at Fratton Park.

Then when he wanted LuaLua to come back for the second tie against Marseilles, it was hardly surprising that a piqued LuaLua refused.

Still and all, Robson certainly did not deserve the broadside he got from the club's chairman, Freddy Shepherd. A few years ago, Shepherd and a fellow director, you may remember, distinguished themselves in a foreign nightclub, unaware they were talking to an undercover journalist, by calling Newcastle women "dogs," sneering at supporters who paid exorbitant prices for shirts produced by exploited Third World labor, and dismissed Alan Shearer as "Mary Poppins."

The pair made groveling leafleted apologies to the fans, and since Shepherd has the shares, there he still is. Alas.

THANKS to an eccentric old New Zealander denying and defying his mandate, South Africa didn't get the 2006 World Cup, which was surely a narrow escape and a godsend.

Now it seems that they will get it for 2010, so we must all earnestly hope, with little real reason, that by the time it comes around, the appalling rate of murder, rape and robbery will have declined.

Awarding the World Cup, Havelange-Blatterwise, on a basis of Buggins' Turn, irrespective of realities, is not only irrational but potentially dangerous. I yield to no one in my colossal admiration of sub-Saharan African footballers, who bring such talent, life and color to the game, but they are constantly betrayed by corrupt, inept administrations.

As for North African countries such as Morocco and Egypt, they might well be capable of efficient organization, but the prospect of terrorism during the tournament is frightening. Tourists have already been massacred in Egypt, and the word is that the position of the absolutist President Mubarak is now far from impregnable.

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.