I went along to the Emirates Stadium this afternoon for the second day of the Emirates Cup pre-season competition featuring Arsenal, Inter Milan, Valencia and Paris Saint Germain. Today’s games were PSG v Valencia at 2pm followed by Arsenal v Inter at 4.15pm.
PSG won their game 3-0 and they were good value for that score. Valencia just weren’t at the races and for a lot of the game their only attacking outlet was hopeful long balls for David Villa, which was quite surprising as they’re normally one of the best passing teams in Spain. Baraja and Morientes were left on the bench until the second half but PSG were 2-0 ahead by then and their players up for it. PSG have some young, fast, skillful players with very quick feet, expect to see the likes of Granddi Ngoyi, David Ngog, Younousse Sankhare and Amara Diane coming to a Premiership team near you in the not too distant future.
Arsenal’s game with Inter turned out to have a bit more spice in it than the usual pre-season kickabout. The crowd was 59,800 and they booed Marco Materazzi every time he touched the ball from the get go. Inter had three players including Materazzi booked in the first hour, which you don’t normally get in friendlies, Materazzi is the perfect pantomime villain.
Arsenal were missing Emmanuel Adebayor, Tomas Rosicky, Theo Walcott and Eduardo da Silva who’s still waiting for a work permit and started Hoyte, Gallas, Toure and Sagna in defence, Eboue, Flamini, Fabregas Hleb and Gibbs in midfield and van Persie as the striker. Arsenal controlled all the play but that lack of support for van Persie up front was obvious. Inter took the lead in the second half against the run of play but Arsenal kept playing their game and worked a good goal from Hleb before van Persie got a brillant winner. Watch the replay on the clip above, the drag back move he puts on the Inter defenders is brillant.
Wenger played new signing Bacary Sagna at right back and regular right back Eboue ahead of him on the right side of midfield. This really worked, Eboue made a lot of dangerous runs into the Inter box and when Sagna went on the overlap Eboue dropped into rightback naturally. Its a combination I think Arsenal could get a lot of success out of, they’re both similar, fast and skillful, and Eboue’s always straining to get forward.
One name to watch out for in the future, Kieran Gibbs. I’d never heard of him but he’s 17, from London, started the game, played 80 minutes and looked completely at home linking up in midfield with good control and a cool head for his first big game. For Inter, Figo had a 30 minute appearance in the second half trying to get something going for them, you can see he has the vision to open things up. Adriano came on at halftime and what a great big lump of a player he is, not that quick but he looked pretty skillful, if you were going to describe him in American football terms you’d say he’s someone who could move the pile.
I swung by Highbury before the games to see how the building work there was getting on, there’s only the facade of the old East Stand and the famous marble halls of Highbury left.
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