photo courtesy of BBC News Sport

Gunning For Your Attention
Matthew Ralph

As I scratch my head and stammer my words trying to think of all the teams playing in the postseason for baseball stateside and casually check scores on the college football games I'm unable to watch not having cable television in my apartment, the news reaching me from the British Premiership via the internet on Saturday met me with more excitement and enthusiasm than I have had for any American sport all season.

The news of course was that the Arsenal Gunners, the other team to many stateside who can only name the New York Yankees-affiliated club Manchester United without hesitation, had not only beaten rivals Leeds United to maintain an early hold atop the premiership table, but had completely disposed of them during an afternoon match at Elland Road.

While by Play Station 2 FIFA 2002 standards, a 4-1 defeat isn't all that impressive, especially considering the fire power of the London squad with goal scoring machine Thierry Henry (scored once on Saturday) and an on-fire Nwankwo Kanu (chipped in two goals Saturday) leading the way, the reports of the match alone demonstrate how monumental the road victory on Saturday was.

"Quite simply, Arsene Wenger's team has taken football in the Premiership to a new level, sweeping away all before them with a blend of graceful, attacking play that leaves the purist gasping," said Paul Fletcher of the BBC News in a report on the match.

An insider for ESPN's soccernet.com site concurred when he said:

"There are times in football when you just have to sit back and admire. An insatiable hunger for honours drives all great sides and this Arsenal side can be classed in that bracket. This side didn't just control the match, they stamped their authority on it from the start with the hallmark of champions. If Arsenal did need to send a defiant warning to the rest of the country this result has done just that 'Hands off our title' is the battlecry."

More important as far as the record books are concerned, Saturday's match may have represented a symbolic shift as far as the Premier League's flagship team is concerned on a day that Arsenal fans will not soon forget.

Already the defending double champions (Arsenal won the premiership and the FA Cup a year ago), Arsenal shook off the darlings of football to the north in Manchester United, who they had played second fiddle to three straight seasons.

Now, early into the always important season following a World Cup, Arsenal has shown its dominance once again without demonstrating any signals of slowing. Saturday's 4-1 victory over Leeds in fact broke a 71-year old record for scoring in consecutive games at 47, held previously by a pre-World War II Chesterfield team and also matched Manchester United's 29 straight premiership victory tally, while besting a previous 21-game road unbeaten streak.

Unbeaten at the top of the Premier League early into the season (6 wins, 2 draws), just ahead of Liverpool who kept pace Saturday with a hat-trick performance from striker Michael Owen, already the thought of an unbeaten season is being talked about. Simply put, when a team goes out and disposes a Leeds United so easily on the road, there's good reason for people to talk about complete domination on the horizon.

This is one of the outstanding performances of my career," Arsenal head coach Arsene Wenger told Soccernet. "I am still hopeful we can go through the season unbeaten' – a frightening thought!"

Even Wenger's counterpart, Leeds United head coach Terry Venables' was made a believer Saturday, not to mention a host of supporters and analysts of the game throughout the country and beyond.

It's a huge call to predict Arsenal to end the Premiership season unbeaten, but when you see them playing it's possible," Venables told a Soccernet insider.

Headlines of "Arsenal Keeps Winning" and "Arsenal's Record Setting Day" were everywhere I looked Saturday on the web, countless articles devoted to the exploits of a team that despite being an ocean away manages to excite me more through correspondent reports and internet sports sites than just about anything happening in the world of a sports here in the United States.

Maybe it's the four months I lived in London back in the fall of 1998 and the two matches I was able to see in Highbury that are still fueling my fire, or the World Cup this summer that was another friendly reminder of how soccer is the world's greatest and most exciting sport. Whatever it is, I share the feeling portrayed by Soccernet's Aresenal correspondent Dominic Sutton said earlier this week - "I'm running out of superlatives for this awesome team of ours."

posted 9.27.02

2002 White Elephant Productions