Arsenal's Unbeaten Streak Ends




(Wayne "Mickey" Rooney scoring in injury time)

Rooney makes like Ric Flair and there goes the Gunners' 49 game unbeaten streak. Arsene Wegner wasn't pleased, and we can safely assume that Alex Ferguson is still watching the incident on his VCR, laughing with each successive replay.

DirectTV's PPV telecast of this barn-burner was in direct competition with ESPN's highly-rated "Watch Michael Irvin Talk With His Hands", so I wasn't able to follow the action in real time.

Arsenal are still leading the Premiership with 25 points, closely followed by Chelsea at 23 following the latter's 4-0 crushing of Blackburn yesterday afternoon at Stamford Bridge.

Sunday's other match for the time capsule saw Newcastle beating Manchester City, 4-3, Craig Bellamy scoring the winner in the 89th minute. Kevin Keegan had some of the weekend's most magnificent moans :

'It was astonishing if you look at 4-3 and get carried away with it, but the most astonishing thing was that the referee here today was not strong enough and made too many mistakes, and I've been in and told him that,' Keegan said.

'He got too many decisions wrong. They weren't major, major decisions, but they had a major impact on the game. I would like him to look at it and analyse it.

'You've got to remember how they got in front to 2-0. One was a free-kick that to me wasn't a free-kick, and the penalty when you see it, you might dispute it, although you wouldn't argue as an away team playing here if they get a penalty like that.

'They've got 2-0 up by default, almost. No disrespect to them, they looked like they'd had a game in midweek, which they had, and whilst we weren't any great shakes first half, we showed a determination and a character second half that should have got us something out of this game.

'We got nothing and the players are livid with the referee. I'm going to be their voice on this and I'll be the one who gets fined, but he had one today, a major one.

'Let's leave it at that. That's as nice as I want to be with him. Everyone has a bad day.

'I'm not taking any credit away from Newcastle. I was five years here and I loved my five years here, and I hope under Graeme they go on and achieve what we failed to achieve, I've not got any problems with that.

'It's ironic that you've got Graeme Souness, who's probably one of the most volatile managers saying 'I know how you feel, but don't get in trouble'.

'If those decisions were going like they went for me, I think he'd have long since have been in his car and going home.'

Amidst all the hoopla surrounding the Patriots/Jets game and Boston's first World Series appearance in 18 years, how about those lucky New England Revolution? The Revs have barely shown up on the Boston sports radar despite beating the Columbus Crew last night, 1-0 at Foxboro in the first leg of their MLS first round playoff. Not that MLS is on CSTB's radar either --- as long as the Revolution and Metro Stars have to play their playoff games on NFL hashmarks, they're gonna look lame.

Posted: Sun - October 24, 2004 at 04:27 PM      

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