More Physical Training for Arsenal

According to reports, Sam Allardyce thinks that Arsene Wenger is feeling the pressure. For all his gruff exterior, Sam is usually a little more perceptive than this. As he knows perfectly well, managing a premiership club is a high pressure job – and the bigger the club, the more the pressure (though Sam may not be aware of that for obvious reasons).

Nevertheless, Sam has done an excellent job with Bolton – so good in fact that they have become a bit of a problem to Arsenal and have even been described as a ‘bogey team’. They are extremely well organised, their manager is tactically astute, they have remarkable resilience and formidable aggression and they always play to their strengths. In other words, they are not the sort of side Arsenal, with their obvious preference for fluent, inventive attacking football, would prefer to play. Unfortunately, their success has not gone unnoticed by other clubs, who have formed the opinion that since they are inferior technically to the Gunners, their best hope is to adopt what might most tactfully be cast as a more physical approach – bruising but hopefully within the legal limits decreed by the Laws of the game.


But ultimately it was the brilliance of goalkeeper Jussi Jaaskeleinen, coupled with a spectacular last gasp goal-line save from Gardner to prevent what seemed like a certain winner from Thierry Henry, that earned Bolton a point after Arsenal had laid siege to the Bolton goal and grabbed a late deserved equalizer through Gilberto.