So who needs Nicolas Anelka anyway? Sweltering Arsenal supporters streaming away from Wembley yesterday afternoon could have been forgiven for posing that rhetorical question after seeing their team end Manchester United's seven-month unbeaten record. For the second successive year they defeated United to win the FA Charity Shield.
Inspired by the huge, loping but gifted feet of Nwankwo Kanu, Arsenal came from behind to defeat the winners of last season's historic treble without a striker in the strict sense of the word. After one of David Beckham's inspired free-kicks and Dwight Yorke's header had combined to give United the lead, Kanu brought the scores level with a penalty and then set up Ray Parlour for Arsenal's winner.
For once the Charity Shield began the season with a sharp intake of breath rather than a long sigh. The football was fast and committed and five players were cautioned - two from Arsenal, three from United. It was clear that the low boiling point which has accompanied encounters between these clubs for the better part of 10 years is still there.
The fact that the teams produced a match of such high quality despite missing a number of important players said much about the depth of the squads now available to both Arsene Wenger at Highbury and Sir Alex Ferguson at Old Trafford. Yet both managers have reason to fortify their squads.
Yesterday Manchester United were without Roy Keane, Gary Neville, Ronny Johnsen and Ryan Giggs. Injuries had deprived Arsenal of David Seaman, Tony Adams, Marc Overmars and Dennis Bergkamp, and of course Anelka has flown the coop.
Yesterday, as a stop-gap for the absent Anelka, Wenger played Fredrik Ljungberg and Kanu up front with each taking it in turns to drop deep. Ljungberg is quick, busy and perceptive, but he is no striker, as three missed chances before half-time demonstrated.
Increasingly Kanu's size 15s dominated Arsenal's movements. Trying to win possession off the Nigerian must be like attempting to take the ball off a circus clown who has it tied to an enormous foot. There were moments yesterday when Kanu successfully defied three or four attempts to dispossess him near the United goal.
For much of the first hour yesterday Arsenal reconfirmed the quality of Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit in midfield and the enduring strength of Martin Keown in defence. Gilles Grimandi, alongside him in place of Adams, produced a surprisingly adept performance but Arsenal rarely suggested that they were going to overrun United's defence as they had done at Wembley a year earlier.
Jaap Stam, who has been nursing an Achilles injury all summer, gave way to David May for the second half without being put under the sort of pressure Anelka had subjected him to in the previous Charity Shield. An odd bird, David Beckham. Midway through the first half he was booked by Graham Barber for dissent and 15 minutes from the end he risked the wrong sort of headline by again arguing the toss. Yet in between times - the 36th minute to be precise - he produced the shot from which Manchester United took the lead, a 30-yard free-kick which cannoned over the line off the underside of the bar.
Alex Manninger, Seaman's deputy, could do no more than paw at the header with which Yorke met the rebound and which, according to the referee, made him the scorer since play had not been stopped for Beckham's "goal". Nevertheless Manninger had denied United an earlier lead by pushing Cole's shot wide, a save he repeated from the same player late in the second half.
Mark Bosnich had less to do but did it competently. However, he was beaten, portentously as it turned out, by a shot from Parlour which rebounded from the far post four minutes past the hour.
A minute later Arsenal were level. Vieira, bearing down on goal, was pulled down by Denis Irwin and Kanu slipped the coolest of penalties past Bosnich.
Just under a quarter of an hour remained when Vieira headed Bosnich's goal-kick straight back to Kanu, who controlled the ball deftly before sending in Parlour, this time his shot rebounded in off the far post.
Arsenal: Manninger, Dixon, Winterburn, Vieira, Keown, Ljungberg, Parlour (Luzhny 89), Silvinho (Boa Morte 65), Petit, Grimandi, Kanu. Subs Not Used: Taylor, Wreh, Malz, Lukic, Vernazza. Booked: Vieira, Keown. Goals: Kanu 67 pen, Parlour 77.
Manchester Utd: Bosnich, Neville, Irwin, Berg, Stam (May 45), Beckham, Butt (Sheringham 81), Cole, Cruyff (Solskjaer 61), Scholes, Yorke. Subs Not Used: Wilson, Curtis, Greening, Culkin. Booked: Beckham, Butt, Cruyff. Goals: Beckham 36. Att: 70,185.
Referee: G Barber (Pyrford).
