‘WENGER WITHIN TOUCHING DISTANCE’ You are Arsène Wenger, and you believe you have planned everything with precise, almost scientific, attention to detail. Absolutely nothing is left to chance. Then, after 86 minutes of a contest your Arsenal team has dominated but whose 1-0 lead has just been negated by a penalty, your side are also awarded a spot-kick.
Your first-choice taker Thierry Henry has been injured in the challenge that brought the penalty and, under the ridiculous rules that must be applied to players who have received attention, has to leave the field for a period decided by the referee and cannot take it. Your second choice is the Brazilian Edu, but he has been substituted three minutes earlier. From nowhere, and uninvited, up strides the Cameroon defender, Lauren, to convert the kick. Wenger can only stand and watch.
LAUREN KEEPS THE GUNNERS PRIMED Should the championship come to Highbury for a 12th time, and the second time in the Premier League under Arsène Wenger, Arsenal will no doubt keep a special place in the memory for the moment when a cool head from Londi Kribi outwitted a jumping bean from Washington.
The situation in which Lauren, Arsenal’s Cameroonian winger-cum-full-back, found himself four minutes from the end of Saturday’s north London derby against Tottenham was bizarre. His team had been awarded a penalty and with it the chance to recapture the place at the top of the table stolen by Manchester United over lunch at Leicester, but who was to take the kick?
