FA Cup Final 2003

By Colin Malam at The Millennium Stadium Courtesy of The Telegraph Online

Arsenal (1) 1 Southampton (0) 0

One-nil to the Arsenal - the familiar cry reverberated off the closed roof of Cardiff's Millennium Stadium yesterday as the Gunners and their fans celebrated a victory straight out of the George Graham songbook.

It was like going back in time, with Arsenal winning the FA Cup for a second year running with the sort of gritty, focused and disciplined performance that was their speciality before Arsene Wenger's arrival.


	Bobby dazzler: Robert Pires smashes home the match winner for Arsenal

Had Arsenal played like this more often in the closing months of the Premiership season, they might well have retained the title as well. There was none of the flamboyance that had caused the destruction of Southampton 6-1 at Highbury 10 days earlier, just a palpable determination not to end up empty-handed after playing what, in the first half of the season at least, was some of the finest football seen from an English club.

Southampton did not make it easy for them, either. Far more combative and purposeful than they had been during their Premiership trouncing, the Saints took the contest to the wire. In the closing minutes only another miraculous save by David Seaman and a goal-line clearance by Ashley Cole ensured that Robert Pires's first-half strike would remain the winner.

Arsenal's superiority on the day stemmed largely from the control of midfield established - in the significant absence of injured captain Patrick Vieira - by his deputy, Ray Parlour, Gilberto Silva, Freddie Ljungberg and to a lesser extent, Pires. With the suspended Sol Campbell missing from the centre of their opponents' defence, Southampton needed to offer James Beattie a steady supply of inviting centres, something all that hard work in midfield stopped them doing.

Chris Marsden, albeit carrying an injury that almost stopped him playing, was marginalised on the left, while manager Gordon Strachan's concern about Arsenal's potential for launching devastating attacks down the left persuaded him to leave out Fabrice Fernandes, the Frenchman whose crosses had contributed so much to Southampton's attacking football this season, but whose defensive qualities are more questionable.

Strachan replaced Fernandes by pushing Paul Telfer forward from right-back and filling that gap with Chris Baird, a Northern Ireland Under-21 international. Considering that this was only the youngster's third senior appearance, and second start, it was a bold decision. In the event, Baird displayed plenty of talent and remarkable confidence, but all his considerable promise could not compensate for the loss of Fernandes's input.

When Southampton did succeed in offering the prolific Beattie some kind of service from the flanks, the big, raw-boned striker was dealt with firmly and efficiently by Arsenal's pair of thirty-somethings, Oleg Luzhny and Martin Keown, at the heart of what was expected to be soft-centred defence. Their success is best illustrated by the fact that the young England striker had only one scoring chance, and that deep into injury time.

Thierry Henry, by comparison, was offered an embarrassment of riches, early in the game particularly. He might have had a hat-trick inside the first 11 minutes as Ljungberg and Dennis Bergkamp made the most of his startling acceleration with delicious passes. Henry was voted man of the match, but Bergkamp delivered a more compelling performance.

Henry nearly got the game off to a sensational start. Less than 30 seconds had gone when the Frenchman made a run down the inside-right channel and Ljungberg fed him the ball. Henry turned on the after-burners, but was impeded deliberately by Claus Lundekvam, who tried to drag him back. Although the striker got away from the defender, Antti Niemi saved well at his near post.

Niemi was less successful with another Henry shot, and Bergkamp pounced on the loose ball. But the low centre he drilled across the face of goal was hacked away by Baird. Bergkamp also contributed significantly to the move that led to Pires scoring the decisive goal seven minutes before the interval.

Henry began it by slipping a short pass to Bergkamp on the edge of the Southampton penalty area. Bergkamp hooked a pass inside for Ljungberg. The Swede's mishit shot then squirted off a defender to Pires, who buried the ball in the bottom corner. Not one of Arsenal's most beautiful goals, then, but no less important for all that.

Baird, now becoming an expert at this sort of thing, cleared off the line to stop Bergkamp scoring at the end of a first half in which Southampton's glimpses of goal had been severely limited.

Ljungberg, shooting into the side-netting, wasted an inviting chance early in the second half after Bergkamp had wrong-footed the Southampton defence, then seen Niemi palm away his shot. The Finnish goalkeeper ought to have done better in that instance, but nobody could fault the fingertip save he made soon afterwards to divert Henry's low shot inches wide of the far post.

That was Niemi's final contribution. He was carried off on a stretcher after 64 minutes with a calf injury. Paul Jones took his place and justified his inclusion by making a good save from Henry as the game swung back and forth in the closing minutes.

It was overshadowed, though, by the magnificent reflex save Seaman had made a little earlier to divert Brett Ormerod's close-range half-volley away from goal. It was the sort of goalkeeping excellence that must have made the watching Sven-Goran Eriksson reflect on the wisdom of his decision to drop the goalkeeper from the England squad because of his age and doubts about his club status next season.

The save did not break Southampton's hearts, though. They continued to press forward and flooded the Arsenal penalty area with bodies in desperate search of an equaliser in the dying minutes. But when Beattie at last connected brutally with a header, Cole nudged the ball off the line with his thigh.

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