Coleman’s king makers hold out against Arsenal onslaught

Arsenal 0 Fulham 0

Fulham followed up their stunning 3-1 victory at Old Trafford this season by holding Arsenal to a 0-0 draw at Highbury yesterday, a point which lifted them to fourth in the table.

“It seems as if we are having a big influence on who will win the title after winning at Old Trafford and taking a point here, but I really don’t care who it goes to,” said Coleman. “The top three are already in a league of their own.

“There is a league outside the top three. We are fourth now so we are top of our own league and, considering what people were expecting us to do that is a fantastic achievement, although the aim is still to get to the 40-point mark,” Coleman said.

It was backs-to-the-wall stuff for Fulham as they kept 10 men behind the ball, with goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar outstanding as he kept out everything Arsenal could throw at him, but that was exactly the game plan.

“I don’t care that it was one-way traffic,” said Coleman. “We worked hard all week at a certain system and it paid off. In any game like that you need your goalkeeper to have a ‘worldy’ if you are to have a chance and he was absolutely brilliant for us.

“He was man of the match, he has a big bottle of Champagne which he deserves and the lads are delighted for him. They have a lot of respect for him because he is world class.

“Anyone can come here and get hammered. I was on the wrong end of a few hidings here myself as a player and I am glad we made sure that didn’t happen to us today because Arsenal can take anyone apart.

“We did not deserve to win by any means. We got everyone behind the ball, left Louis Saha up front on his own hoping to catch them on the break.

“They were buzzing with confidence after they destroyed Inter Milan but I would have played the same way even if they had not smashed Inter 5-1. We broke down the statistics and knew 70% of Arsenal’s goals came in the first half.

“The longer we went on the more frustrated they became, and they finished with four centre forwards on the pitch and started to knock it long.”

Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger was philosophical after a frustrating afternoon.

“I would say we played well but had a frustrating result. Because we are Arsenal people always expect that goal to come because we always score goals. It was a question of patience.

“We lacked a little spark to be clinical in our finishing and tried to force it a little too much, rather than use vision or relaxed finishing.

“They defended well, it was a game of forwards against defenders. They were obsessed by defending well, they had one shot on goal and no corners. I just felt our timing was not quite right.

“Their goalkeeper played well. I don’t think he made any excellent saves but he didn’t make any mistakes. We didn’t give him any huge problems but tactically he was very good and saved what a good goalkeeper should save.”

Arsenal saw Chelsea leapfrog them into top spot in the Premiership after their 1-0 win over Manchester United at Stamford Bridge.

Wenger added: “Even if you know you can’t afford to drop points because everyone at the top seems to be winning, you know you will. But we have 34 points from 14 games, we are the only unbeaten side in the Premiership and this is the first time we have got that many points at the start of a season.

“My players are very disappointed because they thought we should have won the game, but the quality of our play makes me optimistic for future.”

ARSENAL: Lehmann, Toure, Campbell, Cygan, Cole, Ljungberg (Aliadiere 79), Silva (Kanu 67), Edu, Pires, Bergkamp, Henry.

FULHAM: Van der Sar, Volz, Knight, Melville, Bonnissel, Malbranque, Clark, Legwinski, Inamoto, Sean Davis, Saha (Hayles 76).

Referee: G Barber (Hertfordshire).