I said after the Man United game that that win had to be the start of something bigger. It was, but unfortunately not in the manner we all had hoped for.

The club is now in crisis; it's as simple as that. Some might say that they'd quite like to be in a crisis like ours: still in all major competitions, and only 1 point away from securing champions league qualification again. Click to continue reading...

Some disturbing news from Arsenal.com just before tonight's game:

http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/rosicky-undergoes-routine-surgery-in-germany

Routine surgery for what? What injury is he recovering from now? The one he picked up in January which was meant to rule him out for only three weeks? Click to continue reading...

I suppose, given how roundly Arsenal had been written off this week in the media and blogosphere, that a win was nigh on inevitable on Saturday. It was a game which confirmed something evident about Arsene's Arsenal in the last few seasons: they can beat any team in Europe in a one-off match.

Things went our way in the game which haven't in other matches recently. Click to continue reading...

I don't normally like writing previews because I'm almost invariably proved wrong. That may sound a little arrogant, but once you start watching a certain level of football you like to think that you know what's going on.

So I think tomorrow's going to go one of two ways.

Arsenal may well lose heavily. Click to continue reading...

Well if Wednesday's game was an embarrassment, this was just pitiful. Arsenal were outplayed by a team that have laid bare their incredibly basic gameplay strategy on numerous occasions already this season, without so much as a whimper or much of an idea of how to get the better of them.

It's a shame that Clichy's first goal for the club will, and probably should, be forgotten in the midst of all this, but this was just about as bad a performance as we've seen in the Wenger era. Click to continue reading...

I can't remember exactly who it was, but for argument's sake let's say its Cesc, as I'm pretty sure it was him.

You're 4-3 up against your biggest rivals, who've just pulled a goal back to bring themselves back into contention with about a minute or so to go. You have the ball near the half-way line. Click to continue reading...

Hello again. If you're wondering why I haven't been blogging, try moving from Scotland to London to Paris, with a trip to the US throw in, in the space of about a month. busy, busy, busy.

And a lot has happened since Bolton away.

I was there at both the Hull and Everton games, saw the Sunderland game, but only caught the highlights of the Fenerbache and West Ham matches. Click to continue reading...

An excellent three-points at the Reebok against a team that used to intimidate us, and who managed to put us on the back foot in the early stages of the game.

Despite opening brightly, and comprehensively out-passing Bolton, they took the lead through a goal which, again, asked questions of our ability to defend from set-pieces. Click to continue reading...

It's been a pretty sickening week for English football.

Geordies out on the streets complaining about a chairman who hires and sacks a local hero with impunity, after admitting he failed to do proper due diligence on the books of Newcastle before buying the club.

Abu Dhabi deciding, so it would seem, that Man City is nothing more to them than a vehicle through which they can publicise their Emirate. Click to continue reading...

Being in the North-West, where as Match of the Day so often points out 'we struggle' (really, we didn't last season?), we delivered an absolute tonking to Blackburn, and a humbling lesson to new Prem manager Paul Ince.

Theo, after his and England's incredible performance in Zagreb, was bursting with confidence. Click to continue reading...

Well, it was quite a deadline day, wasn't it?

I think the activities that went on regarding other clubs - United's shameful flouting of almost all transfer rules and conventions to steal Berbatov, Abu Dhabi suddenly owning Citeh, and turning them into a major player in one fowl swoop - need to be discussed elsewhere, and in depth. Click to continue reading...

Morning, or should I say afternoon, fellow gooners.

Apologies for no blog over the weekend. I was in the process of moving house, something i will have to do again by the end of the month. What joy.

As such, I only caught the second half of the Newcastle performance, but what I did see was rather lovely. Click to continue reading...

Well, the above picture is the first thing that comes up in a google image search for Kiev. That's the Pechersk monastery, apparently. How nice.

In terms of football, the draw was, on balance, kind to us. Not as kind as it perhaps could have been, but kind nonetheless. We should to be able to beat Porto, Fenerbache, and Kiev at home, and pick up at least a couple of points, if not more, from our away trips. Click to continue reading...

Well, that was nice. 4-0 in the tie, 6-0 on aggregate, and hopefully our season has finally begun after 4 games.

After dominating the opening exchanges of the game, Theo bombed down the wing, sent a dangerous but rather aimless cross across the box, which RvP intercepted, and laid off to Samir. Click to continue reading...

The second leg of our CL qualifier is tonight, and I think we've done enough in the tie to see ourselves through. I can't really see Twente scoring twice or more at the Grove, but then I don't want to tempt fate too much, given the perilous state of our defence in recent games.

If I was Arsene I'd be tempted to throw caution to the wind and let the youngsters have a run about. Click to continue reading...