Happy ‘Middle-o-week’ day to thee, my wonderful Arsenal supporting colleague, I hope yours is a good one?

If you’re a UK-based Arsenal fab and a season ticket holder then I guess the answer to that is dependent on whether or not you got lucky in the ballot yesterday for the cup final. By and large it seems like the majority did, with a few noises going around on Twitter about people getting five out of six, or seven out of eight applications.

And as usual the question is raised about how this is decided and how it’s all dreadfully unfair. The thing is though, I have no idea how you better the existing system, because every way you look at it somebody misses out.

The season ticket holder that goes to every single game at home including the league cup, yet nothing away, might feel aggrieved, but it’s hard to chastise people who have already racked up the away points I think. Perhaps in biased because I have enough points for cup finals so haven’t missed one since I got my season ticket, but I can’t see any other system that works as well, and I’m not a fan of ‘home credits’ because then you get people calculating the balance between home and away and it just gets messy. One point for home, three points away, so if I get three away games in a season then I don’t need to worry about going along to the away games?

Like I said, messy.

Anyway, it’s the middle of the week and The Totts play against Newport tonight, with me hoping we see a full strength team out this evening. They’ll get through – we all know that – but at least it’s a match and hopefully some of their players are a bit fatigued for the weekend.

I won’t hold my breath though; we had a weekend off when Swansea played a near full strength team away in the FA Cup and they still managed to out run us, or so I thought anyway.

My hope is that the games can just start to catch up with them and that starts this weekend. They have the benefit of having the English refereeing fraternity, the FA and a manager that encourages cheating in their favour though, so let’s not expect anything beneficial for us just yet. I think we’ve conceded three penalties in our last four matches against that horrible lot – the home game earlier on this season being the exception, so I’m not expecting anything else other than a nasty, cheating, filthy Tottenham team to try to wangle their way all afternoon on Saturday.

There is some murmurs about the Aaron Ramsey contract situation and I’ve listened to a podcast or two talking about it, but nothing concrete, although you do hope that the Ramsey situation is being decided one way or another. My issue with Ramsey has always been half of his own doing and half of his own misfortune. His inability to stay fit is hardly his fault; sometimes you just have players who’s body’s just cannot sustain the required longevity of a professional career. Ramsey has missed so many games down the years that it’s inevitable that he takes longer to get back up to full speed. But when he is, he offers something that the rest of our midfield don’t. He’s an engine that works the pitch, covers ground, arrived late into the box and is always available for a pass in most corners of the pitch. When that is working then he is somebody who we should be getting in the first team as often as possible.

My other only issue has been that he does love the occasional Hollywood pass and if I’m honest, it really winds me up when players try that, when they clearly don’t have the range for that. Ramsey is better getting on the end of balls played into the channels, not the one trying to distribute them, although I must admit that I’ve seen less of that lately, so perhaps he’s realised he’s not Özil from a passing perspective and has phased it out of his game. We shall see.

I personally think we should sign him up. Not at all costs and certainly not by leaving it until next January, but if he wants to stay and if the club don’t fanny around, it needs to be done.

The rest of the news doing the rounds yesterday and today relates to transfers and I just can’t be dealing with that, having just got through January, with all of the palaver that puts us through. So until Arsène’s presser comes around – which I suspect will Be tomorrow – I’ll say my goodbyes for another day.

Laters people.