Saturday’s without Arsenal are like pies without mash. You can get by, you can even find some enjoyment, but it never quite has the same impact.

That’s what we’re faced with today boys and girls. No mash. Not even a potato. Still, at least it means I can observe the other games happening today and cheer for sides like Leicester, who play United in the evening kick off. They may be top and mathematically any Arsenal fan will be routing for the side second from top to spread the points out, but I think everyone knows that Leicester won’t stay there the whole season, so if they can pick up even a draw against van Gaal’s United, it will be good for us.

Moneychester City are the other team to watch today, as they host Southampton and despite the fact the Saints are no easy pushover, I’m not expecting anything else other than a home win today. City won’t be as poor as they were against Liverpool and they’ll overwhelm a Southampton team that are doing ok in eigth, but aren’t ripping up trees like they did last season.

If those two games go as we expect them to today, it will put a bit of added pressure on the players tomorrow, because I even think the Spuds might beat Chelski to knock us out of the top five for the first time since the start of the season. If there’s one thing we’ve become pretty good at, it’s staying in that top four, so I would expect us to be there come Sunday evening.

To do so, Norwich will need to be vanquished and as I usually do on the tube journey home last night, I decided to undertake a spot of nosing around on the Norwich website and fan blogs too. There aren’t a massive number of them, so I had a look on some forums and the general consensus is that they expect the team to try a bit of kicking a few shades out of us with ball winners sitting anchored in midfield. Alex Tettey is one of their first choices in that regard, so perhaps its useful for us that he’s injured, but I don’t think Alex Neil would take the Tony Pulis school of thuggary on Sunday. I suspect they will try to sit a little deeper and pick us off, despite what he’s already said about potentially coming at us. If they did that, I’d expect a game a bit more like the Leicester one at the King Power. That’d be nice indeed!

They’re talking like the plucky underdogs on the official site, about causing an upset and perhaps that is certainly the case, because if you’re sitting in 13th in the league and you’ve won just three games so far this season it certainly is something you would be hoping for rather than expecting. They’ve beaten Sunderland away and Bournemouth at home, two teams really struggling this season, as well as Swansea who are having an indifferent time under Gary Monk at the moment. It’s the type of form they’d probably expect as a newly promote club and as such, we should be expecting to beat them, despite our injury list. Let’s just hope we do that. I’d rather not have three disappointments in a row in the league please, Arsenal, if that’s ok?

Anyway, what else is on the Arsenal horizon, worth talking about? Alexis to Real Madrid in January? Doubtful. He’s an ex-Barca player, he’d be cup-tied for the Champions League (although we might be out of it by then so perhaps that would be no real loss for him) and January is notoriously difficult to sign players. He’s a superstar at The Arsenal and a move back to Spain would just see him shunted out wide right and told to hang around for Ronaldo to do his stuff before he can make any impact on games. I don’t doubt that Madrid are a massive club and exciting for any player to play at, but right now they look a mess, so who’d want to go to any kind of mess that didn’t have ‘Eton’ before it or an ‘i’ added on the end of it? Not me guv. So I don’t see that as anything realistic and hopefully by the summer those grubby little Los Blancos will be looking at some other shiny new trinket elsewhere.

Besides, Mes can tell Alexis that Madrid ‘ain’t all that’ anyway, so do ya thang, Ozil.

The only thing I want to mention is the farcical uproar that has been brewing over the last 24 hours about Arsenal taking a 14 minute plane journey to Norwich for the game. The papers and media websites are all up in arms about the fact that it’s environmentally unethical. But I’d implore those on their environmental high horse to try and schlep their way along the A12, A14  and A140 to Norwich when it’s busy. It’s a pain in the arse when I’ve done it and for the sake of extreme boredom and stopping Flamini from being cooped up in a bus for any length of time, I’d argue that the morally appropriate thing to do would be to fly. Lives, or at least limbs, could be at stake if Mat is not let out for regular anger management relief on a regular basis. So I applaud Arsenal for their common sense.

Anyway, with that wrong, righted, I’m off to burn coal in my garden, whilst tipping oil over birds and dropping litter all over the floor. Ringpulls especially.

See ya!