I don’t know if it’s because there’s no football on this weekend meaning that we’ve had to endure that unpalatable taste of a poor performance for longer than usual, or whether it’s the fact that it’s the last working week before Christmas, but it really has dragged for me.

It’s self-inflicted though. Whenever Arsenal lose I try to avoid Twitter, the official site, talking about it with friends and family, etc. I just don’t feel like it. On Monday an Arsenal supporting work colleague said “what was that yesterday, eh?” and all I could muster was a shrug of the shoulders and a “to be honest, I can’t even be bothered talking about Arsenal right now”. That was a prime opportunity for me to sit down with a peer and avoid having to talk work. It was a break from the reality of my day-to-day grind and an olive branch handed to me to talk about Arsenal. But I just couldn’t muster anything. And as my old Ma says “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”.

Of course that doesn’t quite work from a blogging perspective, but when I get in to the real world I usually get quite insular after an Arsenal defeat. I even had a telephone conversation during the day with a family member who is an Arsenal fan. We also do some work together so the purpose of the call was to talk work, but when the subject inevitably turned to Arsenal, both of us simply said “let’s not bother talking about our team, eh?”.

It’s a mental self-preservation thing. If I block out that football even exists, then it somewhat dulls the pain of having to think about how pants Arsenal have been after a defeat. Better to go cold turkey. Well, from a ‘having conversations with real life people’ goes, anyway. I still blog. It’s my catharsis you see. It’s my opportunity to just dump a load of thoughts online and then get on with my day. I think it helps. Sometimes it certainly does and after I’ve written it I don’t feel the need to spend most of the day online looking to pick verbal fights with people. I just get on with my sh*t.

So in a way, my blog has really helped me, certainly as far as The Management is concerned. Because she knows that I have this release and that’s the reason I started blogging in the first place. To take my mind away from thinking about football at random points in the day. I still do it, but I feel like it’s been toned down a tad, which works out A-ok for me.

All of this waffle, and not much actual Arsenal opinion, eh? That’s probably because there ain’t much going on. Arsène has said he loves the Christmas football period and Adrian Clarke has dissected the City defeat, but I’ve completely avoided watching it, for reasons listed above. I know I probably should, because it’s always so informative and you always learn something from what he says, but for me the raw emotion of football overrides the technical and tactical side of the game. Sometimes I just don’t want to bother with finding the answers. I just want to stew a bit.

So that’s where I’m at on this misty Thursday morning in London. I’m still stewing and until I get to tomorrow’s press conference and talk of Tony Pulis coming to town with West Brom, I think I’ll continue to stew. But don’t cry for me or anything, because there are plenty of other things in life to do that ensure you can avoid football. I can’t think of anything right now, but I’m sure I will during the course of the day!

Right. Off to work. See you when I see you. Or write you. You know how this thing works by now.