We talked about that particular moment on last night’s Same Old Arsenal pod and how, frankly, weird it is that people do that. I sit on the edges of the North Bank, in Block five and 11 rows from the corner flag. I can honestly say that in all my years of having that seat, I have never had the compunction to trundle down there to abuse an opposition player. Even one from The Scum. There’s just no point. These athletes are tuned to zone out anyway, so it’s a complete waste of energy to try to do something as pathetic as trying to put them off on a corner. And as those individuals found out, it only makes you look even more moronic when your team concedes immediately afterwards.

Egg, meet face. I’ll leave you to get acquainted.

As for us, we now have almost a week for the players to prepare for the visit of Bournemouth to The Emirates and having gone through quite a frantic April in which there were games what felt like every five minutes, we now drop in to a weekly cadence of games between now and the end of the season. The way the season is shaping up in terms of the fixtures too, there will be a bit of a ding-dong between us and City if we can keep pace with them. City play after us next weekend, then before us the weekend after that, so there is going to be a bit of back and forth as both teams try to maintain that perfect momentum as the season reaches its climax.

And this feels like it’s going to be quite a nail biter. I’m not sure I’m ready for it, to be honest with you, because the last time we were this good and competing towards the end of the season, I was a Uni student and we’d already won it in 1998, then in my first year of Uni in 2002, then in my third year in 2004. And in both 2002 and 2004 we had built up such a lead that the final games were just processions anyway. Not this season though. This season I feel like the best outcome we will have will be if we are still in with a chance of winning the league on the final day, because City aren’t dropping points to Wolves or Fulham and by the time their game comes around against The Scum, I suspect they’ll find that a little easier in itself. That’s because Tottenham have Chelsea this Thursday and Liverpool on Sunday and I don’t see them winning both of those games. By that time Villa might have dispatched Brighton. Hopefully not, because we do need the Scum to believe they have something to play for when they play City in a couple of weeks time.

Eugh, doesn’t it feel just dirty thinking that we might need to rely on that lot up the road, eh?

But enough about them, let’s focus on us, with some news emanating from the socials yesterday that the away kit for next season will be a black, red and green number, which you can have a look at Arseblog here for more info. I have to say, I don’t entirely hate it. I’m not sure about those weird marble patches under the arms, or the green, but it’s a darn site better than this season’s abomination of an away shirt, that’s for sure.

The reality is that ultimately it’s just a football kit though. If I like the look of it I might buy it, if I don’t then like this season’s kits, I probably won’t buy it. Hopefully it can become one that can be associated with the big trophies though; that would be nice.

I also think it’s nice that David Raya moved on quickly from his error at the weekend. He acknowledged it, owned it, then did well after that initial mistake and I think it speaks to the mental strength of this young Arsenal team that they were able to hold on to all three points in what was a bit of a cauldron of pressure after that second goal had gone in. It was horrible for us, but for the players perhaps holding on to their nerves in that moment can be good for them; we still have three matches to play and I’m sure there will be more scenarios in which mistakes will be made, but how the team responds is more important than the mistakes themselves.

And I would say that this is one of the key improvements from last season and previous Arsenal iterations: These players overcome adversity quickly enough. I looked at our April fixtures in March and I couldn’t see how we were going to get through it unscathed; we had a heck of a lot of difficult fixtures, across a very short time span, so this was where our season could derail. Then when we drew at home to Bayern, lost to Villa and drew away, it did kind of feel like that. But the response thereafter was phenomenal. Wolves is a tough place to go, you never know what you’re going to get with Chelsea and the North London Derby had absolutely been built up as the day our title dreams died. But these players showed the minerals to step up and the outcome is that we find ourselves top of the league (albeit for now because of City’s game in hand) and STILL fighting for this title.

There needs to be big credit given to these players and to Arteta and I for one certainly feel like I’ll need to have some time to appreciate the season they have had when it’s all over, regardless of what the outcome is.

I think I’ll leave it there for today. Back tomorrow with some more midweek thoughts. Enjoy your Tuesday.

It’s strange though. We’re now more than 24 hours since the humbling against an average Olympiakos team and if I’m completely honest, I’m not as angry as I thought I’d be and I certainly don’t seem to be as fussed that our season is more than likely going to be over pretty soon.

We play Portsmouth on Monday night and it’s a chance to get into the sixth round of the FA Cup, but I’m really not that bothered about it, mainly because there are still all of the big teams in the competition and if this Arsenal team mentally sh*ts the bed against a pretty bog standard Greek side, what chance have we got of lifting that old trophy for the 14th time?

Pretty slim I’d wager. So I’m a little numb to it right now, as I am for the league itself, which feels like the most outside of bets. We’ve been so turgid for so long this season that a top four finish is pretty much out of the question, and this idea that fifth spot is up for grabs is fanciful if you ask me, because City will get their way somehow and be allowed in.

But even if they don’t there are probably one or two too many teams in front of us that all need to fall apart for finishing fifth to be any kind of realistic ambition. Plus we’ve still got a load of really tough games to play that it’ll be a challenge picking up maximum points from, like:

• Wolves
• Spurs
• Liverpool
• Southampton – we’ve been bad there quite a lot so this becomes a tough game
• Leicester
• Man City

Yes, we have a few games that could potentially give us all a lift, but if these players can’t have the professionalism and mental fortitude to overcome a team like Olympiakos, then they’re going to trip up against some of the ‘lesser’ teams too.

So Arteta really does have his work cut out for him because he has to turn around this negativity because if I’m thinking it, there must be a few others thinking it, and maybe some of the players are thinking it.

The good news is that I have faith that he’s taking us in the right direction. He’s made a few tactical errors, but he’s a young coach and for every poor decision like a delayed sub, he’s made five or six good decisions. So we have more reasons to be positive than negative.

And that’s what he has to do as his convincing commences today, tomorrow and Monday ahead of the game. He has to pick those players up, tell them they’re awesome (even if for some of them nothing could be further from the truth), put on the metaphorical mental bandage, the. Send them back out there. And we have to hope they get back on that horse sooner rather than later.

He’s got to lift himself too though. This is his first real proper setback. In every game up until the Olympiakos one it has felt like anything that hasn’t resulted in a win has had some sort of mitigating circumstances. Against Chelski Jorginho should have been sent off and that would have changed the complexion of the game. Palace we had a man sent off. Chelski away we had a man sent off. We missed Auba for three games. We had a lot of injuries in January. There’s been so many setbacks that you can chalk off. But on Thursday it was all Arsenal and Arteta’s own doing and whilst we’re all talking about how important it is that the team responds, it is also essential how he responds as a manager too.

I hope it’s a good response. Not because I think we’ll achieve any of the ‘outside bet’ chances of any glory this season, but because Arteta needs it in his own development.

Right, that’s yer lot for this Saturday. Catch you sexy bitches later.

The story here is of a team decimated by injuries, a man down inside 25 minutes and a goal down as well; double punishment away from home and as I spoke to my mate Ben at halftime, I said that I didn’t feel like watching the second half. After all, we’ve seen this play out a few times, haven’t we? You know the story; Arsenal go a man down away from home, wilt, then get served an absolute pasting by one of the better teams as they press their foot hard down on our necks and punish us for our poor defenders and man disadvantage. It wasn’t a fun 15 minutes and I dreaded what was about to happen in the second half.

Except it didn’t. Wilting? Nope, not Arteta’s Arsenal. ‘Not tonight’ this collective of Arsenal players said and the result was two shots and two goals having largely been forced to defend for our lives last night. It was brilliant to watch and this morning there won’t be many Arsenal fans that will be lamenting our 12th draw in the league this season.

That’s because this team formed a metaphorical roman ‘tortoise’ (when they all lock shields together), united in one, and staved off any attacks from a Chelski team who when they did get through to Leno, were stopped by our German, who certainly atoned for his blunder in the last game (that Ross Barkley header was a great save from Leno). The team were organised, difficult to break down, worked their socks off and got the reward.

And the reward was a slice of that ‘luck’ that I’ve been whinging that we hadn’t got much of lately. A Mustafi header out from a corner falls to Gabriel Martinelli, and the kid gets fortunate with a Kante slip but the rest is all on him. Bear in mind that he was running with the ball at his feet – which naturally slows you down – and he still outpaced all of the defenders behind him.

Martinelli is certainly the bright spark for this season. He’s a kid who was playing in minor leagues in Brazil who has been plucked out of nowhere and now has himself into double figures. That’s two in two for him as well and he’s essentially guaranteed himself a start away to Bournemouth. He’s out only other goal threat at the moment apart from Aubameyang.

Well, that’s strictly not true, because Hector loves a curling shot into the bottom corner. His finish was tidy but it was a weird one. It felt like it took an age to hit the net and I think even Hector looked a little surprised he managed to creep it in. It was a real ‘Champ Man’ game for us in that we had two shots and scored two goals but given the resilience of the team when faced with such adversity, it feels like it was deserved.

It also doubly feels the case because to me Chelski didn’t deserve the win at our gaff. We were skanked that day and it felt like this was some kind of realignment of karma going on.

Of course it wasn’t just luck though, because we had some really determined performances in there. Granit Xhaka, for example, played an imperious role as both central midfielder and central defender, which he was for most of the match. He was fantastic and it’s amazing to see his transformation under a manager who has given him belief. Sadly it reflects even more poorly on Emery as a coach but we move on.

I also thought the full backs were very good. Saka was grand both going forwards and backwards and for a man who I wondered how fit he was, Bellerin stepped up and gave a captain’s performance. It was epic.

I’ll quickly go through some of the less good parts before finishing off with a little more positivity though I think. Mustafi. Oh Mustafi. The enigma that is. I’ve said this a few times now and you’ve all seen it, but how can a guy play quite well for 89 minutes but still cost his team with such regularity. Mustafi won the header which set Martinelli away, but it’s hard to get away from the fact that every game he seems to play he seems to cost us a mistake through his ridiculous errors. Last night it was on display again and David Luiz paid the price for the German’s horrendous attempt at passing the ball back. Defenders make mistakes, we all know this, but if you’re keeping those mistakes to one or two a season then as a fan you can live with it if for 40-odd games you get good performances. Unfortunately with Mustafi it is more like 10 to 15 games a season in which he makes howlers. That’s not good enough for a Premier League defender and it’s why he has to be moved one or at least be a few rungs down the pecking order.

I also thought Ozil was very average yesterday. His performance was probably affected by us being a man down as it was difficult for him to find space and move defenders and midfielders apart when you’re a man down in your side, but before that he was virtually anonymous. Arteta has to keep on at him because we’ve seen better performances, but not for the status he enjoys in the team.

But let’s not dwell too much on those negatives, because so much of last night was positive. Like Azpilicueta scoring that goal that he thought was the winner, sticking his tongue like a proper little w*nker. Have that, you dirty little pr*ck. That felt good seeing Hector get that equaliser and thinking about what’s going through that Chelski players head. Happy days.

And today can be a happy day, because Arteta is slowly building a grit and determination about this team. We were good against Bournemouth but a little wasteful. We were good against Chelski but a little unfortunate (a sending off for Jorginho makes the world of difference). We were great against United. We did the business against Leeds having been poor in the first half. We were a man down for a third of the game against Palace, otherwise I think we win that game, likewise if we’d have got the rub of the green with a stonewall penalty against Sheffield United we’d have converted that into three points. In every match so far the narrative and way the game has played out has been slightly different, but we can take positives from every game so far.

We just need to start turning those draws into wins. I’ll take another draw last night though. Well done the lads.

For me it’s also a great time to take a look at new players, or potentially new players and with Lichtsteiner and Torriera playing for Switzerland and Uruguay respectively, it’s good that we have that little extra on top of our own players to watch. In a way it’s a shame Turkey or Greece won’t be there, because Soyuncu and Sokratis would have been good to see in terms of style and how they set up in their national teams.

I remember watching Rosicky closely in the 2006 World Cup just as we signed him from Dortmund and getting rather excited when he bagged two goals against the USA – one an absolute screamer from outside the box I seem to recall. It was the sort of performance that every fan loves to see and watching him rush off with his arms aloft thinking “he’s ours now – yay!” Was a great feeling.

He played a farewell match over the weekend in which a host of former teammates and ex-players of Arsenal came together in honour of the majestic Little Mozart. I didn’t follow the game closely enough because I’ve been out and about all weekend, but Cesc, Flamster and van Persie were all reunited and although two out of three have had their ties with the club muddied by their moves away, it is kind of nice to remember that 2007/8 team before the Eduardo leg break and subsequent implosion of results that cost us the league that season.

That season still reels. We had the team capable, we should have won that, but the mental strength that Arsène spent so many years trying to convince us that was there in all groups of players he’s managed, just wasn’t there to see it through.

But that season we definitely mounted a challenge and that’s all we want right now; we want to see this Arsenal team look like it could get close at least, because we haven’t had that in so long, essentially for ten years.

I remember that season we got off to a flyer and that’s what helped to carry the team through to the new year. Momentum in football can be so valuable and I seem to recall we had a bunch of home games at the start that front-loaded our season and because of the wins we picked up we ended up being able to carry the confidence through to being in contention by at least February.

That’s the best we can hope for next season I suspect. I doubt this team is going to be realistic contenders for the title but they can at least give us some positivity if they have a good start. Emery will be hopeful that when the fixtures come out on Thursday he gets dealt a good opening hand in that regard I suspect.

If he gets a few decent and winnable home games, plus one or two away in the first month, it will give hope that a bit of momentum can be built by the time you hit October. The league doesn’t really take shape until then but certainly you can see what benefit a good set of results can have. Last season’s first two away games of Liverpool and Stoke away (given our shocking record there) didn’t exactly set the tone for a good season, quite the opposite in fact, so we’d want something a little more low key I suspect.

I wouldn’t mind going up to Newcastle early, or Huddersfield, as they’re the sort of games you’d hope the new regime can pick up points at. Of course given our away form last season I guess we should take nothing for granted and expect to be under the kosh as teams know if they press us high they’ll force errors from these players.

There’ll be some who will say “you’ve got to play everyone twice so it doesn’t matter” and I get that, but as I’ve said in the 2007/8 example, sometimes it can make a huge difference if you get off to a decent enough start.

Laters people. Enjoy your Monday.

It’ll feel a bit weird doing a match preview tomorrow if I’m honest, because quite frankly, most of us just want this to all be over now. I’m talking about the season more than Arsène but there’s a feeling within me that’s a bit sad that we can’t just throw the remaining two games. Bit like on FIFA when you used to be able to just get loads of men sent off and then when you’d reached three or four reds you’d automatically have a match abandoned as a 0-3.

Sunday should have been Arsène’s passing gift to the fans. Bowing out with one final hurrah of Wengerball would have been about right.

But instead we have to go throw these motions and so I suspect we’ll have a press conference today talking about the Leicester game tomorrow night. It’ll be a weird one I suspect because the journos have already said their farewells via people like John Cross and so I suspect a few of them will be shuffling in their seats as they all try and work out what to ask now that all of the pleasantries and ceremonial gifts have been given out.

I suppose they’ll have to talk about the game and who will play and Arsène will no doubt be his professional self in talking up the desire to win. Personally though my desire is on seeing who is going to give the new manager a selection headache and so I’m hoping to see if Chambers can build on his form and get another chance to impress alongside Mavropanos, although I suspect we might be told that tomorrow night’s team will have more first teamers in it than we’ve seen in recent weeks.

Fitness wise there will obviously be questions over some of them but I would expect Özil, Mkhitaryan, Welbeck and Ramsey to all be fit and ready to fight for a start either tomorrow night or on Sunday. What I suspect will happen is Arsène will be thinking about splitting the first team down the middle and alternating for the final two away games. Perhaps the players could get one more monkey off their backs and actually win a domestic league game away from home though? That’d be nice, eh? The last thing we all want is the team going in to the new season off the back of that many away defeats. I know each new season brings about a freshness and a sense of the past being the past, but with this current crop of players and the clear mental deficiencies they’ve shown at times over the last couple of seasons, I wonder what psychological disadvantage we might end up with if we continue to fail to win away in the league.

The press love a stat like the one they’ve been busting out against us in recent weeks and if we lose these final two games then that’s all we’ll hear from them at the beginning of next season.

“Arsenal haven’t picked up a point in 2018”

“Arsenal have gone over eight months without a point in the league – the worst form of any team in Europe away”

All of that kind of rubbish. And it is rubbish because firstly, measuring Football on an annual basis is pointless, and secondly, even if we do lose the final two games of the season, we’ll have two and a half months of now Arsenal matches. So talking as if we’ve played every week for eight months and last is a misnomer.

Regardless of that though we do need to get this weight from around the teams necks. I don’t think it will do them any good to go into the summer off the back of that form. We’ll just have to wait and see if we get the types of performances the quality of player we have deserve tomorrow night and on Sunday.

Right, that’s it from me. More thoughts on the game tomorrow. Until then, adios amigos!

It’ll feel a bit weird doing a match preview tomorrow if I’m honest, because quite frankly, most of us just want this to all be over now. I’m talking about the season more than Arsène but there’s a feeling within me that’s a bit sad that we can’t just throw the remaining two games. Bit like on FIFA when you used to be able to just get loads of men sent off and then when you’d reached three or four reds you’d automatically have a match abandoned as a 0-3.

Sunday should have been Arsène’s passing gift to the fans. Bowing out with one final hurrah of Wengerball would have been about right.

But instead we have to go throw these motions and so I suspect we’ll have a press conference today talking about the Leicester game tomorrow night. It’ll be a weird one I suspect because the journos have already said their farewells via people like John Cross and so I suspect a few of them will be shuffling in their seats as they all try and work out what to ask now that all of the pleasantries and ceremonial gifts have been given out.

I suppose they’ll have to talk about the game and who will play and Arsène will no doubt be his professional self in talking up the desire to win. Personally though my desire is on seeing who is going to give the new manager a selection headache and so I’m hoping to see if Chambers can build on his form and get another chance to impress alongside Mavropanos, although I suspect we might be told that tomorrow night’s team will have more first teamers in it than we’ve seen in recent weeks.

Fitness wise there will obviously be questions over some of them but I would expect Özil, Mkhitaryan, Welbeck and Ramsey to all be fit and ready to fight for a start either tomorrow night or on Sunday. What I suspect will happen is Arsène will be thinking about splitting the first team down the middle and alternating for the final two away games. Perhaps the players could get one more monkey off their backs and actually win a domestic league game away from home though? That’d be nice, eh? The last thing we all want is the team going in to the new season off the back of that many away defeats. I know each new season brings about a freshness and a sense of the past being the past, but with this current crop of players and the clear mental deficiencies they’ve shown at times over the last couple of seasons, I wonder what psychological disadvantage we might end up with if we continue to fail to win away in the league.

The press love a stat like the one they’ve been busting out against us in recent weeks and if we lose these final two games then that’s all we’ll hear from them at the beginning of next season.

“Arsenal haven’t picked up a point in 2018”

“Arsenal have gone over eight months without a point in the league – the worst form of any team in Europe away”

All of that kind of rubbish. And it is rubbish because firstly, measuring Football on an annual basis is pointless, and secondly, even if we do lose the final two games of the season, we’ll have two and a half months of now Arsenal matches. So talking as if we’ve played every week for eight months and last is a misnomer.

Regardless of that though we do need to get this weight from around the teams necks. I don’t think it will do them any good to go into the summer off the back of that form. We’ll just have to wait and see if we get the types of performances the quality of player we have deserve tomorrow night and on Sunday.

Right, that’s it from me. More thoughts on the game tomorrow. Until then, adios amigos!

I sort of am. To tell you the truth, I’m quite glad we’ve got a bit of a wait before the next game, because it’ll hopefully allow absence to make the ol’ heart grow fonder. It’s fair to say that I’m not too fond of Arsenal right now. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love them. I just think a little bit of space will help me.

What also doesn’t help is the inevitable “we must respond”, “we need to bounce back”, or as Gabriel has put it “reflect and put us back in check“. It’s all a bit boring, though, I’m afraid. We’ve heard all of this for the last decade. For the last two years though, this team has exhibited a painful lack of mental strength when it comes to winning big football matches away from home. I’m pretty sure we’re at the stage in which even the Tiny Totts have a better away record against the top six. 

There has to be something wrong with the mentality of the squad though – in these big away games I mean – because there’s no way that any team in the top four should have as shocking records as we do. Not without there being some kind of undiagnosed psychological problem.  

I dunno, maybe I’m just still a bit too sore after those two displays last week, and so I’m just getting a little melodramatic. But if I’m thinking about what the problem is and why this keeps happening, surely Arsenal must also be analysing it, right? They’d be mad not to. Sometimes you can put results down to a fluke, a freak incident or something unusual, but when it repeatedly keeps happening you review each case and try to diagnose what common thread runs through it.

Is it mentality after half time? Does Arsène need to do more assessment rather than the well-known reflection he normally prefers? Is it the tactical set up? Does he need to rotate more to keep players fresher if we’re going to try to play the ‘rope-a-dope’ tactic we tried on Sunday? 

Whatever it is, we’ll never win the league unless it can be addressed, because as soon as we put a run together of wins we’ll eventually come up against a big side and we’ll once again wilt under pressure. The Arseblogger has offered some positive thoughts this morning and he’s right in what he says about our next half a dozen games: they’re all winnable. But then we have Chelski and whilst I’ll go into the game with all the hope in the world that we can get three points, I won’t truly believe it. I won’t be confident in any way, shape or form, because quite frankly I have no data to back up and kind of confidence. 

Last season we beat United at home to arrest a terrible run against them in the league. This season we did the same against Chelski. We have shown that at home the team are capable of results. But this time last week all we could read about our Arsenal side are that they had only lost one away game in 2016. So you’d think the side has a culture of confidence away from home that breeds more confidence? I keep seeing how our toxic home support is contributing towards the problems we have, but there’s no element of that in away games. In fact it’s the opposite. If we go down to an opponent, the away fans will sing even louder, so blaming any kind of team performance on the fans is a complete red herring. Especially when you consider Tuesday night and Sunday’s performance. 

To be fair to Arsène, he has always said the fans aren’t the cause behind the team performances, that the players need to give them something to cheer about. Well they’ve got just under a week to work out how to do that by reflecting on what has gone wrong, hopefully not doing a single interview about ‘bouncing back’, then just actually bouncing back against West Brom on Boxing Day. 

Just finally, on a non-related football note, let’s all have a thought or two about the horrible news story coming out of Berlin yesterday. I don’t care what religion you have, if you deliberately go out to cause other people injury and death, then whatever god you believe in, will not welcome you with open arms when you think you’re about to reach the gates of paradise. These people are innocent people, going about their lives at a time and f the year in which peace and love is supposed to be at its greatest. You don’t get to paradise by doing what you’ve done. You only get damnation. 

Right, that’s me for the day, so I’ll catch you tomorrow.

The performance against that lot was so convincing, that it has many wondering whether this Arsenal team is finally clicking, whether we’re finally starting to see the development of some kind of momentum. The good news – from what I’ve seen – is there aren’t too many people who are getting carried away with themselves and talking up the title. Yet. We’ve all been here before you see, so we know that this Arsenal team has disappointed as much as its ‘wowed’, so everyone is trying to keep a level head. Makes sense.

But you’re all starting to ‘what if?’ now, aren’t you? Come on, you can admit it to me, because I’m thinking it too.

What if we can keep our fitness of key players?

What if we can find the right balance of rotating, to keep players fresh?

What if we can get enough momentum that it can carry us through in to the new year?

What if Alexis does end up working as a centre forward, and we have a mobile and rotating front three, that can cause defences trouble all season?

What if this win removes the psychological shackles that have so clearly affected the team in games like Chelski?

Lots of questions, with very few answers, at this early stage in the season. But the questions are ones that have at least been built on a foundation of form for the team. We’ve lost one game of our opening eight and we play Basle on Wednesday with an opportunity to make it nine. Things are looking rosy in the Arsenal garden.

But I’m still not convinced we’ve got enough to win the league, not compared to last season, anyway. Last season United had van Gaal and we knew his limitations. Chelski were imploding with Mourinho and Pellegrini was the flawed Manchester City manager. Even at this stage last season, having only signed Cech, I still felt like we had a better chance than this season. 

A lot of that has to do with the fact that not many teams are dropping points at the top. This weekend just gone we’ve seen United, Liverpool, City and the Tiny Totts all grab wins. So whilst our victory will have done the power of good for morale, from a functional point of view, we’ve essentially just tread water in comparison to our rivals. 

I think this season will be more like any other season, whereby a high points total of the late 80s is going to win you the league, because already that’s looking like how the league will shape up. That means very little margin for error in games like Burnley away next weekend, or Swansea and Boro at home for the other fixtures in October. Last season, even at this early stage, I felt like you could afford more slip ups than this season. So that’s why I’m still to be convinced that we’ve got as good a chance as in 2015/16.

Still, the start we’ve had is encouraging and when you look at our next three games you’d hope we could get maximum points before we play those dirty Totts at the beginning of November. If we have picked up 12 points from Burnley, Swansea, Boro and Sunderland, then you’d think we’d be in a great position to get one over on them, which would be a lovely present for me on my birthday.

But we still don’t really know who Arsène’s best XI is, which is a strange feeling indeed, and perhaps one which is useful for us. The style of Arsenal under Wenger has always been such that you could pretty much pick his starting XI before any game. From an opposition manager perspective that’s rather handy because it allows you to plan. But with the size of the squad we have, as well as the players who all offer something slightly different, perhaps it makes us a little bit less predictable to set up against. Long may that continue, because whilst we all know the style of Arsène’s teams, mixing it up a little bit with personnel at least makes the team more unpredictable.

So how far can this team go? Well, last season taught us that if you have enough momentum and belief like Leicester did, then you can win the league. Whilst Arsenal have the squad depth and can certainly build momentum in these early stages of the season, the real test will come after our next defeat, which will happen eventually. And when it does, it will be a mark of how good this team really are when we see the reaction, either to respond to defeat or to wilt. 

I hope they respond. When it happens. 

Until tomorrow.

From the weekend I took comfort in the fact the Spuds drew, but it feels like this title is Leicester’s now, especially because of some of the breaks they’re getting. They now sit top on 69 points and need another ten just to match the maximum points we can get in seven games. Were it any other side we’d have given up, but this Leicester team are getting wins like Champions, so perhaps we should forget the names on their badge and start treating them like a Chelski or a City? 

When it does eventually happen, I and many other Arsenal fans will be asking plenty of questions about the manager and the players he is in charge of, but until that happens I’ll be holding on to my hope and getting behind the team.

It would be the lesser of all evils though. If a Spud meltdown happens then that’s at least some consolation. I’m not sure it will happen though. United aren’t great and Stoke will have nothing to play for in their next few games, so I suspect we’ll see that lot pick up more points, so we just have to keep going and take care of ourselves. That is the party line from the club.

There’s another line that the manager enjoys peddling too, which is one of ‘mental strength’ and the attitude of the team, which also came out on an article on the official site yesterday. Arsène called the team ‘mentally pure‘. He was referring to the Watford result in isolation, but can anyone give me a heads up as to what the bloody hell that means? I have no clue. Is he suggesting that they are untainted psychologically? Because if he is, I’d ask him not to tug that wool so far over our eyes; it scratches a bit and means we have trouble seeing what’s in front of us. What I saw on Saturday was a formula that should have been our blueprint long ago – more mobility, fluidity of player positions in attack and a team who trusts every other player on the pitch – but you’d be a brave man to suggest that the team were mentally untainted after what we’ve seen in 2016. We’ve seen an Arsenal team give up a slender lead in the league and turn it in to a massive chasm by April. We’ve seen players so devoid of confidence that when at home against a relegation threatened Swansea, they choke the second they are behind, running out of ideas and letting their heads go down. We’ve seen an Arsenal side who contrived to let the worst United team in my living memory pick up three points. None of that suggests any kind of mental purity to me.

But hey, let me stop myself for a second, because I did say I’d try to be a little more hopeful, which is hardly the route I’m heading along at the moment is it?

Aside from the comment about mental purity, he is right in his assertion of the balance of Elneny and Coquelin sitting behind the front four, which leads me to hope that we’ll see less Ramsey/Flamini and more emphasis on developing a midfield pairing that brings balance in future. I just hope that we’re looking at other options that will compliment players in the middle of the park in the summer. There are certain players that simply don’t work together and when you have spaces opening up to replace Arteta, Rosicky and Flamini in the middle of the park, you need to make sure you get it right. Elneny was not an expensive buy, but he’s proving to be a useful one. Let’s hope we can find more of his ilk in the summer. 

The hope is that Jack Wilshere will be fit and able to play a part, but we’ll just have to see about that, depending on whether he has been hung, drawn and quartered for crimes against humanity. He was pictured outside a nightclub at some ungodly hour at the weekend and all of the papers have jumped on the story. Of course it isn’t great to see and you’d think with all of his previously publicised issues he’d probably try to avoid any spotlight like this, but really, is this anything for the world to be getting too excited about? A twenty-something male is in a nightclub with friends and there’s a bit of an argument. Is that something that never happens? 

It doesn’t set the right example, he should probably be a little more careful, but this is a massive storm in a teacup and frankly I don’t know why I’m even dedicating two paragraphs to mention it. But there doesn’t seem to be much else Arsenal related to talk about at the moment, so that might be why, I suppose.

Anyway, it’s Monday, we’ve all got stuff to do (most of us boring work/school) so I’ll leave you to yours and I’ll go get mine over and done with.

Peace out.