I didn’t get it.

But then the Ornbomb was dropped yesterday and it became clear of the machinations that had been underway behind closed doors at Highbury House and at the Brentford Community stadium; a deal was being struck that suited all parties given the situation. Arsenal would take Raya on loan for the season for £3million. Brentford would have him sign a year extension to protect his value. Arsenal would get a ‘keeper much closer to challenging Ramsdale than Turner. And Matty Turner’s £7million plus add on’s deal was ratified and confirmed by the club yesterday.

And I gotta tell ya, this is some smart moves from the Arsenal hierarchy, for sure. They have given Ramsdale what they need because he knows he has to fight for his place and we all know that this is when he is at his best. They have given Brentford the opportunity to avoid some unpleasentness by losing Raya for a cut down price later down the line this transfer window, or for free next summer. That will potentially help in relations between the club, especially if future business has been done. And Arsenal have secured a buy option at the end of next season if Raya proves he is the best. At the beginning of this window Brentford wanted £40million for Raya. There were no takers. So Arsenal came in and said we’ll do a deal that works for you guys and we want to protect a reasonable price in case he ‘bangs’ in an Arsenal shirt.

This is a fantastic deal for Arsenal and ensures the competitive nature of Arteta’s squad that we all know he is so desperate to maintain.

Whether that is the last of the incomings remains to be seen, but the outgoings now have to take priority. We need to sort out futures for Tierney, Balogun, Cedric, Holding, Pepe and maybe even Elneny, although I’m sure he’s happy as a cheerleading role. But there is more work to do.

Including, it seems, with Charlie Patino, who is set to join Swansea on loan for the season. Apparently Patino wanted out for a permanent move, but Arteta and Edu have spoken to him, mapped out what his future looks like and he is apparently happy to do one more loan before a more permanent decision is made on his future. And I think that’s the right move. He’s a very talented kid, we all have high hopes for him, but he’s only 19 and one more full season impressing in the Championship could be really good for him. His contract runs until 2025 and if he explodes next season with Swansea then he’ll either come back with an increased value and we can get more money for him, or he’ll be slotted in to the first team.

I do wonder if that is what Arteta has said to him, you know? We have Thomas Partey sticking around for this season and whilst Patino and Partey should not be compared at this stage, Patino is a good ball distributor, he is a deeper-lying playmaker and with Partey reaching one year left on his deal next summer, perhaps Arteta has told Patino that he sees him taking over the mantel of Partey if he’s got enough men’s football under his belt. There might be some that would question the jump from Swansea in the Championship to Arsenal towards the top of the Premier League, but let’s not forget how a certain Jack Wilshere went to Bolton in the Championship and played for Bolton at age 18, so at just one year older there’s no reason why Patino can’t ready himself for a first team place next season if he excels.

And it is another smart move from the Arsenal hierarchy. Patino loses nothing by going out on loan as opposed to a permanent deal, Arsenal don’t have to sell a promising player before he could skyrocket in his value, plus if his trajectory is as good as we hope then we get a player ready to step in to the first team at age 20 and compete for a place in an already competitive squad.

This is all good news.

And I think I will leave it at that for today. With good news and good vibes towards the club and the work they are doing. The weekend fast approaches and the kick off to the new season, with all of the hopes that it will be a good one.

Catch you wonderful people tomorrow or, if you fancy, join us on the Same Old Arsenal pod this evening from 7.30pm here.

• We have now conceded more goals than West Brom, who are bottom
• Only Watford have dropped as many points as Arsenal have this season from winning positions
• Sam Clucas has three career goals – all this season and all against Arsenal
• Swansea haven’t managed to score three goals all season
• Alexandre Lacazette has just 39 touches of the ball – Walcottian

It’s hard to reconcile this Arsenal team with the one that Arsène Wenger coached four odd years ago. The football isn’t beautiful. We used to be beautifully flawed, but now we’re just flawed, rudderless and out of ideas and without anybody on the sideline who can see where the problems are.

Swansea coach Carlos Carvalhal must have been very happy when he saw our team sheet, because it was as predictable as our pedestrian passing. Arsène went for four at the back, Elneny holding in midfield, with Xhaka and Ramsey in front of him. He went for Özil and Iwobi behind Lacazette and his intention was clearly to dominate the midfield with an extra body.

But that just didn’t happen. It didn’t happen because Swansea are not 14 year-old school boys. They are a professional Premier League football team – with a manager who has an idea of a game plan and knows how to play against Arsenal. It isn’t hard with our defence though, is it?

“Lads, it’s Arsenal today, so we need shape, discipline and them to sideways pass it. Then when they eventually lose the ball through a turnover, we need channel running and we need to collectively break as a unit, in which they’ll have no response”

That’s what Forest did. That’s what any team worth their salt when Arsenal visit them should do because we are a pedestrian team in possession with just one man who makes movement going forward. And he’s our main creator.

Mesut Özil would be our if his mind to sign a new deal at Arsenal. He is, quite frankly, better than this creaking old barge that Arsène Wenger is managing. He made movements, runs, looked for teammates, even got an assist with a sumptuous pass to Nacho for yet another goal from the Spaniard. He’s making the right noises, Arsenal clearly think he wants to stay, but if I was him I wouldn’t touch a piece of contract paper until the season is done because honestly, right now, he’s better than what he’s playing in.

Petr Cech has been good this season and every once in a while there’s a rick in him, but that’s because of his age I guess, although we had the same last season away to Chelski, so perhaps this is just him. We need somebody new but that isn’t happening this window.

Shkodran Mustafi is an enigma. And not an entertaining one because for every good game there are two bad ones.

Granit Xhaka. Jesus. What on Earth is he doing in this team? He is woefully out of form, should be dropped, but won’t because Arsène doesn’t punish players for poor performance, he mollycoddles them.

And that is one of the biggest problems we have. The Colney Cresh may not be referenced much these days but it is still there, where players are babied and treated well and never drilled or held accountable for their poor performances or actions. Xhaka has had one too many brain switch off moments this season and Arsène should be rolling the dice and dropping him at the weekend for Ainsley. There’s little risk in the league any more. It’s done. We’re done. Top four is eight points away and with a team that can’t win away from home that is 100% not happening. We’ve lost seven this season. We still have to go to Tottenham and United. We have City at home in a few weeks. We will probably end the season with ten losses. TEN! That’s the form of a team that is a little better than mid table. That’s a quarter of all games played this season being losses. That’s a team who cannot build momentum.

Because they are managed by somebody who is, sadly, out of ideas. There’s no more wiggle room. The planning is out the window. The team dynamic just doesn’t look there. It’s just a collective of players who are asked to turn up at the same place and the same time each week. They don’t play well together.

Yesterday we missed drive. We missed movement. Ramsey looked knackered. Iwobi lost the ball three times in the first 12 minutes. Lacazette looked disinterested. Xhaka did little. Elneny made a couple of decent tackles but we all know how limited he is. Swansea saw what Chelski did to us in that first half and replicated it. Elneny was effectively pushed back into defence and we ended up as a pseudo back three. It was a classic example of Arsène thinking we could dictate what an opponent does but in fact the reverse happened.

Afterwards he pointed to a psychological problem away from home. Well sir, I put it to you that it is YOUR job to motivate the players, install confidence, give them a plan to believe in and turn this around.

I have no faith that Arsène will do that. Not for a second. He is done. Out of ideas and this is not the first time this season (and at times last season) that the players have looked like they’re not playing for him any more. They’re not. They can’t be. Why else do you get situations like Lacazette not offering movement? Like Xhaka not tracking Clucas’ rum into the box for their equaliser?

I don’t think the players intentionally think “let’s be sh*t to get rid of Arsène” but I do think there isn’t a concern that there will be consequences for their actions. Because they all know there won’t be.

Cech will play on Saturday because there is no competition for him. Mustafi too. Bellerin as well, who was another one who had a poor game but who I thought was just “less sh*t” than so many of the others. Xhaka gets his free pass. Only Iwobi could, and should, be worried about his position because Mkhitaryan should walk into this team in his place. The Nigerian has shown nothing to suggest he’s worthy of keeping a new signing out.

Which then brings me finally – because I’m getting bored of ranting about Arsenal given how many times I’ve done it this season – to Lacazette. He looks lost. He looked uninterested yesterday. He’s on his knees confidence-wise and with Aubameyang coming in I can’t see it getting any better for him. That’s a real shame because I think we have a player in him but he’s been starved of service because he’s played most of the season with an individual in Alexis, or somebody as budget as Iwobi, with only Özil offering anything like the quality he should have expected when he joined Arsenal. Maybe Mkhitaryan can offer some more quality, but if that is for Auba and not Laca, then you have to feel for the Frenchman.

We’re used to Arsène breaking young defenders, but now he’s doing it with forward players? So what does he have left?

It’s time for change. But we’ve got at least four months more of this. Sigh.

So tonight we get to forget about all of the “what ifs” and permutations on players and look at how we could potentially get our season back on track against a Swansea team who have struggled all season.

Or we’ll lament yet another away day in which the players simply haven’t cut it.

It’s safe to say we are one of the Premier League’s biggest ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ teams that exist this season. At home we are one of the top teams in the league and yet away from home all of that confidence drains away and we look like a rabble of schoolyard kids, unable to string passes together, devoid of creativity in the final third, with teams understanding exactly how to counter our approach.

The better teams just move the ball quicker than us when we’re away from home and in doing that they isolate our players in certain parts of the pitch. They also work the ball well and rely on our complete lack of a midfield at times to overload our defenders.

The worse teams just sit. They remain dogged in defence and ask an Arsenal team who struggle without Özil to break us down. They then play to their own strengths by being good at set pieces, or by countering quickly, or in some instances just rely on mistakes from referees (see Watford and West Brom ‘penalties’ this season as an example).

Swansea will do the latter tonight. They have their blueprint by the way they suffocated the life out of the Liverpool game on their own patch and I’m expecting Arsenal to have the same resistance put before them. Which is why these types of games require quick responses. At home this season we’ve been good at getting goals early and I think that has helped the home matches from being frustrating for us. We’ve caught teams cold like we did against Palace the weekend before last and that has meant that teams have been forced to be drawn out. At least a little anyway.

So tonight if Swansea are leading or level without conceding at the break, I worry for us, because they will get confident and build on that, which means I’m hoping that the rest from the weekend ensures a vibrant and quick-passing Arsenal take to the pitch to move Swansea around this evening.

Swansea played at the weekend and it looked like a lot of their first teamers played too, so the hope is that we’ll be fresher, which I also hope means we can stretch them.

I suspect we’ll see Mkhitaryan and I hope it’s from the start. I’d be surprised though. Our last game saw us beat Chelski and I think Arsène will have seen how much better we looked in the second half and will go with the same starting XI but with Elneny making way for Monreal. I’m hoping that Kolasinac makes it back into the team because I think we’re going to see more of the ball going forward and there’s no doubting his ability when in the opponent’s’ half of the pitch. If we play with three at the back he has cover though.

Midfield will most likely see Granit but then we have a question because both Jack and Rambo are fit and Wenger loves them both. My money would be on Jack as Rambo is still recovering from injury, although I wouldn’t rule out the Welshman being deployed further forward with Özil and Lacazette. I’m no Ramsey fan in that position but hey, compared to Iwobi there is a massive gulf in class, so I do wonder if that might be an option. As better as Iwobi was against Chelski in the second half he still looks short on confidence and form and should have been taking out of the limelight months ago, but perhaps it tells more of our lack of options in those positions, than anything else.

So it’s three at the back I’d like to see, with more from our final third attacking options, but thankfully the arrival of Özil back into the starting XI should help us. He was once again brilliant against Chelski and had looked very good for some time now. Perhaps he’s playing for a big move somewhere else but for now we can just appreciate what we’ve got and how we’re going to use him. We need to see the best from him tonight I’d wager. He’s the type of man who can thread the eye of that needle and if Swansea sit deep and compact then we’ll need that special player to play that pass.

Hopefully we see enough minutes with Mkhi and Özil because I’m fascinated to see what those two together could accomplish. But I suspect we might only get a little glimpse tonight.

Right, that’s me done, so off for another day of work whilst waiting patiently for the football to arrive.

Catch you all tomorrow.

So in what is this winters latest plot we saw the development late last night that most of us must have expected following Dortmund’s public statement about Aubameyang on Saturday: an agreement on price finally being met, communicated through the clubs’ unofficial sources. For Dortmund it was Kicker but for us it’s the BBC’s very own David Ornstein, who said that a deal is there to be done if Dortmund can source a replacement.

So actually there is clearly no deal that is close to being done. There won’t be any Giroud-shaped loan deal offered to Dortmund and by the sounds of it he doesn’t want to leave London. So that means Dortmund have until Wednesday to find somebody suitable and if they don’t then they’ll hang on to their prize asset.

So now we wait. Having made Dortmund wait all this time for Arsenal to put in what they consider an appropriate bid for their best player, we now have to wait, hoping that they don’t dither over who they want to bring in. But frankly if they did could Arsenal real blame them? After all it has been clear for some time that we’ve been in for him and it’s clear Dortmund and Arsenal have been talking for longer than the week and a bit since Ivan was spotted in Germany. So if for whatever reason this deal doesn’t get done due to time restraints, once again we will all need to seriously question whether Ivan can run a football club effectively from a player acquisition perspective.

The CEO has put a lot of eggs in this elite player signing, so if we come out of this window empty handed then it’ll be him that bares the brunt of the ire from fans, media, etc.

There’s plenty of people out there who have said that the £60million figure is too high and that we shouldn’t be going that high to get him but I actually think it’s not that bad. Let’s not forget how much Barca paid for Dembele, or Coutinho, or how Liverpool shelled out for a central defender. The prices are inflated everywhere except Arsenal, where we offload players for a song because we just want to get any old rope in for them, so we suddenly think £60million seems expensive. But we’d be getting an elite striker in here folks. In January, which is always a window that everybody knows usually has no value, so I think we should all be happy with that. Six months ago we probably would have had to go to £70million or £80million for him. So to me £60million seems like a fair price.

It does sound like there’s a deal to be done. Dortmund would probably not want a player who has one foot out the door and come the summer they’re also less likely to get as much cash for the player I’d suspect. So I think they’ll probably work just as hard to get this transfer sorted and get the squad unity back too. Having spent so long telling us that the Alexis situation doesn’t affect the players Arsène is now admitting that it did in fact have an impact, which is what Dortmund are going through at the moment, so it’s in their interests to find themselves another striking option as much as it’s in Arsenal’s.

What I don’t want to countenance is a move to strengthen Chelski’s Champions League attempts by sanctioning any move by them to bring Giroud in. Lest we forget how they dangled Demba Ba in front of us on deadline day one year before suddenly whipping him away and leaving us with nobody up front as an option. I for one would be more than satisfied for Arsenal to return the favour this window. Especially if it pisses Chelski off even more.

I’ve already stated my case on how we would use Giroud as a ‘Plan B’ anyway so I won’t reiterate that now, but the important thing for me is that we have different options, not that we give other rivals different options.

Quite what else is happening today I’m not sure. Arsène’s already done his press conference and so there’s nothing new to add there. I suspect the team will be travelling tomorrow to Swansea so it’s probably another training session on the cards and another opportunity to bed in Mkhitaryan with his new teammates. Then the only question will be whether he starts in Wales tomorrow evening.

So we play the waiting game. We wait for any updates on a shiny new signing. We wait for tomorrow’s game. We wait to hear from Kicker and The Ornacle. Waiting, waiting and a little more waiting. But soon, thankfully, this is all going to be over – transfer window wise I mean – and we can get back to cursing our atrocious away form.

Catch you all tomorrow.

For the third time this week we came from behind and whilst it’s a great feeling to ultimately overcome adversity, I wouldn’t mind a bit more of the stress-free stuff we all saw against Bournemouth at home over a month ago.

Perhaps it’s just the way we do things. Perhaps that’s just how we get motivated. Perhaps that’s how this team has to deliver. Perhaps there are a few ‘cajones’ after all. Well, we’ll find out next week away to City, but at least we’ve been given somewhat of a response since that Watford game.

Arsene started pretty much the exact team that we had all expected, which meant total rotation from midweek and in came everybody for the usual weekend fixture. Swansea did what you’d expect and sat men deep with an intention to hit us on the break. I feared that Swansea would do to us what they’ve done on plenty of occasions before but ion truth this isn’t the same sort of side. Those sides have been built on a passing game that wrestled the retention and possession stats from us and suffocated us on our own turf. This one was set up to be compact, hit on the break, take their chances and to be fair to them, when Clucas slotted past Cech on the angle, I wondered if this would be the archetypal Championship Manager simulation skanking that was such a fixture in my teenage years of playing the game.

It was poor from Cech I have to say. The threaded ball in to Clucas was alright, but it looked to me like a Petr `Cech from six or seven years ago would have scampered out and collected that ball. But he came, hesitated, then came again too late and we’re one down.

There wasn’t really much of a reaction in that first half and I have to admit to being rather worried when the halftime whistle went. We’d troubled Fabianski once with a good effort by Alexis, but that was pretty much the sum of our attacking in that first half and the fear was that we’d get more of the same frustration in the second.

But Arsenal came out early for kick off and the Arsenal players had a different look about them from the first touch of the second 45. There was more urgency, there were more ‘gamble’ balls in to zones which had higher risk/reward stakes and we started to see the forward players move more and force Swansea to lose their shape.

You can only really say this when it happens, but it felt like the goal was coming. We were getting closer, Fabianski seemed busier and when Kolasinac found himself with space after a deflected ball across the box, he swept home with remarkable accuracy I thought. A really composed finish from a left back who is fast becoming one of my favourite players.

I thought he was man of the match yesterday and not just because his goal and assist for Ramsey, but also because of his general all-round play. He loves getting forward but he also feels a very stable full back. He’s not the best defensively in the world, just stable, which when you are playing in the formation we’re playing in, it’s good enough. I think it also helps him that he has Monreal behind him. The Spaniard mops up any time the opposition get in behind on our left hand side and given that he’s been a left back for most of his career, it offers some comfort for Kolasinac that he can move forward with less risk to being exposed, i’d say.

We got the win and it was thanks to another goal from Ramsey and i’m starting to believe that if he can avoid injury, we’ll find him with 15 goals in all competitions before the end of the season. He’s already popping up in those spaces and yesterday’s goal was an archetypal Frank Lampard position from which he needs to be more often. A great pick out from Sead too by the way.

I thought the front three were better in the second half and certainly Ozil had more impact on the game, but Alexis was a little off. It’s a shame really because I was hoping to see more of the same stuff we had last weekend but in truth that was never going to happen against a team who just wanted to stick bodies on the edge of the box and be compact. Lacazette also found it tough going and never really had much of a sniff all afternoon. I suspect he’ll find more chances next weekend even, because City won’t sit as deep as Swabsea, so let’s just wait and see what he can produce.

Overall this looks like a routine win and on balance of play and with the benefit of our old friend hindsight you’d say it was, but it had a few elements which made it a little less comfortable than I’d have liked. I still don’t believe we’ll get anything from City next weekend so this result was important for us.

Catch you all in the morrow.

Laters people.

its when the chips are so heavily stacked in our favour, you see, because that is usually when we manage to truly eff it up. We had a great performance last weekend, we’re at home, Swansea are in a poor run of form, they have a few players out injured (Renato Sanchez, Wilfred Bony and Martin Olsson I believe) and we have no fresh injury concerns; everything seems to be in our favour and I don’t like that one bit.

my fear compares from that horrible word: complacency. If any team at the top end of the Premier League are guilty of it, it’s Arsenal, so that’s the main reason for my fear today. And usually when Swansea have come to Arsenal there has been a bit of the old ‘c word’ going around so my hope is that we see none of that today.

Which means the tone and tempo of the game needs to start early. If Arsenal start by moving the ball quickly, by pulling Swansea around the pitch and by forcing them to lose shape, we’ll be in with a good shout of three points today. Paul Clement set his team up to be difficult to break down away from home against the Totts and I have to assume he’ll use that as the blueprint for today’s game. They’ll be compact, they’ll have a midfield that sits in and they’ll look to frustrate us.

we’ve been getting a few early goals at home though, so if that happens again today then it throws his gameplay out the window and they’ll be forced to come at us. So that’s why a high tempo in the early skirmishes simply has to be Soup de jour.

I suspect we’ll see the weekend team in full action today which means Cech, Bellerin, Koscielny, Mertesacker, Montreal, Kolasinac, Xhaka, Ramsey, Özil, Alexis and Lacazette as your starting XI. The emphasis will be for those attacking players to open up Swansea in probably quite confined spaces but the movement and ability of our front three should see that happen today. I hope.

A game like today also lends itself to Ramsey though, because if he’s going to be spending more time in the attacking third of the pitch then it gives us another option for the overload. The trick will be to ensure that when the ball is turned over, that he’s at least covering space because isolating Xhaka on his own in front of our back three has cost us all season. Mustafi may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s a game like today where he excels, because he’s always aiming to win the ball higher up the pitch and on a team that wants to break when we’ve committed bodies forward, that comes in handy I always feel with someone like Xhaka, because there’s always two more defenders behind in the central positions. There’s rumours he could be available today but I’d be surprised if he’s risked by Arsène.

The Swansea team will include a back four that will most likely have Britton, Carroll and Clucas sat deep in front of them so I expect it’ll be a compact game. In Ayew and Abraham though they do have pace, so what we need to ensure is that if and when they break, we have covering bodies. They are sure to try to isolate themselves up against Big Per so really it’s on Koscielny and Monreal to ensure that doesn’t happen too often.

I read this morning that only Chelski have a better Premier League record at the Emirates than Swansea and they’ve won at Arsenal three times since promotion and so we should be under no illusions that they could do a number on us today. They’ll have a game plan, they’ll look to frustrate and if we see ‘sleepy Arsenal’ then I worry that it will be an afternoon of anguish.

but if we have any aspirations of getting back to the top table then this is the sort of game we need to win. Next weekend it’s Man City away and right now it looks like we aren’t getting anything from that game, which means that matches like today become doubly important.

It’s on these players to perform and I want to see a statement today that they’re still reeling from Mr Deeney’s comments.

Go out there today and lay down a marker, Arsenal.

The AGM took place yesterday and as usual it was an affair of relatively pointless corporate nothingness, but unlike usual it was presided over by a man who couldn’t look any further distances from the fanbase and the ‘values’ of the club if he tried.

I didn’t attend but I’ve seen the videos, in which a grumbling old man tries to dismiss fellow shareholders, ignore questions from the floor, lose control of a meeting and for some – like the lady who asked a question about board diversity – probably feel a little insulted.

We all know that the AGM is an exercise that Stan would shut down in a heartbeat. He’s a man with whom all of this ‘transparency’ is probably foreign to, but – and I never thought I’d say this – thanks to Alisher Usmanov and his stake in the club – this ceremonial event must take place.

And boy, did it, because the spicy outcome at the end of the AGM was something we haven’t seen before. A mass voting against by minor shareholders from the floor, with Josh and Sir Chips voted against with what is nothing more than a symbolic gesture, but a gesture nonetheless.

The evening before we’d had to read all about the desire of the Kroenke’s, about how they said most fans were ‘in the middle’ when it came to their stewardship, that the fans were ‘rabid’ and I suspect that they even thought it was a vocal minority.

‘Fraid not Stan. These people are shareholders and yes, they have little power to take any control from you, but these people are usually the  ‘moderates’. These aren’t the crazies that foam at the mouth on Arsenal Fan TV. These are those ‘middle’s you talk about. And they made it clear what the general fanbase think about you. 

Sure, the Kroenke’s won’t care a lot about us and sure they just care about their investment, but at least they will have got the message loud and clear: most people want you out.

That’s the best we can hope for.

Afterwards Arsène made his way to his usual presser (having spent a bit of time with fans to be fair to him and Gazidis) and gave us a bit of team news and it all sounds good. No fresh injury news and the return to full training for Chambers, who will most likely be seen next Thursday at home to Red Star I’d imagine.

But most importantly we have all of the first team fully rested and available for Saturday and that most glorious of things: a three o’clock kick off. I genuinely can’t wait.

Arsène also spoke about how he wanted Theo to stay at the club in what you’d expect to be a stock position he’d take for one of his players. But I suspect that behind closed doors that both are talking about what his future holds. Theo has become something of a lightning rod for ‘the comfort of Arsenal’ and whilst I can understand those comments we don’t really know exactly what is happening behind closed doors. 

For all we know Theo and Arsène could have tried to find him a club last summer. Or they could be talking now about a January or May move. What is clear is that he doesn’t seem to work in the current system and he certainly isn’t a first team regular any more. So if he truly believes he can make it on the plane for England next summer then I think his situation will be reviewed in January because he isn’t starting in the first team any time soon that’s for sure.

I think that’s it for me for another day. Catch you all with a match preview tomorrow.

And now we have a guy who has swept all before him, suddenly looking a bit bemused by it all, with a collective of players who are exactly like our lot: can go quite easily from sublime to ridiculous.

I’ve stopped short of saying that I thought City would never implode like they did yesterday, but they have very similar outlook and approach to the game that we do, so in one sense it certainly is very believable. Ruling them out of the league though, isn’t, to my mind. It isn’t, because I’ve realised something this morning as I got up and crunched my Waitrose own-brand version of Special K; every team in the top six has now gone on a prolonged unbeaten run. 

At the beginning of the season it was City. Then it was the Spuds who hadn’t lost. Then it was us who had only lost on the opening day. Then people realised what a streak Chelski were on. Now it’s United that everybody is talking about from an unbeaten perspective. Liverpool too have had their winning streak.

Why? 

Because all of the ‘bigger’ teams are not dropping points against so-called ‘lesser’ opposition. I wouldn’t class Everton in that bracket, but the blow was enough to have Pep sort of reaching for the white flag. But there will come a point in the season where they will have a series of ‘winnable’ games and they will re-establish their form. They’re too good not to. The trick will be whether anybody can have a streak like Chelski’s. the difference between their streak and ours was that they were keeping clean sheets. Had we gone that period hardly conceding a goal, we’d probably be a couple of points away from them, but they took advantage of their ‘easy run’ of games and now they’ve got enough points bagged for a slip up or two. 

So whilst Pep rules his side out, he only needs five or six in a row and we’ll see them return to form and fighting for the league, I think.

It’s what needs to happen to us. We have to go on a run now. I’m looking at the next two league games and probably even the cup game – to continue momentum – in which we need to be winning and picking up points/entry to the next round before we play Chelski. We’ve all seen the script from Stamford Bridge for far too long so I won’t even think about that right now, but if by some miracle we could avoid defeat there having managed to win all of our games between now and then, perhaps our team can look at going on a bit of a winning streak too.

It does look unlikely at the moment though. Not because we aren’t capable – we all know the team is – but because we’ve all seen the deficiencies in the side and it’s the same headaches that keep cropping up. I don’t want to sound overly negative on a weekend in which we’ve just won 4-0 away from home, but I see our midfield and it’s haphazard approach to starting games, and I can’t see how those two in the middle can function effectively when we come up against a strong midfield who can play in between the lines. 

Think about someone like Erikson/Dembele. Or Hazard/Willian. Or Silva/ De Bruyne. These players are all class and when you have a midfield like our current one that allows too much space in front of its back four, that’s where I get fearful. We’re ok at this moment in time, but that Chelski game is three weeks away and as it stands right now, I’m not sure how or what we can do to counter them. Hopefully I’m just being a pessimistic fan though. The whole ‘self preservation’ thing. I’m saying all of this but deep down I’m thinking “but what if?”. No Chris, don’t say anything more, you’ll curse the team and everyone will blame you for it. Not the fact that Aaron Ramsey can’t put together anything longer than a ten yard pass.

What needs to happen over the next few weeks though, is that the team needs to build its momentum, but also those little partnerships all over the pitch, with a sprinkling of injured players come back ‘like a new signing’ too. I’m looking over in your direction Hector. Gabriel has done okayish, but you only have to see the overlapping runs and recovery tackles that our young Spaniard makes, to see the impact that having him in the side has. 

I’d also like to see what Danny Welbz can do for us too. His return to the team gives us another pacey option up top. When he’s back to full fitness we’re talking Alexis, Theo, Welbeck, Iwobi, the Ox and Lucas Perez, all who have quite a degree of pace about them. I’d like to see us utilise that more and whilst Ollie G continues to bang them in playing through the middle, I’d like us to be continuing to provide him with willing runners either side. 

What will be interesting to see in a few weeks time, will be who becomes first choice in that side right position. At the start of the season Theo made it his own, but with so much competition in the side in the attacking positions, as well as his injury now having him out for almost a month, I hope he doesn’t just waltz back in to the side. We need players to have the hunger that competition brings and so I’m hoping that he finds his path blocked by the form of other players, because that means we’re playing well in attack and scoring goals. 

But Arsène does need to keep them all hungry. You know I have my theories about his ‘hierarchies’ of players, which I think is unhealthy because it doesn’t breed that hunger that we’re seeing from players like Giroud right now, so my hope for the next few months is that Arsène gives players enough game time that it doesn’t take them a couple of matches to get up to speed when they are called upon. That will happen if a player is left out in the cold. I am hoping that Lucas, Theo, the Ox and Iwobi all get enough game time. Some will, because Wenger has his favourites, but we need them all to be fresh.

Righto, that’s me done for now, and over the next two weeks it’ll probably be intermittent blogs. I’m off to St Lucia early tomorrow for some winter sun, so I might catch you tomorrow, or I might just be in the air somewhere.

Laters.

So after the first fifteen minutes of the game, with Aaron Ramsey having misplaced his second pass out for a throw-in, I started to dread the outcome of the game against a Swansea team who were at rock bottom in terms of confidence. 

We just couldn’t seem to get a grip of the game. It seemed like we weren’t in control and as an Arsenal fan, what we all know usually happens when we don’t have control of the ball, is that we end up shooting ourselves in the foot. 

Thankfully though, Swansea are a team who do have real deficiencies all over the pitch. After 30 minutes yesterday they had had their spell of dominance, Cech had made a save or two and we’d been able to ride out the initial storm, which allowed us to assert more dominance of the ball and the game as a whole. The team Arsène sent out began to see a little bit more of it, we began stringing passes together and on the second proper move that we’d put together, Giroud swept in the ball after an Alexis cross and Özil headed down. 

It probably wasn’t really what we deserved. We’d only had a few minutes of dominance compared to Swansea, but that’s why we’re towards the top of the league and they’re at the foot of it; because our team have the players who can take advantage. Which we did and then saw out the first half to go into the interval with a lead and an opportunity to improve on a ropey looking first half. 

It’s that midfield, you see. It just doesn’t fill me with confidence. Xhaka and Ramsey looked the same in that first half as they did against Preston and Bournemouth. We just can’t seem to gel and it all feels a little haphazard and chaotic. Teams seem to be able to slice through that midfield too easily and had we faced a team of any kind of technical prowess, I think the narrative this morning would be quite different, so perhaps we should just be thankful that this fixture has fallen when it has. When we do eventually come up against a better team, a team with whom our midfielders will need to do just as much going backwards as they do going forwards, that’s when I fear the worst with Xhaka and Ramsey. Perhaps then we’ll have Coquelin back. Perhaps then I’ll realise that actually, Coquelin does have a place in the squad, depending on the opponent.

But in the second half Arsenal did what they’ve been doing in recent weeks: they realised that they were Arsenal and they realised that actually they’re all technically quite good. Özil started to influence the play more. Xhaka and Ramsey were doing more going forward than going backwards. We started to be more controlling of the football and Swansea began to be pinned back almost immediately from the start of the second half. 

Iwobi, who I thought was one of the best players on the pitch, was getting the ball and driving it through the Swansea midfield. This allowed us to open them up a bit and where they had pressed us high up the pitch to some degree of success in the first half, this tactic didn’t work in the second, because we were breaking through the high press and after a few instances of that Swansea began to lose their shape and we were able to capitalise.

Those who only watch the goals of a game will tell you with an uneducated conviction that we were fortunate with two own goals by Swansea. But much like how a high press executely effectively will force opponents into making mistakes, our dominance in attack did the same to the Swans. We pushed them so deep as a defensive line that the second and third goals were always going to come. Giroud came off after 15 minutes of the second half and we reverted back to the style earlier in the season of more direct running at teams with the ball. The Ox, Iwobi and Alexis all showed movement and drive and we looked much better than we had in the first half. Swansea folded like a house of cards after Iwobi’s deflected finish and whilst I’ve read a few reports saying that 4-0 flattered Arsenal, I don’t really believe that at all, because I thought we could have had a lot more if we’d have taken a couple of the additional chances we had.

Scoring goals is great fun, but yesterday after the initial storm had been ridden and at 4-0, I found myself a little nervous whenever the ball went in to our half by Swansea, because I realised how much I wanted the team to keep a clean sheet. As important as scoring loads of goals is, getting the defensive side right was also important yesterday, because of the confidence it will hopefully breed in our back five. We’ve been conceding silly goals of late and so by avoiding that yesterday, the team will be feeling a lot happier across the whole XI this morning. 

I also have to give some props to Gabriel. I thought he did ok yesterday, given he’s a makeshift fullback. He still offers less going forward than Bellerin and there were times yesterday when he probably should have overlapped, where his natural instinct was to hold, but he dealt with Swansea’s pressure in the first half ok. There were a couple of mistakes, but it’s easy to forgive when the side wins 4-0, so we’ll let him off the odd errant pass.

So that’s that for this weekend. A 4-0 away win and Burnley at home to come next weekend. In the league we have two home games and that is just as well because we need to start building some momentum and picking up points again, because everyone else is, including the Spuds and the concentrated evil that is Chelski. One of Liverpool and United – or both – will drop points today and whilst I’d love to say Everton might do us a favour at home to City, I think we all know that they’re terrible, so I’m expecting nothing less than three points. All of the teams at the top are winning and so it’s a relief that we did so comprehensively too. 

We even got another 12 minutes of Welbz to enjoy. Although I do wish we’d see a little more of Lucas Perez. Oh well. Onwards we march.

 Catch you tomorrow.

That’s twice this season we’ve had to face ‘the new guy’ for Swansea. Whilst Paul Clement has already had one game in the shape of Hull away in the FA Cup, our visit to the Liberty is his first official game in the Premier League as manager. Last time we played them it was Bob Bradley and we had to do a lot of holding on for the remainder of a game that should have been dead and buried. To be fair that was due to the incompetence of Jon Moss and his sending off of Xhaka that never was in a million years, but we don’t want to be handing Swansea any kind of impetus by doing anything silly today. 

That also means we don’t want to be starting the game slow and full of lethargy. It’s something Arsène is mindful of, mentioning it in the press conference yesterday, but saying and actually doing are two different things. I read the always excellent Tim Stillman column yesterday and I’m inclined to believe in what he talks about (and also mentions in the Arsenal Vision podcast this week)  when he describes how bizarre we are at the moment in terms of our structural set up. In effect, we don’t really seem to have one and are relying on a response to our own ineptitude, which then galvanises us in to action. Ignoring the West Brom and Palace games over Christmas, we’ve had two games where we’ve gone ahead and not known how to close out a game (Everton and Man City), as well as two games in which falling behind has forced a response from the team (Bournemouth and Preston). We need to arrest this approach asap because it’s not conducive to my own health, let alone our faint hopes of an outside shot at the title. 

Today needs to be that start of that and so first and foremost I’d like to see us walk out of Swansea with a clean sheet. They’ve been somewhat of a rarity in the last couple of months, only coming over Christmas, but the back line needs to be better. That means improved performances from Mustafi and Monreal, with Koscielny coming back in to the heart of the defence to ensure we have a little more stability about us. Quite who plays on the right hand side is anyone’s guess, but given his experience I’d expect it to be Gabriel. Jenkinson is so out of favour he might as well be on Mars and Debuchy is injured, so the Brazilian will be asked to adopt that position is all I can assume. Although I’d never fully feel confident about second-guessing the manager. We could even see Maitland-ankles there, or even Holding, because he’s played at right back before. 

Midfield is what it is: the only two fit players available in Xhaka and Ramsey and we need to see an infinitely better performance from the both of them than what we saw last weekend in he first half. To do that, we need firstly for them to be able to do the basics right, because both players couldn’t string together more than two consecutive passes to an Arsenal player against Preston. Just do the simple stuff guys. And Rambo, please, not 50 yard diagonals. You simply don’t have the ability to execute them properly.

In front of them will see a return to the pitch for Mesut Özil and what that will give us should be a little more composure and the ability to get balls in behind the lines. But it will also give us a willing runner in the final third. But it’s his eye for a pass that means that I’d like to see Lucas Perez today. In the last couple of games he’s played he’s showed how he’s willing to run in beyond Giroud and assuming the Big Frenchman will be starting today given his form, I think our right hand side needs that type of runner. Alexis will be back on the left so someone like Lucas should definitely start. I’m not sure whether he definitely will, because Iwobi and The Ox have been preferred all season, but I just think it’s time we unleashed him especially as he seems to be developing a bit of an understanding with Giroud. 

Swansea need a reaction from their players today and in the coming weeks, because if they don’t start picking up points now then their season is doomed, so I’m expecting this to be quite a fully bloodied encounter. Their big players are undoubtedly Siggurdson and Llorente, so set pieces and balls from out wide in to our box have to be countered. They’ve always been a ball-playing team and you’d expect that to continue today, but with a new manager in charge it’s hard to grasp whether desperate times will call for desperate measures and we’ll see a more direct approach from them. If that is the case, it might mean we adopt more of a siege mentality and counter approach today, so I’d like to see better control and possession of the ball from our players. That control is predominantly in the midfield and so if Xhaka-Ramsey is going to be a ‘thing’, then it needs to start working. Like, now.

Right, I’m off for the day. See you soon you sexy bitches.

Yesterday’s game was bizarre. It had a bit of everything. There were some great passing moves, some good goals, a poor refereeing performance, defensive lapses in concentration, the works. But ultimately, we picked up three points and have moved level on points with City, so we have to be pleased with that.

Arsène’s unchanged side from Burnley ensured an element of consistency about the team set up, despite my thinking that he might rest Alexis, and Arsenal started very brightly. We dominated possession of the ball, we pinned Swansea back in their own defensive third and we were winning the ball higher up the pitch. That aggression in winning the ball came from all corners of the pitch and it didn’t take long for us to fashion a chance, with Mustafi hitting the top of the bar from a corner. 

Swansea had rarely ventured in to our half by the time Theo notched up his goal tally for the season – save for a Leroy Fer ball over the top – and when he scored about six or seven minutes later, I thought that we could see a battering. 

But Xhaka, oh Xhaka, what were you thinking mate? Cruising at 2-0, his lapses of concentration made us all jittery, when really we should have gone in at halftime feeling like this could be a mauling. I think it’s fair to say that Granit will want to forget yesterday’s game. I actually thought he’d played well if you remove the two key moments of the game which involved him. He won tackles, his distribution was good, plus I saw plenty of Artetaesque dropping deep and receiving the ball from Cech so we didn’t lose possession by playing long. Of course the only proble is the two big incidents in the game led to life being made a little harder than it should of. 

The first incident – the mistake leading to the goal – was silly. The second incident – the trip leading to his sending off – was harsh and an example of Jon Moss’ desire to see Swansea get something from the game. Moss had given us nothing all afternoon. There were a few highly fouls he allowed Swansea to get away with, but also a foul by Amat in which as Theo was about to get goal side of him, he looked at the striker and pushed his hand into Theo’s eyes. I

Think Theo was in and the debate was whether it was a yellow card or a red for me. Jon Moss gave nothing. Five minutes later, Neil Taylor pushes Theo when he rose for a header, yet again Moss gave nothing. In the second half Xhaka did what everyone knows as a ‘good hello’ to give away. Barrow was breaking and in the Swansea half, with a couple of players over the other side of the field and therefore able to ensure he wasn’t the last man, Xhaka did no more than trip Barrow. Moss was itching to give the red. It was a poor decision from a poor ref. Thankfully we weren’t ultimately punished with it by the concession of all three points. 

I hope Moss watches that game again and realises what an absolute fool he was to give a red instead of a yellow. I disagree with Arsène, because it wasn’t even a ‘dark yellow’.

That of course meant 20 minutes of us all ageing rapidly, as Arsenal hung on for the win and there were some scary moments, but even with a man less we still fashioned chances with Walcott hitting the post.

So ultimately we can be happy with the win. When you concede two goals you’re always going to look at the defensive set up, but I actually thought three of our back four played quite well, with the exception of Monreal who was tormented by Barrow all afternoon. I wonder if Gibbs derserves a shot now you know. Nacho hasn’t had the best of starts to the season compared to the previous 18 months, so perhaps freshening it up might be something for the manager to consider? He’s not been terrible, but teams are isolating him and it’s causing us problems as they start to target him. I don’t know if Gibbs will be miles better, but he does have a bit more pace, so perhaps that can act as a recovery mechanism?

In midfield I thought we controlled the play for the most part, whilst in attack Theo looked good again and grabbed a brace. I thought Alexis tired towards the end, but that’s to be expected, and Iwobi had one of the games you get when you’re a 20-year-old. It happens.

So in the main, we have to be happy that we got the goals – Mesut’s particularly was a great finish after a superb ball from Alexis – and secured the three points. Sometimes you just get these weird games, so we need to just consign it to history and look forward to the game in midweek against Ludogorets.

Our form is good, we have a number of home games coming up, so the opportunity is still with us to create great momentum ahead of a tricky November.

Catch you tomorrow.

As you can tell, I’m rather excited that Arsenal are back in action today, after what has felt like the longest interlull in a long, long, time. It’s Swansea at home for a three o’clock kick off and whilst I can’t be there to see it due to family circumstances, I’ll be cheering the lads on from afar, hoping that the Swans don’t do us over on our own turf again. It’s weird, because Swansea have a better record than us at the Emirates in the league, having won three times and drawn once. In contrast, we’ve got just one solitary win to our name, which was a 1-0 victory when they were a newly promoted side.

I’ve been to nearly all of those games, and the tone has been one of Arsenal dominating possession, but Swansea remaining composed and hitting us on the counter. I don’t know what it is about the Welsh team, but they’ve frequently brought out the worst in Arsenal at The Emirates, so there’s no doubt that we can all feel a little wary about our opponents. Despite the fact they are in a poor run of form and currently sit fourth from bottom on four points. We’ve seen how they can defend for their lives against us and last season was an example of a team in poor form that can still spring a surprise. Swansea named a borderline reserve team last season, with recently departed boss Guidolin thinking that other games were more winnable, yet he came up against a self-harming Arsenal side and we just have to hope the international break hasn’t set our momentum back.

In terms of playing style, you’d expect Swansea to be similar to the previous incarnations under former managers, but with new boss Bob Bradley in charge, it’s difficult to predict how they’ll set up. I am in no doubt that there will be an element of new manager, new motivation, but whether or not that manifests itself as Swansea looking to have a go at Arsenal, I doubt it. They will most likely look to hit us on the counter, which is where the passing range of Sigurdsson will come in important, as well as the pace of Routledge and Barrow, who played in the last game against Liverpool. Last season it was a ball over the top that cut the Arsenal defence in two for Routledge to score, so we need to make sure we don’t see the same kind of build up today, which means a better defensive display from Koscielny and Mustafi than Big Per and I think it was Gabriel last season. The good news is that both of our centre backs look like they’ve started to gel together and we’ve kept a clean sheet in a few games. So I’m hopeful that we can continue the good form and remain despite at the back. Then, it’s just over to our attacking options to unlock the Swansea defence, which we’ve struggled to do in recent seasons at home. 

But I’m expectant today. I expect performances from all of our players. I expect to see a better Theo Walcott, an improved Alex Iwobi and a Mesut Özil who has been rested a little, having come off at halftime in midweek for Germany. I want this Arsenal side to lay down a marker. To make a statement to the world saying “we know this team is a bogey team of ours, but this season we’re sweeping them aside, because we have our eyes on the league”. That’s my hope for today. Whether it happens or not obviously depends on a number of factors, but first off is the motivation of the team. I’ve seen too many games against Swansea when our dominance of possession has been laboured and irrelevant. We need to be incisive, move the ball quickly like we did against Chelski and Basel, then pull apart the Swansea team so we can create opportunities for the strikers.

I do wonder what physical state Alexis is in and whether he’ll be starting today. He’s been back in training, but he will have done a lot of travelling and having played on Wednesday night, so I wonder if the temptation might be to play Lucas Perez. It didn’t really work against Southampton, but that was his first game at the club and so it’s almost inevitable that it would be a bit disjointed for him. But the purpose of having a big squad is not to over rely on one or two players. This is an opportunity to give Alexis a rest and if it hasn’t worked just after halftime, then he can be brought on as an impact sub. Whether or not that happens remains to be seen, however. 

The other question mark will be in midfield. Xhaka and Cazorla have played the last couple of games together, but Coquelin is back, so I wonder if Arsène might put him back in. He’s been keen to stress the importance he places on the partnerships in midfield, so I have a sneaky suspicion we might see the Coq again, although I think a game like this is one in which the passing incision of Xhaka will be useful to unlock a Swansea defence.

I don’t know if I’ll get the chance to watch the game today, but I’ll be keeping tabs via the mobile, so let’s hope for three points, a few goals and the ability to actually watch Match of the Day today. 

Catch y’all tomorrow.

Bleak. That sounds like a haven right now. A Mecca. A dream in which there appears to be a modicum of hope. Where we are right now, hope has vanished as quickly as our ability to retain a decent shape in defence. Lord knows how much the bookies odds will spiral with The Arsenal playing like this. The way this Arsenal team is playing right now, 100-1 to win the title sounds like a pound lost if you put it on this team of bottlers.

I feel sad (if you couldn’t tell!). But it’s a sadness which is being born from apathy. Arsenal aren’t a team that excite me any more. Going to the games is about reminiscing over times past. Much like I’d imagine Liverpool or Nottingham Forest fans feel (they won a European Cup don’t you know!). It’s not about the now, for that is fraught with disappointment and resignation, which feels all too familiar. It’s about the future of the club too. Because it feels like we’re stagnating. We have a familiar feeling of a failing team of individuals so woefully out of form that you wonder whether they’re in a title race at all. History repeating itself for the umpteenth time it seems.

I haven’t even gone in to the nuances of the game. Do you need to read it? You know the script. It’s been written so often it’s become clichéd. Arsenal dominate, create chances, fail to take said chances and concede two goals to a team who have had two shots in the entire game.

Embarrassment and fury ensues amongst Arsenal fans. Some fight amongst each other. Some just shrug. They know that the story has been played out enough times. A team who should be lowering their way to glory will soon be in a battle for fourth and a potential cup run. At this rate however, that run will float away as quickly as a dandelions seeds, but those seeds will probably never grow. They’ll probably just smash in to a concrete wall and die away.

Shall we talk about specifics? How about the injury to Cech which means Ospina plays at the weekend. Or how about the injury to Koscielny that will see the calamity that is Gabriel and Mertesacker paired together. Harry Kane, Delli Alli et al must be laughing their little cottons off. They’ll have a field day on Saturday. It’ll be like watching a family member being placed in front of the emperor in the colosseum for the annual games. A brutal bloodbath. 

But then to the Emperor himself. The grand high inquisitor himself. Arsène Wenger. The man who has overseen this car crash. The man who has held on to the reins for so long, it looks like somebody will have to prize them from his cold, hard, lifeless fingers. He is overseeing the crumbling of his empire and we are all the witnesses to the downfall. 

I phoned my brother after the game. He just said ‘wow’. He’s a West Ham fan. Because of me he holds a soft spot fo Arsenal and he would love them to win the league. But even he’s saying “so, we’re putting all of our eggs in the Leicester basket now, right?”. Sports Betting Dime is giving Leicester 3/1 odds to win the title currently, so we will see.

Of course he’s right. He’s right because there is a person in charge at Arsenal who I no longer feel will ever win the league. He doesn’t have it in him. And when you hear post match conferences like this, you see why.

Arsenal Football Club is broken. It’s broken and the man who is charged with fixing it has ignored all of the calls for new tools and devices to improve it. He’s put his trust in tools because they have some sentimental value to him, despite being largely redundant. As a result, his influence is redundant. His ability to manage a team to the pinnacle of their potential is redundant. His relevance in the modern game is redundant.

I don’t want it to be this way. I don’t want to see him on his knees like this. It’s like a family dog that has so many afflictions that it suffers out of self preservation. But in reality, you know that despite the pain, you need to put it out of its misery. It won’t hold a gun to its own head. You need to do it for it. 

That needs to happen now. I don’t have faith that the person managing Arsenal football club, the person I once hoped would stay forever, is capable of taking Arsenal to the next level. He is a relic of a time which no longer exists. We have stagnated and he has presided over this.

I hate saying all of these things. I hate that I even think them. But when you have an eminantly winnable league slapping you square in the face and you still don’t grab it with both hands? That is unforgivable I’m afraid. 

Yesterday evening after the game I put the lyrics from the Andrea Bocelli song ‘Time to say goodbye’.  In more ways than one – title and the manager – it feels sadly fitting today:

When I’m alone I dream of the horizon and words fail me.

There is no light in a room where there is no sun

and there is no sun if you’re not here with me, with me.

From every window unfurls my heart the heart that you have won.

Into me you’ve poured the light,

the light that you found by the side of the road.
Time to say goodbye.

Places that I’ve never seen or experienced with you.

Now I shall, I’ll sail with you upon ships across the seas,

seas that exist no more,

it’s time to say goodbye.

For Arsenal it’s a shot at recovery, but more than that it’s a desparate lunge to cling on to any title ambitions that we might still harbour, however fading they seem to be. 

Mesut is hurting. You could tell through his Twitter message last night, telling everyone that the players don’t need to be told how important the game is, so I’m expecting some intensity from all of the players tonight. They have to show that they have been wounded and the backlash must be felt against Swansea. Petr Cech has already said that we have to respond by getting six points in our next two games and whilst this appears the more likely on paper, history has shown that Swansea are never easy for us. 

Since joining the elite in the Premier League, Swansea have had a draw and two victories, whilst we have only mustered one Premier League win at home. We haven’t beaten them at home in a couple of seasons and last year had a sense of familiarity about it, with Swansea starting with no recognised centre forward, playing with banks in front of their defence and a Lukas Fabianski determined to show that Arsenal were wrong to let him go. A late Batefemi Gomis goal added to the farce, but the same old failings cam to the fore.

We can’t have anything of the sort from Arsenal today, i.e. lethargy, expectancy that we’ll score eventually, profligacy in front of goal. If these players seriously think they can win the title, then they have to start performing like it, not like arrogant tiki-taka’ing, rudderless players devoid of ideas or forward movement. Those under-performing players need to shake themselves out of their own malaise and step up tonight. 

I will be with them and I will be cheering them on. We need to get behind the team as much as possible and try to rally around them. If that happens, the hope is that the players will respond, by giving us the results on the pitch we need.

Swansea go into the game having only narrowly avoided defeat against the Spuds and they’ll be looking to catch us cold after Old Trafford. The previous incarnations of Swansea have been teams who want to dominate possession as much as possible and whilst there’s a new guy in at the helm at the moment, I still think Swansea will look to do the same, to try to keep hold of the ball as much as possible. I think they’ll sit compact though. Looking at the side that played in Spudland, you’d think that Sigurdsson and Ayew are the two big threats in their team from an attacking point of view. The Icelander is the creative hub of the team and is often the guy that can see the pass in between the lines of defence, so keeping him deep and avoiding the concessions of free kicks around our own penalty box, has to be key for Arsenal tonight. With someone as good as he is with free kicks – and we’ve fallen foul over the last couple of seasons – we can’t afford to give him anything because you just know he would score from Swansea’s only chance of the game.

As for us, the decision from Le Boss has to be mainly around whether Welbeck can play two games in four days, because if there’s any doubts then I’d suggest we save him for Saturday lunchtime. Ideally you’d like to see a front three of Welbeck, Giroud and Alexis, but if there are doubts over Welbz then I think rotation is a better option. But please, let’s not reward Walcott for his abysmal showing on Sunday with a starting position, eh? Perhaps a recall for Joel Campbell is in order? He scored at the Liberty Stadium and sometimes you just get players who always seem to play well against teams. If Swansea is one of those teams for Joel, then give him a shot. The other options are a dreadfully out of form Walcott or a raw Iwobi. Surely this is a chance for Joel? And I’m not even that much of a big fan of his, but the manager has to shake it up a bit, because Sunday’s showing needs to have repurcussions.

The possibility of an Arsenal defeat or a draw isn’t something that I’d quite like to countenance at this point in time. It’s entirely possible, obviously, but one has to hope that the players have been able to have a serious talk with themselves and will respond. Like, now. Nothing less than six points in our next two games will do anything to give any hope of a title push. We’re out of time now. The players have no more room and they have to perform.

Come on Arsenal.

The game is made all the more difficult with injuries that are mounting, but our poor record at The Liberty hardly makes for putting ones mind at ease. Since they have been in the Premier League, we’ve rarely had an easy afternoon against them and given the two teams respective league positions over the last four years, you’d expect us to have a better home and away record. But to date in the Premier League era we’ve won four, lost four and drawn two. One of the draws and wins for us was in the FA Cup, so Swansea actually have a better Premier League record than we do.

What is most surprising, is that apart from last season at The Emirates, Swansea have always come to play football against us and rather than us serving them up a bit of beat down, they’ve usually matched us. So today I’m not expecting anything but a difficult afternoon for the team in Wales.

I’m not sure how Gary Monk will set up against us, as he’s changed his style a couple of times this season based on the opposition. Normally you’d expect a team like Swansea to sit deep and catch us on the counter, which could be the tactic today with players like Montero able to have a run at us. However, rather than a Calum Chambers slightly out of position at right back, we have our own speedy Gonzales in Hector Bellerin who will come back in today, so hopefully he won’t get as much joy down our right hand side as he did last season.

If Swansea do play deep and hit us on the counter, then it will be Jonjo Shelvey who we’ll need to stifle I think, because he’ll look to play as a type of quarterback pinging longer diagonal balls to the wide men to spring quick moves. That’s where a higher press may work to our advantage and I hope what Arsene said last weekend about all of the players tracking and tackling more, comes in handy.

Oh, and one more thing Arsenal, don’t give any free kicks away on or around the edge of our own D, because Siggurdson will take advantage. The guy has a mean free kick on him and we were on the end of one last season, so let’s just hope that Coquelin and Cazorla are disciplined in that area.

As for us, I think we’ll see the usual (available) suspects, with just the decision wide right being the main headache Arsene has to consider. I think he will go for Campbell again and as I’ve been saying all week, he needs to step up. If he has a quiet game today, then the whole “yeah, but look at the quality of players he’s playing with” argument from the midweek defeat to Sheffield Wednesday goes completely out of the window. Joel will be up alongside the best of what Arsenal has to offer today, so he needs to show he’s worthy of a starting place.

Moneychester City are going to tonk Norwich today, so nothing else other than a win will doodle-do for us. Id we draw perhaps it’s not the worst result in the world, but we’ll have another tough game next weekend and I can see there being a gap open up between us and City if we draw or lose for two consecutive weeks in the league. But that’s what life is like at the top. The margins for error are negligible and if you’re going to win the league, you need to win these types of games, away from home, when you’ve got a few players injured. The squad is going to be tested to its limit and this week feels like it could be a season definer, what with Bayern and the Spuds looming on the horizon. So often these weeks have turned in to nightmares in the recent past, so if this Arsenal team really has moved on, if they really are to be champions, you have to imagine they have to pick a minimum of four points from the next two league games.

Come on Arsenal, let’s do this!

Firstly, the injuries, which are a bitter pill to swallow. The Sheffield Wednesday defeat can be shrugged off, but none of us can shrug off the disappointment of losing both Theo and The Ox in what was essentially a needless competition. Arsene confirmed that both will be out until after the international break which wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t already have a series of quite difficult games coming up.

We’ve struggled away at Swansea since they’ve been in the Premier League, Bayern away from home will be a steep hill to climb (steeper now we’re missing another two players) and the North London Derby is always going to be a tough game. I’m just glad it’s at home, because that will at least give us some advantage.

This is also a crucial stage of the season. It feels like we’re on the verge of being able to break away from the chasing pack along with Moneychester City. I can’t really explain why, but to me it feels like a series of back-to-back-to-back wins in the league would start to give us daylight with the rest and so this minor injury crisis coming as it has at this time could not be worse. I’m in no doubt that City will beat Norwich at home tomorrow, so we have to keep pace with them, which means our margins for error are quite fine indeed. We’ve worked ourselves in to a position where we’re on an even footing with City and now we need to be able to keep pace with them whilst our injured players recovered. Unbelievably, this is the first time when I’ve wished an international break to come quicker than it actually is!

What we also got from Arsene’s comments on the official site yesterday, was an indication on where his thinking is for who will play wide right. There has been much debate raging amongst many of us that he might shuffle some players around. There’s been talking of moving Bellerin forward and slotting Debuchy in at right back, of moving Santi out wide, or Ozil even. But with Wenger’s comments that he does not want to disrupt the current balance of the team too much, it has pretty much left the door open for either Campbell or Iwobi.

Perhaps that is the most sensible option. The players have developed a rhythm and form in their positions over the last couple of months and to shuffle a few of them around would probably leave us a little disjointed as a team. Why change a winning formula so much, when all you can do if pushed in to it is give it a little tweak?

So as I said in yesterday’s blog, somebody has to step up, which looks like it’s one of Iwobi or Campbell and I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t Campbell. This is his moment, he’ll have three very big games in which to play and he simple must show that he can rub shoulders with the likes of Alexis, Ozil, Santi & co.

I haven’t seen much of Iwobi, but he looked a little lightweight on Tuesday. He had a couple of half decent chances, but he faded in the game, so whether or not Arsene will decide on the guy with more international experience and a little older in Campbell, remains to be seen. No doubt we’ll be given more information about his thinking when he does his pre-match presser today.

There’s not really a lot else going on today. Well, until Arsene gives us some soundbites, so I think I’ll say “that’s yer lot” and see you tomorrow. Laters.

So in a way, it’s kind of a positive thing, because I’ve been able to contextualise Monday’s result a bit more. I’m able to say ‘hey, we’ve been on a great run, we’ve got ourselves into a good position to qualify automatically for the Champions League (which a lot of ex-pros said we wouldn’t make at all), as well as an FA Cup final on the horizon’ and that is not something to be sniffed at.

Perhaps it’s because we’ve developed a taste of success last season with the cup final and this season with that amazing winning run, that I have developed an appetite that attitude for success that means even the slightest blip results in me being even more disappointed? After all, there were times over the last couple of seasons in which rather than the frustration I felt yesterday, I had only apathy setting in. So maybe I – and you if you feel similarly to me – need to just take back, take a breath and appreciate that it ‘feels’ like we’re on the right track. I’m glad it’s under Arsène’s watch too. It does feel like we’re steadily improving and that he is starting to look more like Arsène Wenger: The Dominant Years, rather than Arsène Wenger: The Financially Pragmatic Years. It will have been painful to see him walk out the door without at least looking like we’re going to go ‘Once more unto the breach’ under his stewardship.

Anyway, thankfully and positively, the comments from the players on the official site are more ‘we need to bounceback on Sunday’ style fighting talk comments, rather than bland, generic ‘we know we must try harder for the fans’ that we were getting five or so years ago from players who were clearly not up to it. I actually believe it when players like Big Per talk about a response, which is testimony to the way in which this season has turned around.

I do hope Arsène takes some time to consider what the best option might be for Sunday though, tactically speaking I mean, because the defeat gives him a chance to analyse what went wrong and perhaps make some tweaks to his side based on form and how United might play. The game will be a totally different one to Swansea and so we need to be mindful of that, as Per says when he talks about winning the midfield battle. There can be no time for fallen heads and sloping shoulders. A response must be given. Not just because we want to put daylight between us and the Mancs, but because we need to make sure our confidence and form isn’t spiralling in the wrong direction before we get to the FA Cup Final. That is the big game that above anything else I am worried about if we’re beaten by United to make it two defeats in a row. The league form is fine, but we want the players to go in to the cup final on a high, which you’d question if we fall back down into fourth again this season. 

Anyway, enough of my dealing in hypotheses and other such events that have yet to transpire, I should just worry about the here and now. The ‘then’ and ‘what if’ can wait.

So was Arsène right to pick the same time based on the belief that confidence would see us through against Swansea? Evidently not, but I can see why he thought the confidence of the team would see us over the line.

But herein lies the problem with Arsène. His unwavering belief in the spirit of his players trumps any other kind of reasoning or thought process for selecting any Matchday squad, or so it seems from where I stand, because his inability to look at the opposition and exploit weaknesses feels to me like it’s negated by his belief that the players who feel the most confident will win the game.

It feels a very ‘heart on the sleeve’ kind of management, which I find at odds with the way Arsène is portrayed at times.

Take yesterday’s defeat to Swansea. Knowing that they would look to frustrate and remain compact in the middle of the park, there was no acknowledgement from our manager that we might need to pull them around the pitch a bit to create space. An unchanged squad featuring Ramsey out wide right therefore saw the bulk of play concentrated on trying to wriggle our way through pockets of congested white and red shirts with no real resolution other than a pretty tame half in the first 45.

To Gary Monk’s credit, he executed his game to perfection. You could almost hear the teamtalk reverberating around the Emirates: 

“We’re not playing with a striker today boys, we’re going 4-6-0 and that’ll frustrate Arsenal, but as long as we stay compact we’ll get chances”

It was a perfect plan to play a manager like Arsène on his home turf. We laboured for the entirety of the first half and although we created chances in the second, they were all down the throat of Fabianski, who must have been grateful for the gifts presented to him. Particularly a tame Walcott strike which rolled into his arms as he was practically still on the floor. 

None of our forward line covered themselves in any glory. Ramsey did what he knows is his game and played too centrally throughout. Giroud had an early chance but then faded into anonymity, whilst Alexis too had an off night. Mesut was stifled by the congestion in the middle of the park, whilst Santi couldn’t really stamp any kind of authority on the game. It was a lacklustre performance from an Arsenal team who appear to have nothing to play for on this showing. Quite unappealing indeed.

As for their goal, well, let’s just say that Ospina won’t be winning over any floating voters any time soon. The chance Gomis had shouldn’t have fallen so easily on his head in the first place, but when it’s down to your ‘keepers left hand side and very saveable, you expect him to…well…save it. 

I have no major problem with Ospina. He seems a decent enough ‘keeper, but when you’re going for a Premier League title, you need more than just ‘okay’. When Almunia’s confidence wasn’t completely drained from him he was ‘ok’, but he never made saves you never expected him to make. He never managed to ‘save’ us games. Our two current ‘keepers feel like that. If we really do want to win the league, either one of them needs to be doing that little something more, or we need to find somebody who does, because in a game of fine margins these things matter.

Defensively the two full backs hardly covered themselves in glory either. Both Gomis and Montero are becoming quite a thorn in our side, but I have to admit I thought it was pace that did over Chambers, where as you can’t accuse Bellerin of lacking that can you? 

So there we have it. A disappointing defeat that means we head into the game at Old Trafford knowing another loss will see us drop back down into fourth. Having beaten Swansea just once at home since they came up, I think it’s fair to say that they are well and truly an Arsenal bogey team, which I thought we had managed to shake off those types of sides where we are clearly better but have some sort of psychological block.

Still, when I got home last night a pair of freshly arrived FA Cup final tickets were sitting on the kitchen table, so I guess that enabled me to get some perspective.

See you tomorrow.

Ultimately it shouldn’t matter, because second or third means nought but a few extra million by finishing higher up by one spot, but still it would be nice to be seen to have out performed a side built on a foundation of refineries and dollar bills. 

If we do want that second spot it is still within our hands. We probably have to win all of our home games to finish level on points with City, starting this evening with Swansea at home. 

It’s an interesting one for the manager because if he chooses to keep the same XI he’s played over the last few weeks, you’d have to wonder about his desire to engage in any kind of rotation at all unless forced. Swansea represent a side that has performed well this season, have already beaten us on their own turf, but who should have a distinctly ‘end of season, nothing to play for’ look and feel about themselves. I’m not sure we’ll get that, but it’s what I’m hoping for anyway. 

I hope Arsène does rotate. I’d like us to be keeping players like Gibbs, Wilshere and Walcott topped up with match sharpness in case they are needed and that means they need to be given chances to show what they’re capable of from the start. I doubt Arsène will go for any extreme levels of rotation, like bringing in Szczesny, Debuchy, Gabriel, Gibbs, Flamini, Rosicky, Walcott, etc, but one or two of his deck shuffled should still give us enough to overcome the Welsh side.

We know that Swansea will try to retain possession and out pass us. They work on a higher press and try to win the ball back further up the field, where as when they have the ball they build from the back very patiently. It’s worked too. I remember seeing them Michu us a few years ago, then frustrate us last season with a late goal to nab a draw, so we cannot afford to show any kind of lethargy in our build up play tonight. It will be a warm summers evening but none of us want to see sloppy transition from defensive possession to attacking threat. 

To be fair to our current crop, I don’t think we’ll get that, because form and confidence should dictate that we are on it tonight. We’re playing well and all of the players know that competition is intense enough to see any of them lose their place and with an FA Cup on the horizon, there is plenty of motivation for them all.

Swansea will be reliant on Batefemi Gomis to be a threat on the counter and if they go with nippy wide men like Montero and Dyer then I expect them to look to counter us with pace on the flanks. If we are too hung ho in pushing our fullbacks forward like auxillery wingers rather than actual defenders, that’s where we may find an Achilles heel for ourselves.

In the middle of the park they will use Jonjo Shelvey to build up play and providing we offer him little space, it should stifle and frustrate him. If he’s trying pot-shots from 35 yards plus then Ospina should back himself to keep any rogue ones on target out, but it will mean we’ve stifled his supply line and that will do just nicely.

I am hoping for another masterful display from our midfield maestros Santi and Mesut, because these are the sort of games where they tend to do quite well. If Swansea press hard all over the pitch it will mean those players who can operate best in confined circles will be the most successful. So that’s why I’m looking for those two to potentially be the difference tonight. 

Let’s hope so and hope that three points are ours come the final whistle. Come on you reds!