last night I dreamt I was making a movie in New York, funded by mafia money, and it would have all been fine if it wasn’t for the fact that David Thewlis was an inveterate lush. I can never go to New York again lest someone who sounds like Joe Mantegna comes after me for the $76 they gave me to make the film. Oh well.

Last night Arsenal’s reserves played Norwich at Carrow Road, and the team contained quite a few first team players. Andrei Arshavin, Yossi Benayoun and Marouane Chamakh all started – as did Ju Young Park but it’s hard to call him a first team player. Chamakh went off injured after about half an hour, but Park scored, Arshavin scored two, Benayoun scored and Benik Afobe, making his return after months out with a dicky groin (hah) also got on the scoresheet in a 5-0 win. Also involved last night was Carl Jenkinson who played 45 minutes, making his comeback from a stress fracture of his back.

Clearly the manager had an eye on keeping players who have spent a lot of time on the bench sharp for Sunday’s North London derby. Whether it means he’s thinking of some serious rotation and using these players we don’t know but giving them a run-out is, I guess, better than them sitting stewing on the bench. Neither Arshavin or Benayoun were used on Saturday against Sunderland when perhaps they might have been, and it was hardly a surprise to see the Israeli speak about his unhappiness on Twitter:

I guess the manager has got to decide does he stick with the players who disappointed against Milan and Sunderland, or players he doesn’t seem to trust a great deal. Is he willing to make those kinds of changes for a game that he’s got to win or, at the very least, not lose in a way that feels like a loss. For example, a late equaliser by Sp*rs is a crushing blow, a late one for us a sign of spirit and character. The result is the same but people’s perception of it is going to be a factor this weekend, like it or not.

Whether what happened at Carrow Road last night will change his mind in any way remains to be seen but you can’t ask more than for players to go out and score goals, show what they’re capable of, and both Arshavin and Benayoun have done that. We might get a better indication of their chances later in the week but it’s a case of damned if you do and damned if you don’t in some ways. Stick with the others and it’s conservatism, play guys who have been on the bench most of the season and what can you expect from guys who have been on the bench all season (mostly for a reason too). Anyway, more on the weekend’s game in the days ahead.

Elsewhere, there’s a lot of talk about Robin van Persie’s contract, with people trying to out-exclusive each other with information already in the public domain. The latest is that Arsenal are going to put the foot down and insist that van Persie sees out his contract at least, with some suggestion the skipper is  more open to a new deal than he has been. Or something.

The cynic in me thinks that this kind of news emerging at a time when fans are … erm … shall we say ‘mildly crotchety’ … is something of PR bluff. That said, it is a situation I can see happening. It seems much quite likely to me that we’d hold Robin to his contract and let him leave on a Bosman should he so desire a year later. At that point he’d be 30 and could, if fit and healthy, have his pick of clubs and a nice fat package to go with it. Of course, depending on where we are, he might want to stay.

People draw parallels between his situation and that of Samir Nasri but I don’t think they’re the same. Nasri was younger, more mercenary, more driven to leave and, frankly, uncommitted to anything except getting as much money for himself as possible. It’s easy to say you’re leaving for footballing reasons but tarting yourself from club to club doesn’t give you much of a leg to stand on, in that regard.

Anyway, for me this is an non-issue until the summer anyway. While I think one particular player in the same contractual situation as Robin has a huge cheek to wait and see what happens this season before committing to the club, I can understand it better for van Persie. But like players before him who have left when perhaps they didn’t really want to, maybe the best way of keeping him is investing in the squad and bringing in quality players who increase our chances of winning things.

A top four finish is not just vital for the club’s finances but vital for our team. For player retention, for attracting new players and for allowing those we do have to continue playing at the highest level of club football, something which is important for their development as well. I would suggest all van Persie contract stories are best ignored until the summer, we know nothing’s going to happen until then, and if there’s one place beyond the stock markets where speculation is king, it’s football.

As an aside though – there’s a very interesting piece about van Persie and his contract on Goonerboy. He looks at the final contract dished out to Thierry Henry at a similar stage of his career and wonders if the van Persie situation might be similar. Whether you agree or not it’s a good read.

And that’s that for this morning. As expected it’s been pretty quiet this week, no doubt there’s plenty of taking stock going on and, you would hope, a lot of hard work to get the team focused before Sunday.

Till tomorrow.

Using Sunderland’s  last two games against us he highlights how they modified their approach to render Arsenal pretty much ineffectual in the FA Cup tie. It also ties in nicely with another couple of observations made recently. On the Arsecast last Friday Philippe Auclair bemoaned the fact that our passing, so crisp and pacy in the past, lacked the speed to make it effective. Michael Cox points out that we move to the ball too slowly to wide areas, allowing defences to get men behind the ball and deny us the space we want to exploit.

We know we struggle when teams sit back, ‘park the bus’ if you will, and obviously Arsene Wenger saw that and tried to bring in something of a Plan B with Marouane Chamakh. A target man who was good in the air and held the ball up well with his back to goal seemed like the ideal purchase at the time, but I doubt anybody could have foreseen the transformation when our Moroccan butterfly decided to become a caterpillar again.

His continued deployment of Nicklas Bendtner, another player who despite his flaws was most effective through the middle and capable of an aerial and physical threat, on the right hand side of a forward three was always confusing. I know he had van Persie down the middle but when did we ever see him do what he did on Saturday, putting another ‘striker’ on and dropping Robin slightly deeper? It was always Bendtner throwing in crosses he should have been trying to get on the end of.

The other issue we have when teams play like that against us is our tendency to concede from the oppositions few chances on goal. If our conversion rate is high then theirs is remarkably low. Amy Lawrence pointed out that Arsenal are a team set up to play counter-attacking football but who fall prey to counter-attacks time and time again.

In his piece in So Paddy Got Up, which looks at Wenger’s tactical approach throughout his Arsenal career, Michael talks about how the signing of Gervinho, combined with Walcott, Oxlade-Chamberlain and the departures of Fabregas and Nasri suggested a more ‘vertical’ game in possession But he’s also right to point out the fact that players like Arshavin, Hleb, Rosicky and Nasri became much less direct under Wenger, ‘ball hoarders’, he calls them. And how often have we bemoaned the backwards pass when a shot was on, allowing the opposition more time to get back and regroup?

If you look at the Invincibles side – and we have to take on board this was a once in a lifetime side that we were so lucky to have enjoyed – it seemed to have everything. Pace, power, speed of thought, lightning on the counter and built on a decent, if not outstanding, defensive platform. Yet this team that swept all before them in the Premier League struggled in Europe. Perhaps this was why Wenger decided to modify things, and it’s a curiosity that some of our most effective European campaigns have dovetailed with the lack of domestic success.

Now, Arsenal are a team that have defensive issues, whose midfield lacks the creativity to pick tight defences apart and to move the ball quickly enough when we do counter, and two first choice wingers whose decision making in the final third is, for the most part, pretty poor. But for one of the best strikers in the world right now, it’s hard to see where the goals would come from on a consistent basis.

So what’s the solution? I know Arsene references ‘internal’ solutions all the time but some of them are there. A consistent back four would be a good start. I don’t see too much wrong with Szczesny – Sagna – Koscielny – Vermaelen/Mertesacker + left back, whoever that might be. Ensuring we’ve got a left back fit enough to start most games would be a real fillip.

Jack Wilshere’s absence this season has been keenly felt. I know a player’s quality increases exponentially with the amount of time he’s out injured, but his tigerish drive has certainly been a big miss. And up front, well, this where we’ve all had our say in recent times, where we all wanted him to buy in January yet the cheque-book remained closed aside from the few glorious weeks we got to spoon with Thierry again.

Yet now there’s little point of talking about what we should have done in January. There is nothing we can do now to augment the squad. What we have, we hold, and maybe the solution can be found from the article and the two games at the Stadium of Light. Is there any particular reason why Arsenal couldn’t do what Sunderland did? Not so much in terms of parking the bus, because I don’t think we have the defensive confidence to do that, but in terms of pressing other teams?

When we’ve seen Arsenal do this – and the 3-1 at home to Chelsea last season comes to mind almost immediately – it appears obvious that it ought to the blueprint for the way we should play. Contrast it to the way we played in Milan, stand-offish and passive to the point where it almost looked a deliberate ploy to allow them so much time on the ball, and it’s hard to understand why there isn’t more focus on what we do when we don’t have the ball.

Clearly Arsene’s focus is on how we play our own game. It has always been this way, there are no dossiers on the opposition, but it seems we lack a consistent approach when it comes to opposition possession. Do we actively try and win it back? Do we put pressure on them in midfield? At times it seems we’re content to let them play until such time as they give it back to us, when maybe we should be more proactive.

It takes a lot of work and you need to be very fit to play a pressing game but these are professional athletes with the best facilities in the world at their disposal. People often point to the way Barcelona play but surely it’s not an unrealistic expectation for them to be able to work as hard as Sunderland did in both games against us – and let’s not forget that while we might have had heavy legs last Saturday, so did they the week before after 120 minutes in the FA Cup.

In the absence of a transfer window, without the ability to bring in new players, then the only option we have left is to work harder on the pitch and try and exploit the strengths we do have. There’s little point chucking on Walcott as a central striker against a team who are sitting deep, and while lack of options may be an issue, perhaps we need to use the squad more efficiently.

What’s slightly ironic is the fact that this new ‘vertical’ approach would be far more effective with somebody who had the passing ability of Fabregas in midfield, again maybe Wilshere is the missing component here, but again we can only work with what we have. And if what we have is somewhat lacking in quality then it can be made up with application.

—

In other news the AST met last night to provide some analysis of Arsenal’s upcoming financial results. The profit is expected to be in the region of £40m but seems to come mostly from player trading, without that we’re breaking even. Which is still a lot better than many other clubs. For me the key point is the efficiency of the wage bill and the obvious financial impact lack of Champions League football would have next season. None of this information should be of any great surprise to anyone and we’re not treading new ground in any way.

On the other hand, I do have to wonder why the statement asked questions that the AST, who surely know the club as well as anyone, can have no realistic expectation of being answered. Regardless of who’s in charge, be it Kroenke, Usmanov or anyone else, the inner workings of how and why certain decisions are made won’t be for public consumption, and perhaps by focusing on things they cannot influence or have explained it takes away from the issues they can. Day to day – but crucial – ones like ticket prices, for example.

Right, that’s yer lot. Till tomorrow.

Within hours, sometimes less, of it happening, with no time for anyone to have had a conversation of substance with anyone of substance, there’s all this info out there of such great detail and precision it makes you stop and wonder. For example, in the wake of the Milan defeat one high profile English paper suggested quite emphatically that two players were done and dusted at the club, while another’s career was hanging in the balance.

Fast forward to Saturday and both of those players appeared against Sunderland, as substitutes, while in the meantime another high profile outlet was telling us that the player who was in the last chance saloon was about to be offered a new deal. That’s odd, right? It’s almost as if they’ve simply made up stories using the weight of public opinion to drive and add credence to them.

After Sunderland there’s a story in the Sunday Mirror about how all of a sudden the manager has been handed a “WAR CHEST” and will be allowed spend a bazillionty million pounds on wages. I mean, it took two defeats in a week for someone to come to that conclusion? Or somehow the paper in question managed to get into the inner-workings of the board between 7.30pm and the print deadline?

Now, I know some journalists do indeed have good contacts at the club. I know the club also like to get information out there via these journalists, but when you see stuff like ‘Arsene Wenger has had enough of …’ immediately after a defeat you can be pretty sure it’s fiction. I’m sorry, but Arsene is not likely to tell a journalist, or a anyone who might tell a journalist, what his plans are for a player in these circumstances.

Anyway, it’s a small point but I always find it a bit annoying the way these stories appear and because of the timing of them there’s a desire to find them true. It would be nice to think that the “WAR CHEST” (haven’t heard that before, eh?) is there, and that the wage structure at the club will be done away with so we can pay the most overpaid people in society even more, but until I actually see evidence of it by way of signings and the like, I’ll remain dubious.

Meanwhile – and I suspect there’ll be much focus on this today – Arsene has done himself few favours by going down the old ‘fourth place is a trophy’ route. Speaking after Sunderland he said:

The first trophy is to finish in the top four. And that’s still possible. I believe finishing fourth is vital for us, so let’s focus on that.

Whatever else you have to admit that Arsene has added to the Arsenal lexicon in a way that will never be forgotten. ’4th is a trophy’ is right up there with ‘Like a new signing’ when an injured player returns, but I do wish somebody at the club would tell him how badly this particular aphorism comes across. While I think everyone gets the jist of what he’s saying, fourth place is not, never has been and never will be, a trophy.

It is, at best, an achievement. In fact, this season, more than any other, it’ll be an achievement and a half if we manage it, but when the club has just crashed out of two cup competitions in a week, competitions which provide a real and actual trophy at the end of them, to spout this again was as ill-timed as a Martin Taylor tackle.

I mean, I get it. It’s important, crucial, critical, essential and everything else, but is Arsene really that out of touch with what fans think that he can’t see how comments like that would go down? If we must reference fourth place it should be to say that is the minimum expectation for a club like ours, with the resources we have.

Maybe we have become spoiled, maybe we need to be reminded that our presence in the Champions League season after season after season is indeed a measure of consistency, especially when the manager has been working within certain financial restraints that other clubs have not. Yet as we prepare for interim financial results, and the expectation of a very healthy profits, questions will be asked as to whether those restraints are steel handcuffs locked to railings or some old twine that might be wriggled out of if one was in the mood.

And how do we tally Arsene’s statement that ‘finishing fourth’ (note: not finishing in the top four) is ‘vital’ for us with the club’s inaction in January. Clearly the Henry loan deal was an indication that we felt we needed something more in the striking department, but that was as far as it went. I realise Gervinho was away in Africa but what we say is seemingly at odds with what we do. If it is so ‘vital’ why do we not act like it is?

It seems as if Stan is flying in this week to have meetings, and while I’m sure the financials will be a part of it, there are more important things on the agenda. At a time when confidence in all areas of the club is being eroded – somewhat at odds with the fact the business side of things is going so well – the owner has got to show some leadership, to show that he has a real plan for this club and that things that need to change will change.

Concerns about his stewardship of the club are quite valid (Arse2Mouse has a good piece on this). Even if he is the hands-off type, content (and perhaps sensible) to delegate to people who may indeed have more knowledge and experience of football than he has, he is the majority shareholder of a club on the verge of a real crisis. I don’t use that word lightly, because it’s bashed out day in day out in the media for the smallest of reasons, but with a North London derby coming up and the general feeling one of discontent then it works in this context.

I’m not sure what exactly he can do. He doesn’t seem the inspirational type, not for him Churchillian speeches or chest thumping, but we need to know what the club are going to do about the place we find ourselves in. How long are we going to let the business side of things drive us, seemingly at the expense of the footballing side? But he’s got to do, or say, something.

I like Arsenal’s business model. I know many would love a billionaire to come in and pump in ‘free money’ but I don’t believe that’s right for us, and I don’t believe it should be right for any club for that matter. We are set up well, we make profit, we have huge potential with a big stadium, a massive fanbase, great tradition and everything else, but until it is made clear to Arsene, or whoever might be in charge of the football team, that those resources must be used to their fullest extent, then surely we’re doing nothing but making life more difficult for ourselves.

At this stage of a season, for a club like Arsenal, the focus should be on actual trophies, cups with handles and ribbons, and not figurative ones which drive people mad when they hear about them. So let’s see what this week brings, if the pressure is on the manager and the players, then it’s got to be on the owner too. As much as Arsene or anyone else, he’s got a part to play in putting things right.

Till tomorrow.

So, out of two cup competitions in a week. Sadly it’s an all too familiar feeling these days. We looked for a reaction from Arsenal yesterday and the saddest part for me was that while we tried, we just weren’t capable of it.

The team was pretty much as I expected. Oxlade-Chamberlain started ahead of Walcott, Gervinho came back in, van Persie started up top. The only surprise, if you can call it that, was the absence of Kieran Gibbs who, after making his comeback against Milan, missed out for what I can only assume were medical reasons. His replacement, Francis Coquelin, lasted just eight minutes before he twanged his hamstring, which meant Squillaci made his first appearance since Leeds in the last round and Thomas Vermaelen moved to left back.

We had started quite brightly, we looked purposeful and, dare I say ‘up for it’, but when we had our Coq pulled off we seemed to lose the rhythm we’d created. Ramsey turned an ankle and was obviously not right after that and the game fell into much the same pattern as last week. Sunderland worked hard, pressed us quite high up the pitch, got men behind the ball whenever we were in possession and looked to hit us on the counter.

All the same we fashioned a good opening for Gervinho who forced a decent save from Mignolet before a Song pass almost got van Persie in behind. There was the slightest touch of the ball from John O’Shea and I’ve seen less convincing penalties than that given plenty of times before, but when you’re looking for the rub of the green to it rarely comes when the chips are down.

Djourou then picked up a booking for a foul he really shouldn’t have had to make, Sunderland whipped in the free kick, it was headed half clear and Kieran Richardson’s shot deflected into the bottom corner off Sebastian Squillaci. He’s got a touch of the Murphy’s Law about him, whatever can go wrong generally does, and it was an unhappy performance again. It’s not nice seeing a player struggle like that, an experienced pro misjudging headers like that smacks of a player shorn of any belief, and injury might not have been the worst thing that’s ever happened to him, or us, as he came off not long into the second half.

Here though, is where I felt things went really wrong. I don’t think the substitutions were right and I imagine Martin O’Neill was licking his lips when he saw the double change. Ramsey was replaced by Rosicky, more or less understandable even if he is a man who has not scored a goal for over two years, while Walcott came on for Squillaci as Song moved back to centre-half. This was as wrong as it gets, especially when he deployed Walcott as a central striker playing just behind van Persie.

To my recollection Walcott has never played there before for Arsenal, despite his constant bleating about how he’d like to, and against a team like Sunderland who were happy to sit back and deny us space behind their defence – the only area in which Walcott can be effective – it was a shockingly misjudged substitution. Why not put on Arshavin, who created something last weekend and for all his lack of form at least has the ability to spark now and again? Or, considering our tippy-tappy pass pass pass approach wasn’t that effective on a bobbly, nobbly pitch, why not throw on Marouane Chamakh?

I know the Moroccan is hardly the darling of the terraces and his record is poor but he’s an actual striker, and doesn’t he at least provide something different. If not quite a Plan B, a Plan E, which would have allowed us to mix it up a bit, go long, hope for a knock-down and put pressure on the Sunderland defence. Arsene’s aesthetics won out and the fact that the only time I can remember Walcott touching the ball is when he was given offside but his first touch put it out for a goal kick says it all.

Sunderland’s second was unfortunate but hardly a surprise. Oxlade-Chamberlain lost it high up the pitch, Sunderland broke, Larsson’s eventual shot hit the post and cannoned in off the unfortunate youngster who had, at least, chased all the way back to do his defensive duty. Clearly he was gutted but it would be churlish in the extreme to apportion blame, at least he was trying to make something happen when he had the ball.

The remainder of the game played out as you’d expect. Arsenal barely threatened and the lack of intelligence in our approach was summed up when, with just a couple of minutes to go, Alex Song took a short corner and immediately lost possession when we had a chance to get a decent ball into the box. I hate short corners in general but that was almost criminal.

Afterwards, Arsene said:

We put in a committed performance and gave absolutely everything that was left in our legs. It was a very difficult game.

At the moment it is best to let people talk, criticise, analyse and destroy and on our side it is important to show internal strength and resilience and come out with a strong performance in our next game.

Overall, I think the most disheartening part of the defeat – which was tough enough in itself because we all know the consequences of that – was the fact that you looked at the players on the pitch and found it tough to see anyone, bar van Persie, who might make a difference. But even the best strikers in the world need supply, very few (maybe Messi), can make something out of nothing.

As time goes by you can see the enormous creative hole that the departure of Fabregas has left in the side. Tight games like this might have been turned as he picked a pass which created an opening but there’s nobody like that now. When teams play like Sunderland played – and surely that’s now going to be the blueprint for any team when they face us – we end up passing it around with little or no end product.

I don’t think we can fault them for effort, the real issue is quality, or the lack of it. On Friday’s Arsecast Philippe Auclair make a striking point: bad nights like Milan can happen to any team, but when you look at this Arsenal team it’s one beset by mediocrity. It’s not a pleasant conclusion by any means but it’s impossible to escape the truth of it.

Arsene has built great teams during his time at the club. This, sadly, is not one of them. Its limitations exposed in four days by an experienced Milan side and a Sunderland team who will finish mid-table at best. The manager’s decision making was poor yesterday, hampered by injury I know, but when a player like Walcott coasts through a huge Champions League game – a fact the manager recognised by dropping him – what kind of lesson does he learn when he’s straight off the bench in the next game? How can we expect to get anything from Benayoun or Arshavin when the manager essentially tells then they’re worth less to the team than a player he dropped because he played like shit in midweek?

Arsenal looked a broken side yesterday – that was literally true as we picked up three more injuries ruling Coquelin, Ramsey and Squillaci out of next weekend’s game – and Arsene looked like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. And perhaps, for the first time, a hint from him that all is not right behind the scenes. Asked about the fact this is another season without silverware, he said:

I do not want to speak too much about that, if you want we can speak a long time about it one day but at the moment we have to focus on our next game and try and win it.

It feels like we’re lost at sea a bit, rudderless, directionless, with Arsene trying to paddle furiously as Stan sits back and lets it all happen. If people suggest to the manager that his team lacks leadership, and not without merit, isn’t it also a case that the club, as a whole, lacks it too? I think many this morning will think that something’s got to give, changes have got to be made as you cannot keep failing the same way over and over again, but where is that change going to come from?

From an owner who doesn’t go to games? From a board whose passive acceptance of the club’s problems on the pitch seems borne out of their contentment with good financial results? Will it take a hit to the balance sheets for them to wake up? It’s all well and good talking about 2014 and increased sponsorship deals, but surely those will be affected by a team that lacks success, by empty seats, by Europa League or no European football. Try selling those corporate boxes then.

It’s all well and good shouting for change – something I am not opposed to if it can make things better – but without real leadership and direction from the very top, without drive and ambition, you wonder what effect it would have and whether or not it’s being made for the right reasons.

Arsene’s oft rolled out quote about top four being a trophy has never felt more hollow, but that’s all we have left.

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In terms of today’s team, I expect some changes. If we’d won in Milan I’d have expected changes too, some players rested with half an eye on next week’s North London derby, but today changes will be made not to rest certain players but because you cannot do anything different after the way some of them played in midweek.

Fabianski, the cup keeper, will start ahead of Szczesny. At the back the manager has confirmed that we’ll miss Per Mertesacker ‘long term’, which is a real blow. He’s had surgery on his ankle and Robin van Persie, who suffered a similar injury and had a similar operation, was close to five months out. With Laurent Koscielny also missing it’ll mean Djourou and Vermaelen in the centre of the defence, surely flanked by Sagna and Gibbs. And the deliciousness of the Arsenal injury situation is summed up here – lose our first choice centre-half pairing having just got our full backs fit again … great.

The midfield was ineffective in Milan, and I do wonder if he might change things around in here a bit. I’d be quite tempted to play Coquelin ahead of Song, have Arteta keep things ticking and Benayoun in the more forward role. He’s not convinced me he’s a starter but if he can’t get a chance after Milan when can he?

Up front van Persie must start. If Chamakh and Park aren’t even worthy of a place on the bench for our last two games then they’re certainly not worthy of starting a game which provides a path to Arsenal’s only chance of silverware this season. If Robin is in the red zone, I’m afraid that’s your fault Arsene, for not having augmented the squad properly in the summer and at all in January beyond the loan signing of the now departed Thierry Henry.

Either side of him are Oxlade-Chamberlain on the right, replacing Walcott, and either Gervinho or Arshavin on the left. The manager says Gervinho could benefit from getting straight back into first team action:

He was very down when I spoke with him on Monday, now he is better and hopefully he can contribute on Saturday.

We don’t know [what impact the Africa Cup of Nations will have]. I see Yaya Toure played on Thursday night for Manchester City and sometimes the best thing to get things out of your system is to play a game and have a performance. When you are young it is important to focus on the next game and show you are a good player.

While I feel sorry for him that he missed that penalty in the ACoNoACoNiA final but if it becomes a thing, a millstone around his neck which impacts his club performances, then that sympathy will disappear very, very quickly indeed. You’re a professional football, get over, and it was mostly Drogba’s fault for missing in normal time anyway. Let’s hope whatever pain he is feeling is aided by him having a storming second half of the season for us.

If he’s not quite physically ready, after the travel and the tournament, then he’d be an effective sub to have if the Russian were to start the game. So, Arsene’s got choices, particularly once you go beyond the defence which picks itself. He’s got to find the balance between our need to win the game and the need to demonstrate to certain players that the level of performance we saw against Milan was not acceptable. And, he says, we need a reaction:

Disappointments are a part of the game but we had previously always found the resources to get up again when it was down. That is what’s at stake tomorrow.

It is more important now. It was always important but, because we had a big disappointment in the last game, it becomes more important.

And at least there’s that recognition of the importance of today’s game. You can still argue about whether the cup is less important than a top four finish but the two are not, and never have been, mutually exclusive. Going for the FA Cup does not preclude scrapping for the top four – but today’s game takes on even more significance because of what happened at the San Siro.

Yes, we need to react, restore some pride, put things right and all that, but most importantly we’ve got to win an FA Cup game against a team that are going to make life very difficult for us. No doubt O’Neill has been out on the pitch all week, leaping around like a brain damaged ballet dancer wearing 8 inch stilettos to gouge and plough and pockmark the surface. They worked extremely hard last week after playing 120 minutes in midweek, they’ll be fresher this week having had no game since last weekend’s late defeat to us. This is going to be extremely tough today, make no mistake.

Yet, if we work hard, if we play as well as we’re capable of (albeit not on a consistent basis – our biggest flaw, in my opinion), then there’s no reason why we can’t come away from tonight’s game with a result. I’m sure their pride has been stung too and you have to hope that from a professional point of view they want to show that they’re better than they appeared against Milan. If there’s motivation already, from the point of view of this being the only trophy in our sights, and just the fact that this is the next game, then everything else, the manager’s hair-dryer and simply wanting to put things right will see a much more acceptable Arsenal performance.

Anything like Milan, anything like the passivity, the lack of effort and the sheer carelessness of that performance and we’re going out of the cup today. You have to just hope that lightning doesn’t strike twice … in one week.

Thierry Henry has gone, with a message for the fans to get behind the team, which is great and I know where he’s coming from. But even Arsene Wenger said after the Bolton game that it was up to players to lift the fans. It works both ways, of course, but today they must take the lead and show that they want to do better for this club.

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Kick off later isn’t till 5.15pm, stupid ITV, and as usual we’ll have live blog coverage of the game if you can’t see it. You can follow it on your phone, computer, iPad, iPid, iPud and iPéd, so check back later for another post with all the details. Or you can just bookmark the default live blog page and it’ll automatically update when things start happening.

And betting as always via Paddy Power who have a special for today’s game: If Sunderland score first but Arsenal win, Paddy Power will refund all losing 1st/last goalscorer, correct score and scorecast singles.

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Right, that’s yer lot. Have a good Saturday and catch you later for the game.

I guess the easiest way of tying the still incoherent strands of thought together is to attack them chronologically. Beginning with the Sunderland game – which seems a long time ago now in view of the Milan massacre – and the fairytale Premier League ending for Thierry Henry. I have to say I was one of the most vocally opposed to the move, but whatever we put in his bank account during his stay was worth it. Two winning goals in tight games and, given we currently lead Chelsea in the table on Goals Scored; his strike against Blackburn could yet prove to garner more than just sentimental value.

I always felt there were a couple of nigglingly unsatisfying things about the end of Henry’s Arsenal career in 2007. The fact that his last season was such an injury hit, mish mash affair. The feeling that he was having a hard time acknowledging the handover as the team’s focal point to Fabregas. Arsenal never really settled on a regular formation in the 2006-07 season and it’s a matter of public record that Henry and Wenger fell out on the training ground quite bitterly in advance of a 3-0 North London derby win. The manager was having difficulty reconciling Henry’s ego with the needs of the team.

His goal scoring away from home dropped off significantly in those last few seasons and even the fact that he didn’t get to break the goalscoring record at his beloved Highbury denied him a poetry that his legend demanded. Minor ink blotches on the tome of Henry’s imperious Arsenal career. But it feels as though he has resketched his own epitaph and removed those small blemishes, in my mind at least, ending his legendary scrawl on our history with the penmanship it deserves. A bit like blowing a few stray crumbs away from the kitchen table after a delicious cake.

In truth, on his brief forays wide he has looked slightly off the pace. But the manager seemed to work out rather quickly that if you put him on the shoulder of the last defender, the movement and finish is still there. In short, I recall Henry having three good chances in his loan spell. I don’t need to tell you how many were scored. Thierry appears to have revelled in his role as elder statesman on his return. His public pronouncements have earned him full diplomacy marks.

But as a set of supporters, we know Thierry well enough to realise that the romance of his return will not have been lost on him. I recall an interview with him on the 2002-03 Season Review DVD in which he said, in his enigmatically, cartoonishly French way, “To feel right at a club, I need to feel lurve.” That “lurve” was shown most aptly as his name was sung for the duration of injury time in the San Siro as another show of thanks. On a personal level, I’m delighted my own scepticism was so disproven. So thanks again, Thierry.

In the meantime, his absence now represents a hole in our squad. Henry became the de facto back up to the criminally overworked van Persie in a matter of days, to the point that neither Chamakh nor Park have even made the bench in our last two fixtures. Both players will simply have to feature in our run in at some point. I’m not sure if there is any GPS technology to measure confidence, but one or both has probably long since dropped into the red zone. (Otherwise known as ‘Almunia territory.’)

Now they must partake in the knowledge that, but for the beginning of the MLS season, the manager would sooner have them cleaning boots. It’s a puzzling situation. The bafflement with which will only be increased by Wednesday night’s humiliation in Milan. Pundits and supporters are often wont to say that any defeat, no matter how narrow, is a question of desire or ‘pashuuuun.’ It rarely actually is for a club that operates at the level we do. (Or at least that we have done!)

In our very elevated position inside the stadium however, it was very apparent that, at least in part, lack of desire was responsible for Wednesday night’s thumping. Critics of Arsenal’s back four are all too keen to place the blame entirely on the defence, but it was apparent from the first minute that Milan had untracked runners enjoying the time of their lives in Arsenal’s third. We seemed to stumble on an unhappy marriage of having nobody attacking and nobody defending.

Milan were able to double and triple team the full backs without fear of reprisal. Having excelled in the centre of midfield over the past few months, Rosicky looked maladjusted on the flank. Walcott just looked contemptibly idle. On the few occasions we did manage to work the ball to our one man strike force, he found little in the way of support. Sometimes you can identify Arsenal as being too cavalier in their approach. Sometimes a team’s game plan falls apart through unnecessary caution. Both are understandable if not acceptable.

But we were neither. We essentially set up with five midfielders of varying degrees of offensive and defensive responsibility, yet not one of them protected their defence, nor supported their attack. That, I think, came down to two things at a guess. The lack of a coherent plan from the manager – or at least one that the players could understand. The selection of Rosicky out wide hinted at an air of caution, but were they specifically instructed to be cautious and how exactly to execute that caution? The players didn’t seem to understand their roles.

But the bottom line is also quite simple. Running. Effort. Not enough of it and that’s very concerning indeed. It wasn’t exactly an occasion for flippancy and underestimation of your opponent. It may seem harsh to pick on individuals, but the replacement of Walcott at half time suggested that the manager, like me, felt Theo was the chief culprit. The embodiment of that malaise. The amount of times he left Sagna to fight off two and three pronged attacks down his side was appalling, frankly.

Walcott’s loss of form could not have come at a worse time for him. He’s currently trying to show a strong hand in a contract negotiation and such listlessness weakens his case significantly. The increased popularity of Oxlade-Chamberlain likewise threatens to leave him in the shade. He’s not the darling of the terraces that he once was. Last week, I picked up on some of his more laissez-faire comments about his performances.

With autobiographies and children’s books (!) increasing his commercial repertoire, there’s an increasing suspicion that his focus isn’t as high as it could be. Gervinho has returned from Africa now and the manager’s team selections in coming weeks will tell us how farTheo’s stock has fallen.

The season is on a knife edge now. A lot of Wenger’s reputation rests on Saturday’s F.A. Cup tie. I have a feeling that the state of the pitch, (which has well and truly banjaxed our BFG) may govern his team selection. But to tumble out of the F.A. Cup would finish our chances of a trophy for another season and the dissenting voices will become a choir. Arsene, it’s over to you. LD.

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Having stewed overnight on what he’d seen against Milan, he gave them bollocking/rollocking/dressingdown type thing and, frankly, who can blame him? If he’d chased them around Benny Hill style trying to whack them with a very big stick it’d be hard not to say it was justified. He had plenty to be angry about.

The dismal display against Milan, as well as costing us a chance of a place in the next stage of the Champions League, reflected badly on the club as a whole. And in football when the club is under the spotlight then the manager is the one who takes the brunt of the blame. That is how it is, how it always has been, and always will be. It’s plaudits and praise when things go well, brickbats and broadsides when they don’t.

If Arsene felt let down by some of his players on Wednesday night then he has a right to be aggrieved. As I said yesterday it was the manner of the defeat which hurt far more than the defeat itself. Those players might not be the best Arsenal team we’ve seen during Wenger’s time at the club but they’re not as bad as that scoreline suggested, so I’ve got no problem whatsoever with the manager laying into them, making them accountable and demanding better.

Yet, there’s little point in him going mad at them without some introspection too. If the players were culpable then so was he. After all, these are his players, he bought them, he trains them, he sets them up for games, he picks the team and in hindsight he might consider the selection wrong. Oxlade-Chamberlain should have started for me, and the unceremonious way in which Theo Walcott was hooked at half-time suggests he knew it too, even if Henry was the one to replace him.

He didn’t pick his best team on Wednesday night, choosing an understandable but misguidedly conservative approach, when perhaps we don’t have the ability to be that subtle just yet. We had a rotten January and after only two good results sticking with what worked, for the most part, would actually have been the sensible approach. Not picking Oxlade-Chamberlain was the risky move and it backfired because it impacted on the way the team played.

Now, that’s not to say that if we’d played the young man all would have been well, hindsight is a marvellous gift to have when writing about football, but it just strikes me that it couldn’t have been much fucking worse, could it? He was, during the darkest moments of the last month, the obvious bright spark and while I can understand a reluctance to heap too much pressure on him, the fact is he is a player in form. He might have had a quiet game against Sunderland but he deserved a place in the side on merit rather than reputation, a quality Arsene seems overly fond of at times.

The other thing that worries me slightly about these kind of ‘hairdryer’ stories is how effective they are in the long-term. If it serves to re-focus the players ahead of tomorrow’s game, which while always important has now taken on huge significance, then that’s great. But you can’t do that every week, for every little thing. And I’m not sure it addresses the fundamental issue – why did the Milan performance happen in the first place?

You can get the whole gamut of opinion across this great web of hours. Players aren’t good enough, summer wasn’t good enough, manager’s past it, owner sits in his Colorado Castle twirling his ‘tache and seemingly doing little, club put profit before success on the pitch, lack of leadership from boardroom to dressing room, the ghost of Sylvester haunting us and so on.

Many of them have merit, there does seem to be a lack of direction. Nobody still quite knows what Stan is about, Arsene appears more and more isolated, there’s financial confusion, the lack of investment in the squad seemingly at odds with what the balance sheets tell us and when it comes to the football side of things, maybe we need more from Arsene than a meeting at which he lets off some steam in the direction of his shocked players.

Shouting and roaring, raving and ranting, will have an immediate impact. Unless the players really don’t give a shit – and I don’t think that’s the case – then they will do their best to respond. But soon enough the ranting and raving becomes easy to ignore and the key is solving the problem so that’s no longer neccessary. What is a more effective, long-term message: some shouting after a bad performance or, when the under-performers consistently under-perform, dropping them and ultimately replacing them in the team? Let them ply their capricious trade somewhere else and it certainly sends a message to the rest.

That requires something of a change in tack from the manager, yet who is there to stand up and give the club in general the bollocking it seems to need? Our issues are not confined to the pitch alone, what’s happening at the top is affecting what’s happening at the bottom, and while the manager and the players are the frontline it would be wrong to ignore the bigger picture. Unless we strive to improve everything about the way the club operates – from simple things like communication from the owner, to crucial issues like how we conduct our transfer business – then the training ground tirades will only go so far.

And that’ll be true under Arsene, under another manager and with new players. You can’t put a plaster over a wound which needs stitches and hope for the best. All we can do is keep fingers crossed that nights like Milan teach us lessons to ensure that nights like Milan don’t happen again.

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Right, time for this week’s Arsecast. Joining me to discuss Sunderland, Milan and the fall-out from that is Philippe Auclair. Also in the mix, Internet Joe, Amaury Bischoff PI and your chance to win an engraved Arseblog iPod (something to try and cheer people up).

You can subscribe to the Arsecast on iTunes by clicking here. Or if you want to subscribe directly to the feed URL you can do so too (this is a much better way to do it as you don’t experience the delays from iTunes). To download this week’s Arsecast directly – click here (22mb MP3) or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.

From what I gather there’s no pre-Sunderlad press conference, but news should drip out through the day. Follow it on Arseblog News (and follow Arseblog News on Twitter for instant notification of same).

We’ll have a proper look at that game in tomorrow’s blog. Have a good one.

From the start you could see we were sluggish, off the pace and that certain players just weren’t up for it. As early as the 4th minute the problems were obvious. Bacary Sagna was left two on one as Seedorf traded passes with a teammate, there was no sign of Theo Walcott coming back to help him, no sign of one of our midfielders coming across to fill the gap, and it ended with the veteran Dutchman firing a shot not far wide.

If that was a warning sign then so too was the fact that simple passes dropped between our centre-halves, designed to drag them out of position, worked time and time again. Koscielny did his best to mop up, while Vermaelen is lucky he has so much goodwill on his side such were his struggles last night. This was basic stuff though, Milan were allowed far too much time and space in midfield. If we were struggling to cope with these passes then we should have worked harder to cut off the supply. We didn’t and paid the price.

While Szczesny has to take some of the blame for a poor kick which led to the first, the fact that it dropped to a Milan player without so much as a sniff of a challenge from an Arsenal man was unforgivable. Again, the simple ball between the centre-halves cut us open like a hot knife through butter, and Boateng’s finish was fantastic.

If you hoped it would provide something of a wake-up call then you were disappointed. Arsenal struggled to keep the ball in any meaningful way. There can be no blame apportioned to the pitch. Yes, it was terrible but the same for both teams. It was almost as if the players didn’t want it, keen to get rid of it and pass the responsibility on to someone else. Time and time again we gave it away.

And if anything summed up the state we were in it was Bacary Sagna, a player I have all the time in the world for, getting caught out like a schoolboy. Yes, Ibrahimovic was offside when he received the ball but the first thing you’re taught is to play to the whistle. Add to that his rather half-hearted jog to get back to the big Swede and it made Robinho’s header to make it 2-0 all the more infuriating. A dismal first half closed with Laurent Koscielny hobbling off with a knee injury.

Wenger took off Walcott for Henry at half-time, which was at least a positive move. When the chips are down and you need someone to take some responsibility Theo’s just not the man. Any hopes of Thierry having the required impact were quashed by an early Milan goal. Robinho firing from the edge of the box into the bottom corner, leaving Szczesny with no chance, after Vermaelen slipped.

We did muster a chance or two. There was a glimpse of what we’d like to think is the real Arsenal when Henry flicked a Song pass into the path of van Persie his volley forcing a great save from Abiatti. The captain had a header saved late in the half too, but as an attacking force we were pretty much impotent all night long. A heavy defeat became a rout when Rosicky got caught on the ball in midfield, Milan came forward, Ibrahimovic crumpled under the the vaguest touch from Djourou and duly converted the penalty.

It could have been worse. Before the final whistle Milan had two great chances to make the scoreline even more humiliating, and but for some poor decision making they would have scored more. Afterwards, Arsene said:

It is our worst night in Europe, we were punished and deservedly so. We were very poor offensively and defensively. We were beaten everywhere. There was not one moment in the 90 minutes we were really in the game. What made it worse is that we had to chase the game. It was always the same problem, balls over the top and we were well beaten.

And on having any chance of progression:

Let’s be realistic, we don’t play in dream world. Maybe two per cent or five per cent statistically. We have to show a completely different performance and you never know. But, you have to say, realistically, we are out of the competition.

He’s right. We’re out, no doubt about it. And look, there’s absolutely no shame in going out of the Champions League to a team like AC Milan if you turn up, give them a game, but don’t quite come out on top. Going out to anyone the way we did last night is embarrassing, however. We’ve seen some poor performances from this Arsenal side this season but for me that was by far the worst.

If you can find some mitigating circumstances to the Old Trafford game (threadbare squad, summer still impacting), and Blackburn away (two own goals, individual errors), as a collective performance last night was as bad as it gets. From the first few minutes it was obvious Milan saw a weakness and looked to exploit it. That they were able to do so for pretty much the whole game is a terrible indictment of our performance, and to my mind we missed the organisational skills of Mertesacker.

I like Koscielny and I like Vermaelen but I have my doubts that they can ever form an effective partnership. They’re rather too similar and while the German’s pace is used as some kind of proof he’s not up to the job, he provides balance in the centre of our defence. His reading of the game is exceptional, allowing a Koscielny or a Vermaelen to do what they’re best at – attacking the ball – while he mops up. As it was Koscielny was firefighting for his 44 minutes as Vermaelen struggled in what is his favoured position.

That there wasn’t the leadership on the field to sort it out, or instruction from the sideline, was even more disappointing. Even late in the second half Milan had a free kick in midfield, they played a straight floated ball into our box, bread and butter stuff for any defence, yet Ibrahimovic won the ball. In the first half there was a moment when a high ball dropped just outside our six yard area and Boateng took it down without an Arsenal player even challenging for the ball. In our own box!

You’d get a kick up the hole if you did that in a Sunday league game, let alone a Champions League knock-out tie. It’s so hard to explain, because these are professional footballers who should not need to be told things like play to the whistle or when a ball is dropping in your box make sure you get a head on it instead of letting it fall to a bloke who has already scored one great goal. For all the criticism the manager will get today, and rightly so, he surely has a right to expect that his players will at least get the basics right.

The bottom line though is that on the big stage we choked. People can point to our squad and its weaknesses, again with plenty of merit, but you can’t tell me that the players we had out there last night weren’t capable of better. Quite why we performed like that is anybody’s guess. There can’t have been a lack of preparation or motivation, but nor can you say it was one of those days because we’ve had too many of them already this season.

There are fundamental problems with this team and this squad that continue to go without being addressed. The only striker we had on the bench last night was a 34 year old Thierry Henry who now returns to New York, his legendary status enhanced not just by his goals but by the fact he became van Persie’s de facto back-up so quickly. Neither Chamakh or Park could even make the bench last night and when Henry came on he was deployed up top with van Persie behind him, something we haven’t seen Arsene do before. It all smacked a bit of desperation.

And for me our woes come from our inefficiencies off the pitch as much as on it. I don’t pretend to know exactly what goes on when it comes to our transfer business but clearly there’s something missing in our set-up. It’s one of the more curious situations that many champion the return of David Dein as a cure-all but, at the same time, advocate the removal of the manager he’d most like to work with.

Yet you cannot look at the way this team, this squad, has been managed and not worry about where we go from here. The nucleus is there, there are exciting young players with huge potential, but a lack of quality to support and develop them properly. Last night was something of a slap in the face for Arsene Wenger, he talked about his pretenders becoming contenders, but last night they could even pretend to be pretenders.

The Champions League was, for me, an unrealistic target for us but we’ve been hammered in Europe before (think Barcelona away) and it hasn’t felt like this. Maybe we had the luxury of pointing to the genius of Messi or a harsh sending off, this time we failed miserably, and it feels like something’s got to give now.

All the same, there’s nothing for it but lick our wounds, forget about the Champions League and concentrate on domestic matters. There’s the FA Cup and a top four finish to play for. We can only hope that last night was (another) a nadir from which the only way is up.

Till tomorrow.

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tonight sees the first leg of the Champions League knock-out tie against AC Milan. Arsenal travel there boosted by two recent wins, the one against Sunderland coming after the 7- thrashing against Blackburn. Each will have provided a lift in its own way and it’s important we look to continue this short, but positive, run.

Arsene Wenger has voiced some concerns about the pitch but I do wonder if he’s coming at it from a safety rather than a football point of view. Seeing what Sunderland’s bog-heap did to Mertesacker (more on that later) won’t have encouraged him, but the bottom line tonight is that both teams will have to cope with whatever issues the San Siro surface has.

With regards to the team it strikes me the only decision he has to make is at left back. He’s clearly not quite convinced that Kieran Gibbs is the man to fill the gap left by the BFG injury, saying:

If I start him, which is not decided yet, I do not want to put too much pressure on him because we want a good team performance. Gibbs is a good player.

I will find the most natural [solution], which means I will put Vermaelen back in the middle. Gibbs looks to be ready so I might look to start him but I have not decided completely yet.

There were some quotes floating about on Twitter last night where he suggested he might play Djourou at centre-half and keep Thomas Vermaelen at left, but I haven’t been able to verify those. It would be an odd decision to make unless he feels that Vermaelen is better able to cope with the demands of such a high intensity game. We have to remember Gibbs has spent four months out with injury but I guess if there’s a reluctance to use him that’s down to player himself, the manager clearly had no compunction with throwing Sagna in as soon as he was ready.

Obviously Vermaelen wants to play in the centre again, he and Koscielny should be a very decent partnership although I do think they’re just a bit similar which is why Mertesacker’s absence will more keenly felt than some suggest, and if I had to make a decision now I’d play Gibbs at left back. He’s either ready enough and good enough to play, or he’s not. Having as many players in their natural position as possible is important.

The rest of the team picks itself. Despite Ramsey’s goal on Saturday, Rosicky ought to keep his place and his busy experience in midfield could be important tonight. The good thing is that if we need to make a change we’ve got a Ramsey who is rested and also one whose confidence will have increased by his contribution against Sunderland at the weekend. And having Arteta in games like this is a so important, his ability to keep the ball and keep it moving is invaluable.

Up front Walcott and van Persie are shoe-ins while Oxlade-Chamberlain should start on the left hand side. Yes, it’s a big night, and one he won’t have experienced before, but he doesn’t strike me as the kind of player who would be phased at all by a sense of occasion. He was kept pretty quiet by Sunderland but it is unrealistic to expect a player of his relative inexperience to produce week in, week out. But the idea of him running at the Milan defence is an exciting one and whatever happens it’s going to be an education for him.

The last time we played in the San Siro was in 2008 and we won 2-0 with goals from Cesc and that Sp*rs loan bloke, but Arsene says the differences between then and now shouldn’t impact the way we approach tonight’s game.

We were top of the league and we had a young team that went into that match full of confidence. Now we are a team building confidence. Football is interesting because you can win everywhere. We have already shown we can win everywhere. I have full confidence in my team to do it.

Only one starting player from that night remains, Bacary Sagna. Theo Walcott came off the bench while Robin van Persie was an unused substitute. It just shows how quickly things change in football but the boss is right, there’s no point going there without belief. Regardless of the churn in personnel we are, as a club, much more experienced in Europe now. You don’t need that long a memory to know that Arsenal teams with better players than we have now struggled against more modest European opposition.

That experience is crucial from the manager’s point of view as well. He seems better able to set his teams up for European games, and we showed last season that we’re capable of beating the best in the world on any given night. Tonight will be a big test, we can’t talk about our experience in the Champions League and not mention Milan’s pedigree in the competition. Despite an injury crisis they’ve still plenty of quality and players who can hurt us with the ball (Ibrahimovic) and without (van Bommel).

For further reading on Milan this piece by James Horncastle for the BBC is well worth a read, and Allegri’s quotes about caviar and ham sandwiches will sound quite familiar to Arsenal fans whose ham sandwich was a sausage all those years ago.

Anyway, if our aim tonight is to win the game, or at least grab an away goal, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that this is played over two legs. The rewards for scoring away are obvious but we need to give ourselves a good platform for the return leg at home, we don’t want to be so gung-ho that we give ourselves any kind of hill/mountain to climb. Our defensive performance will be just as important as our attacking one, but with one Champions League win in Italy already this season, and against a team just 6 points of top spot in Serie A (Udinese lie in 4th to Milan’s 1st), there’s no reason to think we can’t come away from tonight’s game with a decent result.

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In other news Dennis Bergkamp talks to Alan Smith in the Telegraph. The headlines are harsh but you can see he’s coming at it from a constructive, rather than critical, point of view. I miss Dennis.

And with regard to Per Mertesacker the news is not good. According to some sources he underwent surgery last night, Arsene Wenger saying:

Mertesacker had reconstruction of his ankle in Germany before he joined us and Monday’s scan did not look too positive.

If he has had surgery we must surely be in Andre Santos territory, looking at 3 months or so out which would pretty much end his domestic season. German TV said 6 weeks but I guess we’re just going to have to wait to see what the official line is. For me this is a big blow and one we could really do without. Those that scoff at the German’s lack of pace miss the point, in my opinion, and they’d do well to reflect on the fact we’re a combined injury/suspension away from Squillaci.

Finally, if you can’t see the game tonight, if, like our good old friends on other side of the Atlantic, it takes place right in the middle of the working day, fear not. You can follow the game with up to the second text commentary on the live blog. We’ll have a post up later with all the details or you can bookmark the default live blog page now.

Betting tonight via Paddy Power, as always, and with up to £50 in a free bet, and Arsenal at 18/1 to repeat the 2-0 win from four years ago, you could do worse. Click here to register with Paddy Power.

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Right, that’s that. Fingers crossed for later and I’ll see you on the live blog. Those of you out there, eat well, drink well, travel safe and enjoy.

the preparations for Milan begin in earnest now. The team travel to Italy today and the latest news we have regarding injuries and absences is that Per Mertesacker has gone to Germany to meet with their national team doctor regarding his injury. The German press say the results of an MRI he had here were ‘inconclusive’ but I suspect this is more about getting a second opinion than not knowing exactly how serious the damage is.

There’s a suggestion surgery could be involved, which would obviously be a very bad thing. If we use Andre Santos as a reference point, he’s been gone since the start of December and isn’t expected back for at least another three or four weeks. That kind of time frame would be nigh on seasoning end for Mertesacker, so if second opinions or anything else might prevent that then I think we’re right to try and explore it.

We should get more detail on that from Arsene later on. There’s the usual pre-game press conference scheduled for Milan later on, plus it’s not unusual for the manager to give a press briefing before they leave for away games in Europe, so let’s hope for some good news. On the face of it, it didn’t look as if we’d suffered any other problems against Sunderland so other than the BFG we should be relatively fit and healthy.

And we go into the game boosted by the weekend’s comeback against Sunderland, which the boss says will give the team a ‘massive lift’. And in typically Arsene fashion, he’s looking for the team to be ‘audacious’ at the San Siro, knowing how important an away goal is:

You always have to push for a goal when you play away in the first leg because it gives you a cushion for the second leg. We will try to score, of course – we always do. The system rewards the audacious away from home.

The way it is with the away goal, you have to be focused to score and therefore it is important that you play your game.

Having the second leg at home is certainly an advantage and if we can do anything like we did the last time we played at in Milan then we’ll be in very good shape indeed. That’s a lot to hope for, in fairness, but Aaron Ramsey seems confident, saying:

If we can go there and get a few goals and then come back to the Emirates then that’s going to be a fantastic result for us.

Hopefully, we can get a couple of goals and keep them out as well.

A few? A couple? I’d take one, I’m not greedy, but we do have to find the balance between having a go and making sure we’re defensively solid. As mentioned yesterday clean sheets, while not quite few and far between, aren’t as commonplace as we might like. And we know well how conceding can have an impact on the second leg of a European tie. Still, it promises to be a very interesting game, and there’ll be more focus on that tomorrow.

And while all eyes will definitely be on the Champions League game, I do wonder already about the effects of midweek travel and the exertions of the game itself on the team selection for Saturday’s FA Cup tie against Sunderland. You’d have to think some measure of rotation is inevitable, and the manager’s got to marry the need for silverware, with the need to rest players who are playing often, and with the fact that we’ve got a huge league game against Sp*rs the following weekend.

Add to that the fact that if we draw on Saturday the replay would take place in midweek at home, meaning that full seven days rest and recuperation we hope to have would be interrupted. Now, on paper it all sounds tiring but the reality is this is the kind of schedule we’ve had to deal with plenty of times before – and tiredness is never a good excuse (especially when lots of the players are fresh as daisies after injury lay-offs and other circumstances). I can understand why the manager would need to rotate for the weekend but this season, perhaps more than any other under Arsene’s reign, the need to take the cup as seriously as possible is enormous. I’m definitely getting ahead of myself here but it’s certainly going to be a talking point over the next few days.

In other news, Thierry Henry has quite pointedly (in my opinion) heaped praise on Andrei Arshavin for the cross which led to the winner against Sunderland. If it boosts his confidence then it can be no bad thing, and while I’ve been hugely impressed by Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, I do wonder if the boss has any worries about starting him in such a huge arena as the one we’ll play in tomorrow night. Personally, I’d love to see him against Milan, I think it could suit him very well, but it’s not unlike Arsene to be a bit conservative at times with his team selection.

I don’t think one cross is enough to suggest an Arshavin recall but stranger things have happened. Which would be more audacious, playing The Ox or bringing back the Russian? Realistically I think he’ll look at the fact that Arshavin had an impact off the bench and will want to see more of that before he returns him to the starting line-up, and the bottom line is that the more competition there is for place the better off we’ll be.

Bonus reading: Clarence Seedorf wary of exploding RVP – worth it just for comment number 7.

Right, that’s that, a full look at the Milan game tomorrow, more injury and team news and the rest throughout the day over on Arseblog News.

Till then.

part one of what is a very tricky threesome is out of the way and successfully overcome. Now we just have the trifling matter of a trip to Milan to play some team who have barely any pedigree in the Champions League and … erm … yeah.

Still, we should be boosted by what we did on Saturday. While there’s little in football as deflating as conceding a late goal to lose a game, there’s not much (beyond a trophy win) that a late winner can match. Add to that the fact that the we came from behind to do it and there’s all kinds of goodness to take from it.

It was noticeable when James McClean scored his goal that Thomas Vermaelen immediately put his hands to his head. It’s a normal reaction when you concede but given the number of times we’ve been on top then let one in you have to wonder if there was more to his head holding than just that. That it’s the second time in a couple of weeks that we’ve come from behind to win a game won’t do us any harm – especially when there’s still the issue of how often we concede. Some more clean sheets would be nice.

Obviously the impact of Thierry Henry on the pitch goes without saying, but Arsene Wenger says he’s been a big influence off it too:

We must say that he was on fantastic on the pitch and off the pitch in the dressing room. He has given us a big boost at Sunderland and against Leeds as well, so let’s hope we can continue like that.

He is intelligent and he has the respect of the players. He has done it before so they listen to his advice. He just has a helpful attitude and when you have done what he has done, players listen to you.

He was also very positive to keep the confidence level high, because we were in a bit of a crisis with losing three games. When you are a young player, the spirit drops quickly. He just tried to keep the spirit high in the camp.

Of course Henry isn’t the only experienced player in the dressing room, you’d look to the likes of Arteta, Mertesacker, Sagna, Vermaelen, Roscicky and van Persie to have an impact too, but I guess nobody else comes with the reputation and history of Thierry Henry. The ironic part, if you can call it that, is that he never really faced a situation like the one we currently face during his time at the club.

Sure, there was the final season at Highbury when we battled for fourth and only won it on the final day, but that was a serious aberration for an Arsene Wenger team. It wasn’t so much about them not having the quality in the side, whereas this season you can’t help but wonder if we’re under-performing because we don’t have the players to get us through it.

Whatever impact he’s had off the pitch (and the youngsters have been quick to talk about how much they’ve enjoyed having him around), he has, more importantly, had an impact on it, and hopefully that will inspire them just as much. The lesson to take from Saturday is to never give it up, there’s always time enough for a goal and hopefully that’s something they’ll take with them through their careers.

Meanwhile, I imagine we’ll get some news on Per Mertesacker’s injury which looked quite worrying at the time. For a 6’7 centre-half to pop up in the air like something has to have gone badly wrong. I know there are those still unconvinced by him but I like him, he adds depth and experience to our squad and, frankly, the last thing we need right now is to lose any more players through injury.

You can argue all you want about Koscielny and Vermaelen being your preferred partnership, and there’s a good case to be made for that (on paper at least), but even if that’s the case I’d rather have a fit BFG to provide competition for places and back-up should anything go wrong. It’s hard not to the fear the worst though, so fingers crossed we get some good news on the injury front. Given the season we’ve had it’s hard not to think we deserve it.

Jack Wilshere is also having a scan this week to see how his injury is faring. From what I’m told this is fairly routine, there are no great expectations of anything being much better or much worse, but perhaps we’ll have a clearer time-frame as to his return once we get the results of that.

Finally, Gervinho returns this week having missed a penalty for the Ivory Coast in the final of the African Cup of Nations of African Nations in Africa last night. There are those who will say he’ll come back a broken man, shorn of confidence, a heavy burden on his shoulders. Maybe he will but that’s football. While I feel sorry for him because he’s an Arsenal player, he’s got to put it behind him. He’s got a job to do here and that’s more important than any international tournament, to me at least. And who knows, maybe being thrust back into club football will do him the world of good.

Didn’t Drogba miss a penalty in a shoot-out in a final a few years back? It didn’t see to do him any harm when he came back to play for Chelsea, did it? And he might reflect on the fact that without his great semi-final goal they wouldn’t have got there (plus the fact that Kolo Toure missed a shoot-out penno too). It might sound harsh but there can’t be too many Arsenal fans who care that much about the tournament he’s returning from, they just want to see him do the business in red and white, and that’s what he’s got to concentrate on.

Right, have at it. Back tomorrow.

Despite the fact this was Thierry Henry’s final Premier League appearance for the club, despite the fact he capped it with an injury time winner, and despite the fact he goes back to New York after our Champions League game against Milan in midweek, it’s hard to think that the Henry Arsenal story is completely written.

There are those who doubted the loan deal, and they had every right to do so, but three goals (two of them match winners), and just his sheer presence has proved that Arsene Wenger knew what he was doing. The shame, of course, is that it has to come to an end, because when you look beyond the emotion of it, what it shows is that having a player of quality who can come off the bench can be the difference between three points and one, between a win and an unnecessary replay.

The clock has just gone over the 90 minute mark when Andrei Arshavin picked the ball up on the left hand side, he had two Sunderland players in front of him, but worked room for the cross which fell just over the head of John O’Shea and onto the predatory boot of Henry who wasn’t going to miss from there. Game over, Arsenal snatched it in injury time having come back from 1-0 down in unfortunate circumstances on an unfortunate pitch, plenty to be happy with.

The first half isn’t worth talking about at all. Sunderland’s game plan from the start was obvious, when we had it get everyone behind the ball, and in their own half. Deny Arsenal space, let’s face it deny any team space, and it’s very, very difficult to break them down. A couple of wayward Walcott efforts were all we had to show from an attacking point of view, while we were untroubled at the back.

The second had more to talk about and to be fair it was the home side that kind of sparked things into life. Wojciech Szczesny was called upon twice to make excellent saves after a period of Sunderland pressure but for the most part Arsenal looked the most determined to win, while Sunderland’s tactic was first not to lose then try and hit us on the break.

The goal was a bit odd, Per Mertesacker had nobody near him as he turned back towards goal, but clearly something went twang in his ankle and he went up in the air then lay in a crumpled, but quite large, heap on the ground. Rightly enough Sunderland played on, James McClean took the ball into the box and from a difficult angle smashed a great shot across Szczesny to make it 1-0.

I’ve got no issue at all with Sunderland playing on, I’m quite sure we’d have done the same, but it’s hard not the think the pitch was a contributory factor to Mertesacker’s injury. It’s also hard not to think that a Premier League club, with the expertise and resources that they have, has a playing surface like that by accident. What better way to stop a team that likes to pass the ball and keep it on the deck than asking them to play on something that looks like it’s been tilled by oxen with old fashioned ploughs?

Anyway, that’s a side issue but the downside to a terrible pitch isn’t just that it can affect the quality of the football, it’s that they’re dangerous. Hopefully Mertesacker isn’t too badly injured but the manager reckons it’s ankle ligament damage (my first thought was snapped Achilles so that’s good) and has already ruled him out of the Champions League game.

The obvious choice of sub was Gibbs for Mertesacker, moving Vermaelen back into the centre, but it would have deprived us of an attacking option. Ramsey’s introduction, moving Song back, was borne out of our need for goals and when the Welshman cracked home the equaliser off both posts just a couple of minutes after coming on you have to give the manager credit for a substitution he got 100% right.

The same can be said for Arshavin. Personally, I’d have done it a little bit earlier and Walcott was the right player to come off, but there was still time enough for him to make his impact. He’s been much maligned in recent times but the fact is if he’s going to be with us until the end of the season – which looks very much to be the case – then it’s better if we have an Arshavin that is at least reasonably happy and productive. We’re going to need the full depth of our squad between now and May and I was glad to see him contribute yesterday.

Afterwards, Arsene said:

We had a lot of the ball but we couldn’t create a lot because our passing was good but it was very difficult to get into their defence.

On top of that we were 1-0 down so it was a question of a spirited performance and that is what happened in the end. I felt we were intelligent, patient and resilient.

He had some nice words for Thierry, as you would expect, who admitted he felt ‘like a kid’ when he scored the winning goal. Knowing it was his final Premier League game to score the winner really must have been something special, and anyone who saw his Match of the Day interview (available on the video page), can’t failed to have been warmed by it. “I’ll be around”, he said. Oh man.

The relationship between Thierry Henry and Arsenal Football Club may have been strained at times but when all is said and done it has been …correction, it is … something quite special, and something we may not see again in our lifetimes. A truly world class player who scored goals for fun will always be a favourite but it’s gone beyond that. It has been a real privilege to see him wear red and white so many times and it does feel like a shame we have to let him go. Maybe this cameo was something we needed for a number of reasons, but mostly we needed it for footballing ones.

To put his contribution into perspective: in a total of 96 minutes (plus injury time) since January 9th, he has scored 3 goals. Fernando Torres has played the entire season for Chelsea and scored 4. Bringing it closer to home, Thierry has scored one more goal in that short time-span than Marouane Chamakh has since November 2010.

And this is not to slag off Chamakh, it’s to illustrate what a difference having a player of quality on the bench can make. Of course you can’t just go out and buy a Thierry Henry but having options, having a bench that can contribute is what can change a mediocre result into a good one, or save a defeat from being just that. As I said, I don’t want to take anything away from yesterday or Thierry’s moment, because that’s what we should be focusing on, but it’s impossible to look at him and what he does and not try to find some kind of context to it.

Overall though, the team and the manager deserve props this morning for taking a very difficult three points yesterday. To come from behind and win against a team like Sunderland who worked really hard and didn’t tire the way I had expected them to after their 120 midweek minutes, deserves credit. That’s actual mental strength as well as some moments of footballing quality when it counted. It’ll energise them and boost confidence, and as much as the 7-1 last week felt necessary, so did this and in these circumstances.

Finally for today, the iPhone/iPad app has just had an update which fixes some of the bugs. You can download it directly from the app store and the link, along with details of our other apps, can be found on our mobile apps page.

Right, that’s yer lot. Have a good, basking in victory Sunday. Till tomorrow.

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I need to stop listening to my brain although I’m not sure who I should listen to in that case. I guess it’s another reason why I’ve always been a fan of butlers. “Should I have one gigantic whiskey before I go to bed, Carmichael?”

“That’s up to you, sir. I can fetch it for you if you would like.”

“Make it super gigantic!”

Hmmm, that wouldn’t work either, although I would still like a butler. Anyway, the essence of this opening is *boilk*. But then this is Saturday morning and that’s fair enough.

After a quite pleasant, if uneventful week, we’ve got to get down to business today with a trip to Sunderland. Yes, yes, Martin O’Neill, blah blah, revitalised, blah di blah blah, skippity-hoppity curly haired leprechaun simpering twee blah blah backhanded compliments blah blah twat blah. Bottom line is that under Mrs Doubtfire Sunderland were a bit poo, under O’Neill, not that poo at all.

And we ought to remember that when they were poo it took a fairly late, but exceptionally great, free kick from Robin van Persie to win us the game at home. We got into the game buoyed by our 7-1 demolition of Blackburn last weekend and Arsene Wenger knows this is just the first part of what’s going to be a very busy and demanding week.

We go into a period that will decide our season. I think it is that important because in one week we play three games in three different competitions.

In every single competition we are, of course, in a position where we want to win our games. I feel the team has the mental strength and a fantastic attitude on a daily basis. And from what we have learned from last year.

Mentul strengfff, that old reliable. Not sure where it was in January, but there you go. Still, the boss is right about this week deciding our season. And while it’s normal to have half an eye on a midweek trip to Milan, we can’t lose sight of the fact that the game today is by far and away the most important. Then the Milan game will be most important. Then the next Sunderland game the most important. And so on.

Team selection today is relatively easy, I guess, although he might bring back Gibbs and give one of the centre-halves a rest. He also has to decide if he stays with Rosicky in midfield or returns to Ramsey who, as Goonerboy points out, is not doing as badly as some people seem to think. Still, I guess the temptation would be stick with the midfield trio that did so well against Blackburn.

Up front, Oxlade-Chamberlain and Walcott either side of van Persie is as obvious as it gets, and between them they were involved in six of the seven goals last weekend. Sunderland will obviously work hard to nullify that threat, it’s rare to find a Martin O’Neill side that doesn’t work its hole off so I’d expect nothing less today.

The fact that they did 120 minutes in midweek might be a factor though, particularly as the game wears on. If there are some tired legs I hope we can exploit that, particularly with the pace we’ve got down the wings. So, it’s going to be a tough test, as are most games for us due to our lack of consistency. You just never quite know which Arsenal is going to turn up. Hopefully it’s the same one we saw against Blackburn, the one that didn’t just create chances, it finished them too.

Wastefulness today will cost us points, so fingers crossed we’ve got our shooting boots on. Bar the free kick last weekend Blackburn didn’t really threaten (during the period they had 11 men) so if we can marry our attacking verve with the defensive solidity we showed then we can be relatively confident that this is a game that’s within our capability to win. Three points today are a must, no doubt about it, and it can start the gentle trundle of momentum which will be badly needed as the season heads towards its final stages.

In other news yesterday Marca ran a story about Robin van Persie and Real Madrid. The manager called it ‘creative’, while the skipper took to Twitter to say:

Contrary to reports in Spain I have NEVER spoken to Marca newspaper and never gave any interview. Enjoy your day.

Boom. In your stupid face, Marca! And I like the fact that as well as debunking a story, which I figure is going to appear again and again until such time as his future is slightly more clear, he wanted us to have a nice day. ‘Enjoy your day’. It’s so thoughtful. And different from other players on Twitter whose responses would have less considerate. There’s no plaintive cry to make him a martyr, no zany facts about himself, just a pleasant sign off. What a guy.

Finally for today, Leopold Mendacions returns on ANR with part II of his epic scrolls - The Oracle Speaketh.

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Right then, time for breakfast, catch you later for the game.

Arsenal play Sunderland tomorrow and under Martin O’Neill they’ve been about 61 times better than they were under Mrs Doubtfire. O’Neill, however, is one of the most annoying people in football with his voice and his face and his hair and his eyes and his limbs and his torso and extremities and his tracksuit pants. Obviously though this game isn’t about how annoying Martin O’Neill is, not for Arsene Wenger and the Arsenal team anyway.

It’s about making sure that we pick up where we left off against Blackburn. The likelihood of another seven goal haul is pretty slim but we have to come away from New Roker Park with three points tomorrow. I fancy United to beat Liverpool, Chelsea are going to lose about 5-0 to Everton while the combined cuntery of Newcastle and Sp*rs will hopefully open up a vortex to another dimension where everything looks normal but food eats you.

So, bearing all that in mind, we’ve got to win the game and keep up the pressure for a top four finish. We know that our margin for error is more or less non-existent, so from that point of view there can’t be any lack of focus on our part. We know what we have to do, we know we’re going to have to play well to beat a Sunderland side who have been much improved, so let’s just get out there and do it.

In terms of team news, there are no new injuries, bar Frimpong’s cruciate but as he was on loan it doesn’t affect us directly, while according to the boss Chamakh and Gibbs are back in the mix:

Both are in contention to be in the squad, there is no reason anymore to keep them out. But I will have to decide that tomorrow. Chamakh is now at normal fitness and Gibbs is getting closer as well.

Yeah, I can think of a reason to keep Chamakh out too, you didn’t get there first, but maybe a return from the African Cup of African Nations in Africa playing for a Cup will somehow have transformed him back into the Chamakh that first arrived at the club. Maybe Dr O’Driscoll has been beavering away in the lab at the new medical centre and has invented a potion of pure confidence that he can inject straight into him to replace that which he has lost (yes, this does sound very similar to cocaine, I know).

But with Thierry Henry unlikely to be around for the Sp*rs game, and no possibility of anyone else coming into the squad until summer, I’d rather see the old Chamakh than the more recent version. We can but hope. Maybe he and Park can spark each other into life, hahahaha, urgh.

Meanwhile, the return of Gibbs means we’ve got a specialist left back for the first time since Olympiacos away. It means that the manager now has three centre-halves to choose from and that can only be a good thing. For most people it’s a case of who partners Thomas from Ireland (hat-tip WST Jr), but I guess, depending on the opposition, the manager can tailor his defence a bit more. Quite what he’ll do remains to be seen but it’s a good problem for him to have.

One man who won’t be involved this weekend, or next if we’re being honest, is Gervinho, who scored the goal to get the Ivory Coast to the final of the Cup of African Nations Cup of Nations of African Nations who drink from a Cup. Arsene Wenger believes it’ll do him good when he does get back to Arsenal via the traditional two week party (Kanu taught them well):

It was a cracking goal against Mali. Sometimes he rushes his decisions a little bit but I was very happy that he kept calm and finished in a very controlled way.

That’s great news for his confidence. He creates those dangerous situations but the coolness he misses a little bit. That can help him to do that.

I haven’t watched it but I just love the idea of Arsene Wenger saying ‘cracking goal’. Obviously an Ivory Coast win in the final means a happy Drogba, which is never good, but maybe we need to just live with that if a happy Gervinho produces more for us. I know he’s frustrating but he has produced a reasonable amount of assists/goals for someone still getting used to English football. He can certainly do better and hopefully he’ll be putting them on a plate for Chamakh and Park during the run-in, hahahaha, urgh.

Right then, that’s about all the news so it’s on with this week’s Arsecast. Joining me to discuss a much more pleasant week than those in recent times is Jim Campbell, comedian and co-presenter of the very excellent Football Ramble podcast. On the agenda, Blackburn, the Ox, Sunderland, Milan and more. Also in the mix Internet Joe while Arshavin takes some time off. Plus a t-shirt competition, what more could you want?

You can subscribe to the Arsecast on iTunes by clicking here. Or if you want to subscribe directly to the feed URL you can do so too (this is a much better way to do it as you don’t experience the delays from iTunes). To download this week’s Arsecast directly – click here (22mb MP3) or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.

Right, that’s that. Have a good Friday, the beers aren’t too far away now. Back tomorrow with more regular blogging. We should hear more from Arsene about tomorrow’s game, the team and everything else at his press conference later on, coverage of that to be found on Arseblog News throughout the day.

Bye for now.

But this issue has brought it from the margins of the notepad into bold type. Does anybody report about footballanymore? Or even the finer forensic details that influence it, such as how it’s financed, or even its cultural relevance. A fine example would revolve around the reportage of our FA Cup victory over Aston Villa. Having scored three goals in seven minutes to complete an exciting comeback, the back pages were full of innuendo around a pretty innocuous “elbow” incident. The game itself wasn’t enough. There had to be a scandal.

It’s the same on television, if you were to tune into post match analysis of any given game, without knowing the score, you probably wouldn’t ever find out who had won based on the flapping jaws of Adrian Chiles and chums. The focus is always on controversy or ignominy. The shrill blast of a referee’s whistle is given infinitely more weight than a beautiful through ball or a crisp finish.

As an indirect consequence, we’re left with managers resigning on points of PR principle and the particulars of a pre-match handshake requiring a board meeting and scripted press announcement. Because one lonely nut-job has the phone number for the Mirror sports desk, one of the most decorated managers in the world is reduced to spending a pre-match press conference talking about non-existent bin bag protests.

Of course, when the protest never materialises, the press are never held to account. They simply create the next scandal, and then stand back as if they are separated from it. I read this piece on Football365 this week and immediately related it back to the manager’s cryptic comments about profit in the Belgian press. They begged further exploration, further questions. There was a genuine level of intrigue.

Instead, the comments were just intentionally misreported as the manager saying he needs to make a profit on his transfer business. He didn’t actually say that – though he might have meant that. But of course his transfer business is the biggest, knobbliest stick everyone is beating him with at the moment so let’s try and bleed that delightful little stone again. We’ll probably never know what he truly meant now.

The wearily disavowing reportage of the game is leading to a fractious relationship between clubs and the media. In their hubris and self interest, journalists will posture that poor media relations hit the supporters. But in the age of instant information this is not true. Keep your eye on your Twitter feed the next time Wenger holds a pre match press conference. Arsenal will tweet the details in advance of any journalist. It almost looks like a deliberate and pointed “fuck you Fleet Street” to me.

The first place I read about Capello’s resignation was from the FA’s official twitter feed. No journalists were drip fed the story. The meeja have risen to such a level of arrogance that they don’t report the game. They think they are the game. But with access so open to all, clubs taking an increasingly untrusting stance and the plethora of online media, Fleet Street’s insatiable desire for soap opera could bring it down. Bloggers of the world unite and take over.

Coming back to Arsene’s comments in the Belgian press, they were very curious. He’s an intelligent man and will have known that they would be seized upon and analysed. Since he was discussing the prospect of signing Eden Hazard, it could be that he was reminding us that Arsenal operates as a responsible business whilst competitors for his signature do not. Or it could be that it was a pointed comment to his critics and / or his bosses of the constraints upon him.

Whilst it’s naïve to expect a manager to completely divorce himself from the financial side (he needs to know what he’s working with and, therefore, how to prioritise any targets) it does rather add to the suspicion that he’s too immersed in the books. I had the sense that there was something of a spin war with Kroenke and Usmanov duking it out for control of the club. But really this ought to have settled down by now. It adds to a supposition I made last week that there is still a suggestion of a lack of strong leadership in the current club structure. The AST reports that Red and White Holdings purchased more shares this week, suggesting that they have no intention of selling up and leaving.

In other news, it looks as though Johan Djourou has extended his contract for another two and a half years. I’d say this is an interesting development in how the club is treating contracts. I wrote last week about them looking for a happy medium between over rewarding unproven players (Diaby, Denilson) and protecting themselves against losing players that we’ve improved for free (Flamini, Edu).

Of course I’m not privy to the terms Djourou has agreed, but I’d suggest his progress has been studied and this deal seems to be a more cautious one. Whether that reveals a new strategy or else simply appreciates Djourou’s status as a 25 year old squad player will be borne out as deals are signed by other players. What I do know is that if Djourou does end up becoming a world class performer and mainstay of the team in the next 18 months, the length of the contract put in front of him this week will be greeted with retrospective howls of derision.

In closing I wanted to address some comments Theo Walcott made in the week. Having provided a commendable hat trick of assists in the 7-1 shellacking of Blackburn, young Theo told the official site that “creating assists is my main role.” Married with his persistent assertions that he should be a central striker, I have to say the comments worry me slightly. Walcott appears to have fallen into the trap many armchair pundits fall into of neatly formatting particular duties according to screen graphics.

I don’t see how assists can be weighted against goals. It comes back to a criticism I’ve made of Theo before, about failing to appreciate in game situations and act accordingly. The best teams are always fluid and Arsenal’s front three relies on that fluidity and quick thinking. The excellent form of Chamberlain has shown that a wide front man in our formation has liberty to come inside and either provide assists (think the pass for van Persie against Manchester United) or else to score, (his first against Blackburn).

In short, Theo should be looking to both assist and score, depending on what’s appropriate in the situation. If the pass is on, pass. If the shot is on, shoot. If his movement is intelligent enough, he’ll find plenty of opportunity to do both. He doesn’t need to be a centre forward to score goals and being a wide man doesn’t mean his only job is to supply crosses. His form in supplying van Persie is beyond reproach at the moment, but his finishing is ailing slightly and he needs to work on it.

I rather hope his attitude in training is less to simply point at his assists and more to say, “O.k. I’m supplying plenty, now if I score some more too I’ll be twice as lethal.” Anyway, three big away games on the horizon and a total of 3,280 miles travelling in 7 days. I shall scribble to you all again upon return from Italy. But to end, how about another story about David Bentley … LD.

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I kid, I kid. I’m all out of Bentley stories. I could tell you my epic about Arturo Lupoli, his secret agent dog and his layabout sidekick, but it’s all a bit too similar to an episode of Scooby Doo and I need to give it some work.

So, what’s going on in the world of Arsenal? Not a great deal. A win generally brings about a quiet week and this has been no different. With less to examine in great details that’s no surprise, nor a bad thing, but the Blackburn game was just the first step in what is going to be a very difficult and challenging run in. And the manager says we need not just consistency, but not just your regular, off the shelf, supermarket own brand consistency. Oh no:

We know that with the position we are in we need an exceptional consistency, so that is the challenge we have in front of us at Sunderland.

We had a good week last week. We had a good result against Aston Villa and a good performance against Bolton. We have a good spirit and desire within the group – and we have quality.

Now, I’m not willing to pore over the Bolton game again, nor the manager’s bigging-up of his players (which I understand completely – doing anything other than that at this stage would be like chucking in a massive towel), but he’s absolutely right about the consistency thing. We have 14 games to go, 42 points to play for, and given our season start and that rather nasty run in recent times, we have nothing left in the way of wiggle room.

Tomas Rosicky believes that the Blackburn performance can act as a spur, saying:

We recently had an unsuccessful spell so this is something we can build on,. We can be happy after this game but the most important thing is to carry a performance like that and fight for a Champions League spot.

It was a game when almost everything went in and it’s good for confidence. But it does not matter if it was seven goals or one. The most important thing is the performance and the fact we can repeat it.

I know what he’s saying about the goals but I’d argue that the seven goals were important. When the competition is this tight who knows whether goal difference might be the deciding factor? The +6 we got on Saturday against Blackburn wipes out the -6 we suffered at United, so while the three points is always going to be the priority, racking up some goals along the way will be no bad thing.

Next up is Sunderland, resurgent under Martin O’Neill, and it’s a place we’ve had some difficulties in the past. And we’d better get used to seeing them because their win in the FA Cup means our next run of games is Sunderland (A), Milan (A), Sunderland (A) and Sp*rs (H) (and that’s not even mentioning the next three, Liverpool (A), Milan (H), Newcastle (H).

You could pretty much say it’s a make or break period for this Arsenal side. At the end of it we could still have two cups to play for as well as keeping up the chase for the top four, or we could be licking our wounds and trying to make sense of football (whilst wailing and shrieking). We need to rediscover the form we showed from the Blackburn game until December. It’s not that we played particularly well, certainly not in the grand style that we have been accustomed to when Wenger’s teams are in full flow. It was all a bit more fragile than that but we got results. And that’s what we’ve got to get back to.

If they’re scabby one-nils or scintillating fours or fives it matters not a jot. Confidence is borne from winning games and while it really is a cliché, the old ‘one game a time’ thing has never been more relevant than it is right now. More focus on the Sunderland game tomorrow and Saturday.

Beyond that not much happening. It seems that Kieran Gibbs will be back in the squad for Saturday after having two hernia operations in the last four months. I’ve got nothing much to say about his abdominal cavity but he really needs to prove he can stay fit for a sustained period now. Otherwise the manager will have to think very carefully about him for next season.

And according to reports in the Swiss press, Johan Djourou has signed a two year extension with the club. I’ve got no problem with this, he’s been criticised, and rightly enough, for his performances at full back but he’s not a full back. As a fourth choice centre-half, which is what he is at the moment, he’s a good option and people are quick to forget how well regarded he was for us last season. I know it’s a case of too much hype but it’s worth bearing in mind.

And finally, Capello, eh? Redknapp, eh? England manager, eh? I am baffled, quite seriously, as to why anybody in the world would want to be the manager of England. It is without doubt the worst job in football. And yes, that includes the Chelsea youths who have to take it in turns to clean John Terry’s ring (he’s quite fastidious about keeping his wedding band shiny, I’m told).

Managers do the England job; managers fail; managers are castigated, slagged off, ridiculed, mocked and lampooned – and if you’re a ‘furriner’, like Capello, you’re doomed from the start regardless how well you do. And yet, the common denominator in all this is not the managers. It’s the FA and the English players and, let’s face it, sections of the English press whose expectation levels when a major tournament approaches don’t seem to be tempered in any way by the England team’s record in previous tournaments.

Still, maybe what England were missing was that something special. The Twitch Factor, I think they call it. No doubt a man who has won one FA Cup in his entire career knows more about winning than somebody who has won countless league titles, cups and the Champions League. And if the England players need someone like Redknapp to inject them with the necessary ‘passion and spirit’ to play for their country it says far more about them than Capello.

Right, busy day, back tomorrow with an Arsecast. Till then.

There’s another story about David Bentley. When he scored his first Arsenal goal, a rather delicious but utterly irrelevant 90th minute chip against Middlesbrough in January 2004 people said he was the new DB. Seriously. In fact, it was Arsene Wenger who said it.

“I believe that he has a bit of the characteristics of Bergkamp, who is his idol. If a young boy comes on for five minutes and chips the keeper, you cannot say he lacks confidence.”

Nothing wrong with having Dennis Bergkamp as your idol, no way. Nor indeed with having confidence. There is something wrong with believing you’re the new DB after just one goal though. It’s rumoured that after scoring the goal Bentley hired a limousine to drive him to training, paid a group of out of work actors to be his posse, refused to speak to any of the other youth players unless they called him ‘Sir Better-than-Bergkamp’, had all his teeth replaced with freshly painted ivory choppers that he bought from an black market elephant poacher and had an enormous tattoo of himself on his back (the tattoo was of himself having a tattoo tattooed on his back, trippy).

There’s another story about David Bentley. When Sp*rs came back to draw that game 4-4 he went on TV and said ‘That’s mustard’. Which is stupid. Because mustard is a condiment that goes very well on a hot-dog and I wouldn’t put that 4-4 mustard on any kind of sausage/bread combo.

There’s another story about David Bentley. From being the new DB, and then the other new DB when he scored some goals at Blackburn and people thought he was Beckham’s rightful heir, he’s now playing (or not, because I think he injured himself badly when he tripped over his own ego) for West Ham where he is managed by Sam Allardyce.

It’s hard not to think the two don’t deserve each other. Bentley, wearing his gold bikini and chained up in front of Allardyce as he sits around his palace with Han Solo frozen in carbonite over in the corner. And we all know how that ends up. Yep, Bentley is going to strangle his manager to death with a chain as they float above the Sarlacc and his career in football will be over. Nobody will shed any tears, apart from Bentley who will end up working the toilets in Kings Cross.

‘So why all the David Bentley stories?’ you ask. I tell them merely to illustrate a point. Bentley was clearly a player of talent and potential, but 8 years after that delicious but largely irrelevant chip against Boro, it remains unfulfilled because he believed the hype and was, at the very bottom of it all, an absolute bellend.

What’s that got to do with anything? Well, I was heartened to read the words of Alex Oxlaide-Chamberlain who, let’s face it, has done more in terms of performance for Arsenal than Bentley every did, and at a much younger age. There’s no ego going wild, no thinking he’s the best thing since sliced beard which always struck me as a weird thing to be better than because lots of stuff is better than sliced bread but anyway, and, most importantly, no being an absolute bellend. He knows he’s got lots to learn and is happy to do so.

I listen to everybody. People like Thierry and Robin who score goals and are attacking players like myself, you can always learn a lot from them. That’s all I do, I listen and learn.

I have belief in myself and in my own ability. I just know that I have to keep working hard and learn off the boys, and then hopefully the rest will come. At the moment it’s going quite well for me so I’m just going to keep working hard.

It is going quite well, isn’t it? Even that is typically understated. Four goals already this season, in three different competitions, keeping established internationals like Arshavin and Benayoun out of the team, and generally being the most exciting prospect since sliced bread. Erm. Well, you know what I mean.

Obviously there’s a whole career ahead of him and football is unforgiving world. Just ask David Bentley. One day you’re the cock of the walk, the next day just a cock. The early signs for Alex Oxlaide-Chamberlain are good. Knowing you’ve got a lot to learn instead of thinking you know it all already is a great start. If he keeps good people around him and his feet on the ground he’s got the talent to become a fantastic player. He just needs to look at the new DB for evidence of that.

In other news Carlos Vela says he doesn’t want to come back to Arsenal and has instructed his agent to get him a permanent move to Real Sociedad. Oh no.

While Ryo Miyaich is impressing people at Bolton with his mad skillz.

Early start here, gotta run, have a good day.