Well that was most satisfactory.

A three one win which could, and perhaps should, have been much more comprehensive. In the first half we were totally dominant with seventy three percent possession away from home, in the second we were less so but still much the better team.

One thing that worries me is Laurent and his tackles from behind that lead to the inevitable penalties. It does not matter that he is getting a touch on the ball, because it’s illegal to tackle from behind. So even if he is getting a touch the chances are a spot kick will be given. Do stop it son.

When you consider that Arteta, Santi, Tomas, Diaby, Podolski, Bendtner and AOC are out injured, the fact that we were able to field such a strong starting eleven makes talk of us having a weak squad seems a little ridiculous to me.

Our new shiny new superstar looked every inch just that. Given he was said to be under the weather the signs look absolutely fantastic.

However, it worries me that his acquisition is being talked about as the making of the team. This team has lost one game in six months, and that was to a referee rather than to a team. The growth of our existing players is the reason we look so formidable. When you think that the pre-Ozil team was built for a negative net transfer spend, huge credit must go to the manager.

The star of the show, once again was Aaron Ramsay. Most tackles (7), most touches (111), most passes (88), ninety two percent completion rate, two goals, and man of the match. The boy is quite simply the best player in the league this season so far. To think that as little as six months ago he was “not fit to wear the shirt” according to some expert fans and even pundits! Don’t tell me Arsène doesn’t know best; just don’t ok?

Imagine the Wengerball we will be seeing when the wounded return. Its frightening you know? It is !

Jack looked much improved. Its been clear that the two years out is going to take some coming back from, just like it did for Aaron and Tomas before him, but with his talent and will it is just a matter of time.

Oh, and how good has Flamini slotted back in? His signing could prove the master stroke of all master strokes.

So that’s it people, you likely all have seen it yourselves, so you don’t need a mug like me to explain to you what you saw.

Great innit ?

I remember my Sunderland review last season. I told you the story of my visit to Roker Park. My many visits. My many unplanned and increasingly frustrating visits as we attempted to escape from Sunderland en route to Cullercoats. In passing I might mention that Cullercoats is a pleasant little seaside town between Tynemouth and Whitley Bay, but that needn’t concern any of us today. The simple fact is that as I allowed my pre match thoughts to wend their way down a nostalgic B road I entirely failed to predict the events that would unfold, and surely bloggers should be able to tell you mere mortals the precise ways of the future. Shouldn’t we?

The game was a real dig in and fight for it affair on a horrible bumpy pitch. We played in yellow with nasty red brown shorts and won the three points with a lovely crafted goal finished with aplomb by Santi Cazorla. Only heroics from Mignolet, the Sunderland post and Wojciech Szczęsny kept the score to one nil but the story of the match hinged on a few defensive performances and one truly dreadful refereeing display.

Cattermole wasn’t even booked when he could so easily have broken Aaron Ramsay’s legs with a really ghastly challenge while young Carl Jenkinson was sent off for two miss timed tackles. Throughout the game that man Anthony Taylor allowed appalling violent play to pass entirely unpunished and it remains a bewildering mystery that Arsenal had to see out a tense final half an hour with ten men whilst a thuggish Sunderland side who would have received red cards on a rugby pitch for some of their assaults on our players completed the match with eleven. Jack Wilshere was literally kicked off the pitch, Fletcher nearly equalized after controlling with a blatant handball and we had to play in a cauldron of vociferous partisan support with a resilience and courage for which we are (unjustly) not renowned.

However, despite all of this drama, the performance which stands out in my mind was that of Bacary Sagna. Drafted into the centre following a late withdrawal by Lauren Koscielny our uber versatile defensive maestro was an absolute rock. I know Arsène had used Bacary in the centre before and as a left fullback during one of our most horrendous injury crises but never has the man’s versatility shone as it did that day. It was an often brutal affair with a lot of old fashioned high balls and crunching aerial collisions but Bacary Baresi was equal to all of them. I don’t want to give the impression that his performance was all about strength and resisting the hooliganism of the opposition though. It was the coolness with which he managed to direct his defensive headers to team mates that impressed me. It’s one thing to go up and stick yer nut on it and quite another thing entirely to turn that head butt into a weighted pass to a midfielder. Instigating a quick counter attack from a ball that comes down with ice on it is no easy skill. Not that he was averse to launching a forty yarder onto Olivier’s head when the occasion called for it, but mostly he won the ball and played a quick imperious pass to a team mate and resumed his station alongside the BFG. He was resolute, tidy, athletic, decisive and perfectly placed throughout the match.

Judging by his remarks this week we might get to see more of him alongside Lauren or Per in the future. In an honest appraisal of his own advancing years he accepted that the modern fullback needs to put in a shift to which he himself might not be equal in the coming seasons. More than speed and agility though it was mental strength that he identified as his key attribute. I think it’s all too easy for us to overlook the psychological fortitude of our squad sometimes. Easy because we are so often dazzled by their quick feet and lightning fast movement. Sunderland away last year showed the importance of the mental strength Bacary talked about. He is a player who has had to pick himself up after some awful injuries and a couple of costly errors in high profile games but he’s done it with a quiet determination, a deafness to the pathetic knee jerk reactions of the worst of our supporters and I believe will be a key member of a squad for many years to come.

If news of Per Mertesacker’s upset tummy are true it looks like Bac will have a chance to reprise his masterful performance of last winter. How the new Sunderland will shape up is more of a mystery though. As with our previous opponents from Middlesex the Black Cats have made a whole raft of new signings recently. I think it’s fourteen but I could be out by half a dozen or so. Like Arsène Wenger I believe a settled squad with personnel who are completely at ease with each other’s style of play is far more important that wholesale changes. One or two key signings joining a team on a roll ought to trump a bunch of strangers still trying to learn one another’s names. Of course this is sport not maths and as Anthony Taylor proved when playing for Aston Villa and very nearly managed in this fixture last time around, sport can be an unpredictable and ruthless duchess. The one factor Sunderland will have on their side today whatever the form and regardless of the line ups is the home support. The old cliché about the twelfth man is nowhere more certain to have an effect than in the Stadium of Light. They took the Roker Roar with them when they moved house and will howl at every perceived injustice, hound the officials and lift the home side for every second of the game and quite right too. A little more of that at the Emirates and who knows where our home form might take us.

I am a hopeless blogger when it comes to predicting the future, and I apologise for this lack of superhuman talent. All I can say is this is the classic post international situation for us: a tough trip up North. I see no reason not to be optimistic but I know that we will need all the courage and fighting spirit with which our makeshift centre back held us together last time around. Whatever happens I just hope we don’t wear those bloody awful shorts again.

Guest post by Varun Shukla (@WengerArmy)

Excerpt from a newspaper advertisement “…the neocortex is a part of the cerebral hemisphere-its outer layer. It is responsible for logical and specific reasoning. This is an appeal to the masses to donate funds for the replacement of Florentio Perez- our supreme leader and messiah’s neocortex. Healthy donations would entitle you to a signed Bale 11 shirt
-sincerely, Real Madrid CF”

Here’s hoping Mr. Perez continues as he is. He has spent, in his two terms as president, an estimated 697 million euros on new signings. True to  his Galactico policy, almost all incomings were geared toward making a statement. Luis Figo was the first of these, followed by Zidane, Ronaldo, Beckham. Raul and Roberto Carlos are not to be forgotten. In his second term, he continued with the signings of Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo. All paid for with big money. His dream? A team of superstars who would dazzle and delight the world with their brilliance.

And dazzle they did with the Champions League and 2 La Liga titles in quick succession. (2001,2002 and 2003). Perez wrecked a perfectly good formula however by sacking Vincente Del Bosque. This caused players such as Fernando Hierro and Makelele to leave the club. The new coach Carlos Quieroz was unable to handle the inflated egos of the Galacticos and the dressing room fell apart. They did not win any silverware for the next 4 seasons- shocking when you see the amount of money that had gone into this team.

To be fair to Perez, this project of his has helped rebuild the Madrid brand in the new millennium. Revenues have skyrocketed( RM are the richest club in the world according to Forbes) and the Bernebeau is almost always sold out. The Madrid team sheet on any day is enough to elicit a look of envy from almost everyone. Seen in that light, the decision to offload Ozil is nothing short of baffling.

Arsenal have got the Galactico  policy to thank for that. Was it not for Perez’s ideology of buying ‘brands’ rather than value, we would never have gotten Mesut Ozil. Gareth Bale certainly is a brand right now, and could develop into a very good player given time, but as Arsene Wenger said, “They[Real Madid] are very generous” I’ve forgiven him for the bad faith he showed during the Higuain saga, and why not? He’s just given us arguably (although it’d be a VERY feeble argument) the best playmaker in the world- at less than half the value of Bale.

Jose Mourinho, Ozil’s ex manager said, “There is no copy of Ozil, not even a bad one.”  Cristiano Ronaldo is planning the biggest ever tantrum in the history of football because he’s ‘angry’ at this transfer. Sergio Ramos has been absent from training for over a week now. Close friends say he’s curled up on his bedroom floor, wrapped in an Ozil shirt and gently sobbing into a pillow. A couple of ex Madrid directors have expressed their surprise and disappointment over the move. Madrid fans at Bale’s unveiling were heard chanting “Ozil is not for sale!”  Arsenal steal Spurs’ thunder, yet again Infact, has anyone welcomed Bale yet?

Everyday I open the official Arsenal website and pinch myself in disbelief. The shock just doesn’t fade! And if shirt sales figures are any indication, it’s the same for all of us. There has been a twelvefold increase in shirts sold. The increase in revenue is reportedly <insert value> million.

There isn’t any doubt that Mesut is a top, top, top, quality player- the kind that Arsene Wenger speaks about in his press conferences. He’s also Like A New Signing because…well, he IS one! But I digress. Does the capture of Ozil represent significant ‘ambition’? is it a proper ‘statement of intent’?
Oh ambition! How I loathe that word. The reason for certain players’ departures( that’s what they said, anyway) and a favoured stick to beat the Club with. How many times have we heard the same old ‘Arsenal lack ambition, they’re happy with 4th place’ ditty?

Personally, this signing is neither a statement of intent nor a show of ambition. It is just what the manager said it would be at the post match Derby Day conference- a surprise. For me, a top quality signing has two criterions-

Improves the team: The most crucial requirement. Last season, there were some games where we struggled to create. Cazorla was the only ‘spark’- the sole creator(until Rosicky came back). Mesut’s stats as a playmaker are extraordinary. For example, he is the highest assist provider all over Europe in the last 3 seasons with 72. Numbers don’t tell you the complete picture however. Ozil’s vision and technique is currently second to none. With a counterattacking style like Arsenal’s, and with the freedom he’s going to get from the manager, there is quite literally no end to what he and the team could achieve. If you haven’t seen him yet, pray watch some highlight videos. Now, imagine that service to the Gunners’ forward line. Mesut is the fulfillment of a need.

Impact- The transfer has generated a hugely positive buzz around the Club. As evidenced by the shirt sales and the players’( and staff’s) reactions, everyone is massively pleased with this signing. It just feels wonderful to be an Arsenal supporter right now. Everywhere you see all of the football community talking about us. I can’t help but grin like an idiot everytime I see or hear the words ‘Mesut Ozil has signed for Arsenal from Real Madrid’. I’ve had absolute strangers come up to me to offer their congratulations. It has overshadowed Bale’s move, Spurs’ spending spree, Moyes’ and Mourinho’s appointments. There are envious gazes being shot all over the place, and we’re at the center of it. For once, there isn’t any negativity surrounding the Club. He hasn’t even kicked a ball yet. Signing of the summer? Without a doubt.

The general impression about Arsenal’s summer and Ozil in particular has been the ‘end of austerity’ and the arrival, atlast of a top quality player.
Firstly, Wenger has never shied away from spending money on players who are worth that much. Bids for Mata, Goetze and Suarez are all well chronicled in the media. All were in excess of 30 million. The fact that they didn’t sign on the contract seems to nullify the fact that efforts were made. Chelsea offered more wages to Mata, Goetze doesn’t want to move from Germany(yet) and Suarez’s agent has probably deceived us with the release clause game.

Secondly, this isn’t the only time the Club has attracted top players in recent times. Since 2011, we’ve brought in Mikel Arteta, Per Mertesacker, Lukas Podolski, Santi Cazorla, Nacho Monreal and finally Ozil this time around. All well known, established internationals( Arteta deserves to be one) Players like this do not sign for you unless you’re going in the right direction, unless you have a definite plan- something else of which we have been accused times. That, and a top manager are essential to attracting players of the best caliber. As Ozil himself said, it was the manager’s faith in him and the vision of where Wenger wanted the club to be that influenced him. (obviously false, we all know Podolski AHA-ed him into it). Manchester United hasn’t had the summer they would have wanted. A major reason being the presence of Moyes- a relative lightweight in the managerial world.

The only negative(?) about this summer is the absence of a new(established) striker. It’s going to be tough getting by with only one proper CF. Giroud needs to keep extremely fit. If his past record is any indication( he’s only been out injured 5 days since 2005) it’ll be alright. We did try for a striker this summer and I remain positive about one in January. And hey, there’s always Bendtner.

Another Guest post from  @The_Beck_

There’s something special about this week, I’ve wanted to write about it all summer, yet when it came, I felt weirdly empty and lost for words. I’ve struggled to come to terms with what happened last week, even though I was probably one of the few who truly believed something like that or more would happen. I’m talking about our biggest record breaking signing, ever, Mesut Ozil.
See for me, I’ve long loved Ozil’s new manager, his name is Arsene Wenger, he’s the greatest manager Arsenal has had to this day and I doubt many will top his tenure. It’s a bit of a cliché to say that Ozil came at the best time, it is hard to say when that time is, but it certainly helped the club, the fans and the manager.
Yet when Ozil was announced, I wanted to go around and laugh at those who doubted it would happen, doubted Arsene, doubted Gazidis and Law (almost everybody), those who talked about them all summer like they have no place at the club, like your average Twitter user somehow knew more, your average Arsenal blogger had all the answers and all the right questions with it too.
But I didn’t do it, I had 100’s of Tweets favorited, 100’s of mates to text, Facebook friends who I’m sure would defriend me after a little online Ozil party. I just thought to myself, we’ve done it, this is great, this is great for our future and no one can take that away from us and all I want to do is celebrate.
All year I’ve defended players he’s defended, whenever I’ve gone to a game, I’ve never booed or abused a player, I’m always the first to defend a player who I believe has quality but is not finding form, the likes of Kos and Ramsey and even Gervinho. I also defend those who have never quite made it at our football club, even if secretly I think they are not a very good player (sort of like AW does).
People truly believe I act or think the way I do because I want to be some kind of super fan? They don’t think I want to look out for the club, its players, staff and fans?
95% of my thoughts are Arsenal and Politics and Sex and Love, the other 5% is just food.
I want the best for us; I want the best for the club, the fans and of course the world (a world where Arsenal is winning, until we’re sick of winning).
For me the best supporter, the best fan of the club is Arsene Wenger, he’s a model supporter, it’d be pretty difficult for me to be a better supporter than he is.
He looks after young players, nurtures them, makes them better, keeps faith in them after injuries, despite our fans wanting them sold, and even when they turn their back on him and leave (Robin), he still continues to do the same for other players (Ramsey/Diaby). The man embarrasses my level of support for my club.

I don’t want to be some kind of supporter police, telling people what they are wrong about, that they are carrying on ideas that do not match reality nor rational thought. It’s not my job either to look out for the club, its players, staff or fans, I am just one person, I have a few that think like me. But making sarcastic quips at people for what they think and why they think it, I do it because I love the club, I love the manager and I love a lot of the fans I interact with.
And I also do it because I see that people are adamant that they love the club, but they don’t show it, is it some kind of secret love where you only drink Peroni and shout at the t.v.? I don’t think that’s love, I think these people fell in love with a quick shag and didn’t realize who they really were and now constantly want them to change.  You can always tell how much someone loves something or a person, by how often they put themselves or their thoughts or their feelings before it, or before that person.  Love is not a competition, it is just love.
And just like I enjoy being friends with faithful lovers, I enjoy being friends with faithful Arsenal supporters, who stay true to their love.  I enjoy questioning things, questioning them until I get an answer that satisfies my rationale, my mind, I don’t enjoy condemning situations or people.  Of course, people do not like being told what to do or how to think, this is self-evident in many situations, they want to somehow get there themselves, or to think they got there themselves.
But this week, it changed something in me; it made me not want to tell people what to think or why they were wrong, I didn’t need to, perhaps I never did. Our manager did it for me in a way.  All year we’ve had people speculating about what Mr Wenger is like, that he would never spend, that he only seeks cheap solutions to expensive problems. That he’s done finding gems, that he’s a relative panic buyer and that he doesn’t have any plans anymore.
But every year he surprises, every year he answers critics, piece by piece the British media try to make him out to seem clueless, pundits, bloggers and the odd bloke at the pub, predicting his demise, predicting it’s his final season, when the likelihood is that he’d be signing a new contract (I’m certain he will) and finally have a fair crack at the title, that I don’t think he’s had since 2004 and we were invincible.
The worst part is, when he proves a certain group wrong, or when our club prove others wrong, they use it for fuel, not to apologise for their irrational conclusion, but to further insult, attack, misinform and panic others and like the sheep they are, they follow.
I wonder what Usmanov has up his sleeve now; it’s probably drenched in pharmaceutical sweat and oil.
This is not to say he doesn’t make mistakes (it’s obvious he makes them, every manager makes them), this is not to say he is the definition of perfection, I just believe, due to the evidence presented towards me, year after year, we are far better off with him, than without.
It was an emotional game (Spurs), Monday was an emotional day, but the man is paid to keep it under pressure and he does, he always does, he always keeps calm when others are panicking, you see it every match and every window, he has the edge, even if he doesn’t always get the targets he wanted.
I’d say every one needed to be reminded that he could still do that, that Arsenal could still do that, but if he hadn’t, for many, this would be their wish for him to leave.
But in a window, filled with misinformation and mistrust and greed, I am still forever impressed that they pulled it off. And even more impressed with the targets we’ve been after all summer and the targets we will be in January and next summer. We can be confident in our proceedings and our pursuits, we are a far attractive club with Ozil, but we were with Cazorla, as we were with Robin and Cesc and Henry and so on. We’ve always been an attractive club with a manager that romances players to sign contracts for us and he does it well.
The thing that annoyed me the most this week is this: Arsenal bought Ozil through the self-sustainable model.  No hand-outs, no billionaire showing off what he can do for the club, silent Stan was silent and he will continue to be as the value of our club rises, without his help, without anyone’s help but our own revenue.

But no one, no one talked about this, it wasn’t covered anywhere, it wasn’t celebrated in the news, it should be celebrated by us. They should be lauding us.

They lauded Dortmund all last year (for good reasons), who struggled to keep Gotze and look like they’d struggle to keep Lewandowski, let alone Reus and Gundogan (who we’ve been interested in for a while).
We’ve done something amazing and will continue to make amazing purchases at a time 2-3 of our in domestic rivals have more spending power than we do. We will catch up and we will do it without help or as I like to call it, cheating.
This is a fantastic achievement, both in business terms and in football terms. We should be proud, I hope most of you are.
I don’t think you can be a super supporter, I think if you are true to your club and its values, you will just enjoy being a supporter a lot more.
I love Arsenal so much more because of Arsene Wenger and I love Arsene Wenger so much more because of Arsenal.

Today its a guest post from Sensational Arsenal,take it away young man

I found this comment by one Seamy82 on a sports website. I think he/she speaks for every Arsenal fan in saying:
“I would like to send out a big thank you to Tottenham Hotspur FC. Without you selling Bale to Real Madrid for such an astronomical fee, we wouldn’t have been able to sign the 3rd best player in the world. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

When I watched the World Cup in 2010, Germany was the team that played the best football. When I saw Ozil play against England, I genuinely only thought: “Arsenal player”; nothing else. I thought that Wenger would go for him in that summer, but was surprised to see him end up at Madrid. His world cup performance made people notice and there was no way we could have gone on a bidding war with Madrid. Even if we did, they would have gazumped us in his salary.

The reason Ozil is now an Arsenal player (Huge buzz just to type that up!!!) is due to careful monitoring of his situation all summer (to a small extent Arsenal would have kept tabs for the past three years), waiting for the opportunity and moving decisively when it presented itself. Credit must be given to Wenger, Gazidis and the team around them.

It is being said that we did our transfer very late. Yeah, how could Arsenal do it so late? Bale went to Madrid on the first day of the transfer window, Madrid kept offering us Ozil, but Arsene Wenger, being the stubborn fool he is, said: “No. I am going to be a petulant child (like how my fellow Arsenal supporters are with the club) and sign Ozil only on the last day of the Window”.

During the summer window, as I scoured the internet for some nice articles and comments to sit back and read about Arsenal, I consistently saw a type of comment “genre” that goes along the lines of: “If we spend X amount of money it will send a statement of intent.” Then as matches started going on, things started getting desperate. “If we sign some 30 million pound players and play them in the match, it will send a statement of intent” So we just chuck a player into the team? Then as it became obvious that there wasn’t a 30 million pound player on the team sheet against Tottenham, things started getting ridiculous: “If we sign a 30 million pound player and he is in the stands watching the match, it will send a statement of intent.”

What the fuck is this statement of intent? You dont buy a special player just to send a message to everyone else: “Hi. By buying this player, I would like to formally state my intent to win the premier league. I would like this to be noted by all the rivals and I fully expect them to duly hand over the premier league trophy now”.

Isn’t the main point of buying a player to strengthen the team? In this case, we added mouth watering attacking quality. Everything else is a knock on effect. This is a special player snapped at a special time and credit must be given to Arsene. Apparently PSG offered more money, but Arsene was the deciding factor.

More than arm chair managers and keyboard critics, more than ex-players looking for cash, players are the ones that can tell us about the manager:

“It is easy [to choose Arsenal], it is one of the best clubs in the world. It is a club with a fantastic story, with a boss who is one of the best in Europe and for me it is a dream. It is special.” –  Emiliano Viviano

“I had spoken to the manager at length on the telephone and he explained his plans and that he has faith in me and that is what I need as a player. ” – Mesut Ozil

“I am very happy for Mesut that he has joined such a great club…… an outstanding traditional club with a great coach who can deal well with young people.” – Germany general manager Oliver Bierhoff

“For me the boss will always be Arsene – always great for me and I know what he has done for the club” – Thierry Henry

Meanwhile, the Arsenal “Supporters” Trust, knowing that timing is everything, released the following statement:

“We welcome the statement of intent Arsenal have made with the signing of a world-class player like Mesut Ozil. It is a transformational signing for the club in terms of both transfer fee and wages paid. It is, however, frustrating that once again a window has closed with over £50m left unspent. The AST would like to see all available resources put toward strengthening the team.

This summer’s transfer window has also reinforced the AST’s view that the club need to overhaul their boardroom and football management infrastructure so they have the very best set-up to maximize the way in which the modern-day transfer window now operates.”

If you cannot be happy after owning the spurs’ ass on sunday and signing a super star – made for arsenal – player on Monday, then man you are fucked up.

Can the real supporters get together and release a statement disowning the AST and say that they have nothing to do with the real opinion of Arsenal fans?

When I posted this as a comment, it was heartening to see the unanimous responses here, deriding the AST statement.

Ozil, you were made for Arsenal. You will play some amazing football with some of the best players on the planet. You will be guided by one of the wisest and beautiful football playing coaches in the world. You will recognise fellow creative souls in Cazorla and Rosicky (push him out of your fantasy lineup at your peril). You will be served well by the fantastic players in front of you and behind you. We believe you will serve them well. You will love playing in this team. Welcome to the home of football. Welcome to Arsenal. Welcome home Ozil.

What did that one-nil result tell us?

Well excuse me for saying this, but it told some of us nothing we didn’t already know. But let’s have a think what it should have told the malcontents.

For starters, despite Spurs spending north of £100 million, and us having a paper thin squad ravaged by injuries, we are a better team.

I felt that we were way below our fluent best and that Santi and Rosicky, despite their efforts, had off-days. With more precisely weighted balls from them, we could have scored a bucket-full. Dont get me wrong, I am not moaning about them, or saying they were bad, just that from our two most technically gifted players, we normally see better.

The upside, which totally outweighs any small downside, is that we had a shape and a tenacity that tells me that the manager is 100% right about this group of players. I would go as far as saying that it’s the most tightly knit squad we have seen under Arsene.

Our dodgy defence is anything but dodgy, no matter what the halfwits in the media say. I still think Bac is by far and away our number one right-back, but Carl is a fine understudy.

Laurent and Per are easily the best centre-back pair in the league.

Even at this early stage. I am confident that Flamini is exactly what we have been crying out for. Not only as cover for Mikel but an actual alternative.

Now, what’s all this rubbish about Arsene not doing tactics? Those looked like different tactics to our normal stuff to me!

I really can’t say how happy I am that Arsene has once again made mugs out of his detractors. When will they learn?

Let’s see what today brings and  where we are tomorrow.

Great team, great players, great manager, great club and a great future.

See you all tomorrow.

Sorry to interrupt your Sunday morning with talk of a football match but there is one scheduled to kick off this afternoon and some of us used to consider it a fairly important occasion. I presume that in  a few  years when my generation are pushing up the daisies there’ll be no one left to care at all about matches played during the Transfer Window. It must be a terrible bore and unnecessary distraction for those of you who see this as the penultimate day in the single most crucial and exciting time of the season. I suppose you’ll have January to look forward to but the January window is really Europa league to the summer one isn’t it? This is the big one coming to a close right now and I must say it seems to have been a real humdinger with Spurs looking like runaway winners. There used, once upon a time to be an exciting rivalry  between our two clubs back in the day where performances and results on the pitch were considered more important than following the activities of agents, ‘In The Know’ fans and sports journalists. Some of us actually enjoyed those days. For one thing our side generally came out on top whereas now we have to hide our Arsenal scarves in shame and just hope that the board and manager will commit mass hara-kiri in order to spare us the embarrassment of languishing at the bottom of the table yet again.

I remember so well when Queens Park Rangers thrashed us last season buying so many players and spending so much money, replacing managers with a breathtaking aplomb that quite simply dazzled us poor Arsenal fans. I even considered giving up on the years I’ve wasted following Arsenal and buying a hooped blue and white shirt, this time I might start supporting Spurs.

Twitter and football blogs have really taken the thrill  of following the fortunes of a Premier League team to new heights haven’t they? I was reminded of this just yesterday. In a quaint flashback to the pre internet days I bumped into an old acquaintance whilst we pushed our respective wives around the supermarket laden down with essential supplies. As the trolleys, or carts if you prefer, chatted about this and that, he asked if I was looking forward to the match tomorrow. He is a Tottenham fan and I’m all Arsenal so you might have imagined he’d be more than a little smug about their imminent victory in The Window. Curiously though it seemed that we preferred to chat about today’s match and how much we were both looking forward to it. He acknowledged our historical supremacy and I pointed out their relative improvement in recent times and in due course after receiving the laser beams from our partners we parted with mutual bad wishes for each others teams and their respective prospects. It was like a scene from pre-history, a land that time has forgotten. Real people discussing actual football with a healthy rivalry and a shared and genuine love of the game.

Then I returned home and turned on my computer. Oh boy was I brought back to earth with a bang. I quickly realised how silly I was to simply look forward to a physical on pitch encounter with our oldest rivals. To be wondering if the unpredictable and shattering number of first team injuries we have suffered would cost us dear should our substitutes be needed and whether the opposition might struggle to accommodate so many new faces and miss their talismanic simian mascot. These were surely the deluded fantasies of a crazy person. For here on the internet the true meaning of football was being played out.

People were falling over themselves to outdo each other describing how nervous they were as the Deadline Day approached. Others were comparing how they coped with the righteous anger they felt towards the club which has so badly betrayed their trust and support. Many saw no reason to even try to cope with these overwhelming emotions and just lashed out at the manager, the board and any fan letting the side down by not expressing his indignation in the most bald and unambiguous terms. I couldn’t decide whether I felt let down, betrayed, lied to, disappointed, outraged or sickened. I panicked that I might choose the wrong emotion and be thought less of by my fellow fans. I realised how utterly silly I would sound if I dared to voice my private opinion that the depth in our squad was there for all to see. If we could field such a strong side against Fenerbache and comprehensively destroy them despite missing Thomas Vermaelen, Abou Diaby, Lukas Podolski, Alex Oxelaide Chamberlain and the division’s outstanding midfielder by any measurement Mikel Arteta then surely we couldn’t be so badly placed. Could we? As I say, luckily I came to my senses and refrained from pointing out that this weak and obviously failing squad had now lost a grand total of one match in the last sixth months. I realised that the days when such trivialities mattered had slipped into history along with bear baiting and Penny Black stamps. These distracting irrelevancies might interest drooling old men like me, senile and out of touch but in the real exciting world of The Window all that mattered is the number of signings, the amount they cost, which players journalists want fans to talk about and how appalling and inept our hapless management is, its inadequacies laid bare by their inactivity.

The latest body blow to those of us unfortunate enough to follow such a feeble, backward and useless club as Arsenal is the signing of Mathieu Flamini. In a move now universally recognised as a deliberate and personal insult to every single fan in the world, made by a board that is at once out of touch and simultaneously devious and spiteful, they captured a player who failed to meet any of the criteria for a Window winning signing. Not only is he not an internationally renowned player with a Name but, and I can barely bring myself to type this, he didn’t cost anything. OK so he has bags of top level experience and once upon a time not costing anything would be a reason to celebrate the canny business minds at any club, and he knows the manager and his system perfectly, he can play well in multiple positions including those where injuries have left us needing experienced cover and he’s been training with us for a while now so knows the other players. Granted he made up a quarter of our most talented midfield of recent seasons and played right through to the European Cup final but all these mean nothing. His suitability, the precise way he fills a need , the fact that he didn’t cost us an obscene amount of money are all just sidetracking, bushwhacking baloney designed to distract from the fact that his signing means the club hate you and your family and would like to see you all drown in a vat of acid and piss.

Luckily enough everyone on Twitter put me straight and prevented me from looking forward to today’s match. I’m sincerely grateful to you all, everyone who has played their part in helping this poor deluded old man to see what really matters in the modern game. Regardless of the result or the final placings come next May, Tottenham have already beaten us, and were relegation from the Window possible we’d be going down and deservedly so.

Dark days to follow the Arsenal. I just hope the close season goes well between Tuesday and the January tournament and we come back stronger and ready to spend some money, faster, earlier and above all more and on the right names.