The curious case of the serving hatch monster

Around 4am this morning I woke from a dream in which a monster, who lived behind a serving hatch in a canteen I was frequenting, went mad and started to eat my hand. A peculiar dream, no question, but not as peculiar as the fact that the hand he was eating in my dream was exceedingly painful when I woke up.

There was nothing wrong with my hand before I went to bed, now the outside of my right hand is very sore indeed. Almost as if it had been chomped on by a monster. Weird.

There's nothing really new to report regarding Andrei Arshavin. Gunnerblog, Johnny Swift that he is, has bits from an article in a Russian paper in which it appears Arshavin might go on strike in order to force through a move to Arsenal. It's reminiscent of Sylvain Wiltord who did exactly the same before he joined the club. Anyway, the Owlish one remains on the agenda, we'll just have to wait and see what happens. I have to admit, I'm not a big fan of owls - check out this crazy video of how weird and scary they are. They'd eat your hand, oh yes they would, the hand eaters.

I bet it'd be like Jaws. Someone would catch a giant owl, string him up, open up his stomach and out would fall hands of all shapes and sizes. Maybe that's the secret to Arshavin's success, he sets his owly gaze on a defender and using his owly mind powers lets him know that if he tackles him he'll be like Captain Hook after the game. It makes perfect sense to me.

Robin van Persie knows Arsenal have gone too long without silverware. He says he feels the fans frustration, saying:

Yes, and I am like them. I feel the same, I want it as badly as them and it can be frustrating when it doesn’t happen. We didn’t win everything in the past couple of years, but we are doing absolutely everything we can to change it. The main thing is to finally get silverware.

Meanwhile Gael Clichy talks about how we're grinding out results at the moment while the boss explains why he put Samir Nasri in the middle against Bolton - and it's not because Diaby was rubbish, honest.

Well done to Jay Simpson who is on loan at West Brom. He scored his new team's first goal last night as they beat Peterborough in the FA Cup, immediately drawing the plaudits of manager Tony Mowbray. That's a decent start for him, hopefully he can keep it up. 

In the FA Youth Cup Gilles Sunu scored a hat-trick in Arsenal's 3-1 win over Wolves. We go into the 5th round now where we'll face Sunderland.

And from an Arsenal perspective that's about it. The main story of the day though is Man City's £100m bid for AC Milan's Kaka. While transfer fees have reached outrageous heights over the years this is just pure Championship Manager stuff. Of course Kaka is a brilliant player, one that every club would love to have, but £100m is madness - especially as they're offering to pay him £75m on top of that.

And as good as Kaka is he's not going to do much to prevent City being a defensive shambles, is he? I'll tell you, when the oil runs out in 30 years then City are going to be completely screwed. That said they're likely to have the best squad in next year's Championship by a long, long way.

Righto, have yourselves a good and owl free Wednesday. More tomorrow.