The football just keeps coming with Champions League action tomorrow night. There'll be a press conference and team news today so we can preview the game properly tomorrow.

A win would assure qualification for the knock-out stage of the competition so there'll be no rest for the main men. Robin van Persie will lead the line again and after two goals against Sp*rs the manager seems to think 25 goals for the season is an achievable target for him. He says:

I don’t want to set targets but why not? If you look at the chances he has had since the start of the season you cannot say he won’t reach 25 goals.

Robin has taken much more responsibility because he is up front. He has committed himself to the club for a long period and he is at an age, 26, where a footballer becomes really efficient, mature and wants to win things.

It's not hard to see the connection between his improvement in terms of scoring goals and the fact that he's, you know, not crippled on a near constant basis. I always felt he was a bit unlucky with his injuries. He wasn't a Michael Owen, for example, whose hamstrings were made of frayed rubber bands. He seemed to pick up a lot of reasonably serious injuries through impact. There was the knee when he played for Holland and he landed funny, the metatarsal after scoring against United, and on top of that a lack of patience which saw him come back a couple of times too early and suffer setbacks as a consequence.

He was fit for the majority of last season and he had his best ever return. If he stays fit again for the bulk of this term then there's no reason why he can't do better. It's clear now he's getting used to the new role he's been asked to play, he says himself he's found a balance which allows him to be more efficient, and while Match of the Day spend their time asking which of Torres, Rooney or Drogba is the best striker in the Premier League, I'm quite content to watch Robin bang the goals in without the hype. He's got to ensure that the efficiency he's found lasts the duration of the season but to me there's no doubt he's got the potential to become the kind of goalscorer a top club needs.

Meanwhile Andrei Arshavin says that the win over Sp*rs shows Arsenal have put the blip of West Ham behind them. He says:

What I liked in this game is that at half-time were were sure we could end as winners. We were not nervous. There was a sense that the opponents couldn't equalise and that we wouldn't lose our lead.

Quite why there wasn't that sense at Upton Park is something you'd have to ask the little Russian. I have to say I was a bit disappointed with him on Saturday. He seems to be off the pace in recent games and perhaps we could expect a little more from him. When I saw him last in the flesh against Boro last season he was so fascinating to watch. He communicated, told players where to put the ball, where to go to receive it, and generally put in a good shift. Against Sp*rs there wasn't much of that, if any at all.

I know he's the kind of player who can give you something out of nothing, and I'm not criticising here, merely observing, but perhaps there's just a bit too much nothing at the moment and not enough something. Maybe he's carrying a bit of a knock, which would explain things a bit, but there's also the sense that fitness is not exactly his strong point and that's an area he could improve. Anyway, hopefully it's just a little bit of a lull and things will pick up as the season progresses. He might be just pacing himself so he can last till May. What with his fitness and that.

Kieran Gibbs, rather prematurely tipped for England by Arsene Wenger I thought, has spoken about that and how nice to see a footballer with his head screwed firmly on his shoulders. He says he can't even begin to think about England until he does more for Arsenal. Refreshing and intelligent. Maybe it's the intelligence that's refreshing. It's why Almunia's repeated comments about playing for England never really sat right with me. It was all newspaper hype really and he should have just concentrated on doing well for Arsenal instead of getting sucked into tripe like that.

Stan Kroenke has had his chequebook out again. The American has bought another 427 shares taking his overall shareholding to 29.6%, edging ever closer to that mythical 29.9% which would require him to make an offer for all the shares. On the new purchase the Arsenal Supporters Trust say:

The AST’s own assessment of today’s development is that a takeover is not imminent and that today’s purchase is the consolidation of an existing position.

And I'd agree with that although you have to think the closer he gets to the 29.9% the more likely it is that something will happen. But just because he has that shareholding doesn't mean others are under any obligation to sell to him, so unless there's some serious dialogue going on behind the scenes about willingness to sell to Kroenke I can't see any takeover happening in the near future.

In other news Emmanuel Eboue says he'd play for PSG if they made an offer for him next summer while Abou Diaby talks Champions League.

Arsenal reserves lost their first game of the season, a 2-0 'home' defeat by Portsmouth.

And that's that. A full preview of the game against AZ tomorrow, any breaking team news during the day will probably be Twittered, if that's your thing.

Have a good one.

Good morning, a fine start to a new week for many of you. Round these parts there aren't too many Sp*rs fans. I play football with one on a Tuesday and when I told him I was going over for the game he said 'Oh dear, you've just wasted your money there'.

Oh dear indeed. So he'll get some tomorrow night but I can imagine those of you returning to work today who live in much closer quarters to fans of that persuasion will have a jolly good morning engaging in 'banter', you might say. Have fun with that.

While we have a Champions League game this week much of the focus is still on the weekend's events. Amazingly people are now beginning to revise their opinion of this team. While Alan Hansen watches his beloved Mugsmashers reel from crisis to euphoria and back to crisis again, he manages to write something nice about Arsenal. Amazing. I bet his scar was pulsing as he did. 

Meanwhile Robin van Persie has summed up things perfectly, saying:

It always feels good to beat Spurs. It even feels good when we don’t play them and they get beaten, so it’s especially good when we’ve played them.

Marvelous. A bit like van Persie's form at the moment. Patrick Barclay writes about him in The Times and he's really growing into the central striker position. He started slowly, no goals in Arsenal's first 6 games. Now he's fot 8 in our last 9 and he's fast becoming accustomed the role many thought he wasn't really suited to. I suppose we should know better than to underestimate Arsene Wenger's ability to get the best out of a player in a forward position. 

Let's not forget he had to convince Thierry Henry he had what it takes to score goals at a time when established commentators on things Arsenal were just as convinced that Henry would never be a centre-forward. Van Persie is no Henry, he doesn't go at defences the same way, but the boss's comments about him being a bit of a mix of Henry and Bergkamp isn't too far off the mark. And what a mix that is. Let's hope he can keep it up and it's worth pointing out that everyone's favourite £25m summer signing who was lauded in the press as one of the best strikers in the world hasn't scored since he nodded that one in against us. The lanky bollocks.

Robin himself makes headlines this mornings, not for his scoring or his recent form, but for the fact he's expressed a desire to play in the next round of the Carling Cup. Funnily enough it happens to be against Man City. On Saturday he said:

What's the draw? Manchester City away? Nice. I want to play that one. If the boss decides to let me play, I'm happy. I'd love to play. We fancy winning that competition.

Two guesses at why he'd be so up for this one. The defeat earlier in the season and the incident with Adebayor no doubt providing motivation. To be honest I don't think Arsene will involve him. Firstly because with Bendtner, Walcott and Vela all injured the manager won't want to risk his main man. And secondly, for all the maturity he's shown, there's a small part of me that just wouldn't put it past him to cunt Adebayor right up in the air and get himself a red card. Anyway, that game isn't till December so we'll see.

I think I'm in love with this picture. I want it in large. So large I can wrap it around my house. Like house wallpaper. That'd be awesome. And I'd put a speech bubble coming out of Pat Rice's mouth that just said "Yeeeeeeaaaaaahhhhh!". Because that's what he's saying just before he turns to the Sp*rs fans and gives them the finger while thrusting his groin out at them.

"Yeeeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhh!"

Not much else happening though. It's a good way to start the week though. The joy of Saturday still resonating, a nice home fixture in the Champions League to look forward to. I've had worse Monday mornings, it has to be said.

Have a good one, more tomorrow.

It's a long time since I've seen a team as negative as Olympiacos were last night. In the 6th minute Arsenal had possession just inside our own half, every single Olympiacos player was behind the ball. Pathetic.

I figure as Zico has only recently taken over as manager he doesn't know the players too well so his plan was to try and stop us playing. We've seen plenty of teams to the Grove and 'park the bus', as they say. Many of them do it effectively, preventing us from creating chances and frustrating fans and players alike but the Greeks weren't good enough to do that.

We played 5-a-side football last night. Lots of short passing and movement which provided us with plenty of goal scoring opportunities, especially in the first half. Their keeper, Aristotle, made some good saves although it has to be said despite creating the chances our finishing was a bit less than emphatic. The closest we came was a Cesc Fabregas volley which crashed back off the crossbar, while the keeper made saves from Arshavin, Cesc and Robin van Persie at various stages.

The second was more of the same. Arsenal dominated possession, the Greeks pushed so far back into their own half that all they could do was hoof it back upfield and give it straight back to us. There were a couple of hairy moments defensively but eventually the goal had to come. Just moments after his introduction Eduardo was fed the ball in the box by Cesc, the timing of his run was perfect giving him the space to cross for Robin van Persie who slammed it home from close range.

The second came from Andrei Arshavin and although he was more than a bit offside when he scored it the build-up play to create the chance was sumptuous. Nice interplay between the Russian and Cesc, Ramsey played it back to the captain who fizzed it across goal and Arshavin's backheeled finish was sublime. Offside, yes, but no less than we deserved. Forget Zico's bizarre post-match comments about the officials being French, classic deflection tactics to take the focus away from just how bad his team were. And they were bad.

Conversely Arsenal were very good last night. I always thought we'd get the goals although I was just beginning to get a bit anxious before RVP's opener. That said I think everyone knew we'd score. Sometimes you can hear the tension quite clearly as we fail to take chances at home but the crowd were right behind the team and I think that helped.

It was good to see Cesc back to his normal self. He bossed the game and was involved in almost everything good we did. Tomas Rosicky's rehabilitation continues and he showed the kind of craft and endeavour that our midfield has been missing at times, while Alex Song mopped up everything that needed to be mopped up. There's no doubt van Persie deserved his goal, his all-round play and movement were fantastic, Arshavin looked sharp and fitter than he has been and in general it was the kind of performance we were looking for. Sometimes it's easy to get dragged down to the level of your opponents but we played well for the whole 90 and it was good to see.

Afterwards Arsene said:

I think we dominated from the first to the last minute. What I liked in our performance tonight was that we always played with a desire to keep the discipline in the team because that is very satisfying. We did not do anything crazy. We have matured and a game like that shows it.

After a late evening game against Fulham on Saturday, which really was a hard fought three points, it was good to see the team do it for the whole game. There was no first half hangover, no late lapse in concentration. Of course some of it is down to Olympiacos being as poor a team as we've played in the Champions League for years but I'd rather talk us up than them down.

I think the key is that the big players performed. Defensively we were solid again but Cesc, Arshavin, Rosicky, van Persie and co all played well. Keeping them fit is going to be the key to winning things this season. With Walcott and Nasri still to return there's still something to be added too, so fingers crossed.

Speaking of Theo he played for an hour yesterday in a game against Olympiacos reserves. We won 3-1, he wasn't on the scoresheet but hopefully that 60 minutes is enough for him to push for a place in the squad for Sunday's game against Blackburn.

So all in all a good night's work for the Gunners, onwards and upwards. Till tomorrow.

When Arsenal won against Standard Liege, having come from 2 goals down, the performance was poor but I thought the way we won the match was important. We played poorly and managed to produce a comeback from a couple of goals down. Every team needs games like that to give them the belief they can salvage something when things are going wrong.

Yesterday's game was similar. Vito Mannone was by far the busier of the two keepers, yet Arsenal left Craven Cottage with three points thanks to Robin van Persie's goal.

The first half was Arsenal at their most frustrating. Simple things seemed beyond them, our passing was off and our left side looked vulnerable, which Fulham exploited. It was the home side who threatened most, Mannone making a great double save from Andy Johnson and Clint Dempsey's follow up. He saved again from Zolton Gera's low shot, pushing it out for a corner with Zamora lurking for a rebound.

The best chance of the half fell to Andrei Arshavin after nice play between Robin van Persie and Cesc on the edge of their area but it looked as if the ball bobbled and his close range shot went well over the bar. We were better in the second half, sharper, had more of the ball, but again we struggled to create clear cut chances.

Seven minutes in though we got the goal. Cesc, who really didn't have a good game at all, showed why he's so important to this team with the kind of pass that our other midfielders can only dream about making. He chipped it over the Fulham defence into the path of van Persie whose left foot control and right footed finish were first class. 

Fulham rallied and showed why they were good value for their 7th place finish last season. They work hard, they don't waste the ball that often and we had to defend well. Again Mannone was the key man making a couple of good saves, the pick of the bunch from a Zamora header. The young Italian can rightly feel proud of his day's work.

Late on we might have had another goal as Fulham pressed. Bendtner had a couple of half chances while Eboue screwed one wide after being put through by Cesc. We held on though to win at the Cottage for the first time since 2006 the last time we won there, man of the match was clearly the goalkeeper, but it might just be one of those wins that does wonders for a team.

Maybe I'm trying to be too positive here but this is exactly the kind of result that pundits laud United for. They didn't play well, the opposition had a plenty of chances, but they won the game. We ground out three points yesterday and it's not something this Arsenal team is renowned for doing. Mostly because we don't do it that often and I think a bit of that is that we don't believe we can do it. Hopefully yesterday will go some way to instilling that because it's such an important ability.

Pretty football is lovely but ask anyone to choose between a pretty draw and an ugly win and there's only one answer. Afterwards Arsene Wenger said of the win:

It is good for us to know that you can win that way. People always want us to play well and dominate but when we do not win they are not happy too. Today I am happy.

Quite right. There's much to be said for winning games at a canter but you have to be able to win games like yesterday's the way we did. On the keeper the boss said:

I believe we will give him 10 out of 10 because everything he did was right. For a goalkeeper that is most important. He stopped everything he had to stop, didn't make any wrong decisions and overall he has shown he has the potential to be a very good goalkeeper.

You have to be pleased for the young man and when you consider that is only his fourth professional appearance it's great for him. You also have to laugh at the interviewer on ESPN who asked him 'Is that the best day of your professional career so far?'. He's only played four games! And I would say we should laugh at Chris Waddle but he's shot right into the top 5 of most irritating co-commentators/pundits of all time. It's bad enough hearing anti-Arsenal stuff but hearing it from someone who can barely speak English is another thing entirely. Honestly, he sounds as if his signature is a paw print. Moron.

Anyway, it was a good three points, an invaluable three points given the other results, and while we'll all hope for better performances in the future there's a lot to be said for the way we won that game.

In other news the draw for the 4th round of the Carling Cup took place yesterday and we've got Liverpool at home. I imagine they'll be keen to make up for the last time we played in that competition when Julio Baptista got four at Anfield and even Alex Song scored so it should make for a good game.

Gael Clichy talks about William Gallas's new found partnership with Thomas Vermaelen and the fact that Kieran Gibbs wants his place in the team.

And that's about that. Time for some patented Sunday lying around going 'Urgh'.

Hello there, Fulham today in a late kick off and a chance to put last season's debacle behind us. The second game of the season gave us an unseemly taste of what was to come.

I remember later in the season reading some quotes from Robin van Persie about how the team were on the bus afterwards and he was thinking 'How did that happen? That is not Arsenal'. I've tried to find the exact quotes, but can't. Anyway, that was not Arsenal but it was the Arsenal we got for an extremely damaging period last season.

This season Robin is aware of how important games like today are. He says:

If you look last year, the way Manchester United became champions was against the 'smaller' teams. They won against all the teams from 19 to 10. That is why they became champions. So it is very important to win these games.

Last season we had a pretty good record against the other top 4 sides. A win and a draw against United, we beat Chelsea at Stamford Bridge (I'm forgetting the home game), and two draws against Liverpool, but that period when we lost to Fulham, to Hull, to Stoke, to Man City and Aston Villa is what blew us out of the title race, shattered any confidence we might have had and left us playing catch up until almost the end of the season.

There was a home game against Fulham last season which was almost as painful to watch as well. It came during a series of games where we couldn't score to save our lives, we drew 0-0 with them on the day and we were awful again. Danny Murphy, who is in the papers today saying we've 'lost the fear factor' and all that, bossed the midfield and when we should have been bombarding Fulham at the end of the game we couldn't even get the ball back from them.

So far this season against 'smaller' teams we have done a lot better. 4-0 against Portsmouth, 4-0 against Wigan perhaps shows there's been a change in mindset. That we don't simply go out expecting to win, we go out knowing we have to perform to get the three points. 

Now, I rate Fulham a lot higher than either of those teams, Woy Hodgson has done a great job since he arrived there, but the 6-1 win over Everton shows we can do it against the bigger of the 'smaller' teams too. RVP is right, these games are the bread and butter of the title race, if you don't win them then you're making life extremely difficult for yourself.

I reckon today's team, based on who's fit, might look like this:

Mannone - Sagna - Gallas - Vermaelen - Clichy - Song - Cesc - Rosicky - Arshavin - van Persie - Bendtner

I've gone for Rosicky ahead of Diaby although the boss might prefer the Frenchman, which to me is a bit like preferring a lump of charred armadillo to a succulent fillet steak but there you go. With Theo back and hopefully on the bench it does boost our attacking options should we need to change things, with both he and Eduardo a threat.

In other news Robin van Persie talks about 'exaggerating contact' as opposed to diving and also lauds the team spirit at the club, saying:

I really love Arsenal and I want them to succeed.  I do feel our team spirit is at a higher level than most other clubs. Other clubs have lots of egos. We have egos here but the whole squad has good egos and good characters. That is not the case at many other clubs.

You can't help but think he's highlighting that in the wake of a certain recent departure who he comically calls 'Mr Adebayor' in this piece. 

He does talk a good game, does Robin. What I'd like to see now are his boots do the talking, his good leg or his chocolate leg matters not a jot to me. It's goal time, Robin.

Arsene Wenger tries to explain why he didn't spend the summer profit but really only confuses things. He says:

We sold Kolo and Adebayor but bought Vermaelen. That money is for me. I know how much I have and I am happy with it. But last week we played Wigan. We won 4-0 and on the bench I had Bendtner.  Walcott, Arshavin, Nasri, Denilson and Djourou were not playing.

That money is for me? He sounds like an Irish government minister there. And yes we won 4-0 with Bendtner on the bench but we lost two games in Manchester and he played them. How odd. I really think he should stop talking about the money we didn't spend, I don't want to hear about it anymore. It's still a bit of a sore point amongst fans and again I think it's one of those articles on the official site that doesn't really do him any favours. 

Anyway, it's all fairly irrelevant so long as the players we do have do the business on the pitch starting today at Fulham. As it's my birthday today I'm expecting at least 8 goals (Arsenal goals) as a present. Come on lads. Do it for me!

Till tomorrow.

Funnily enough I was dreaming this morning that I was away on holidays and Tom was supposed to be writing the blog. It was one of those very real dreams so that even when I got up to go to the bathroom I lay back down thinking 'I wonder what Tom is going write about'.

Sadly, I am not on holidays, nor do I have the pleasure of reading what Tom wrote whenever he got around to actually writing it.

We have an interesting week ahead. A Carling Cup game against West Brom tomorrow night will provide an opportunity for the likes of Senderos, Wilshere, Ramsey and others to get some playing time. There'll be more team news and a preview on tomorrow's blog.

In the meantime Robin van Persie has been singing the praises of Thomas Vermaelen. They had a little spat during the Amsterdam Tournament a couple of summers back (it was this which brought him to the manager's attention apparently) but all is rosy in the garden now. Robin says:

Now I'm happy he is on my side. In training everyone mixes up so I play against him. He is tough and it's good because I am training against proper defenders.

And of his goals, he said:

The first one showed he is very, very strong from corners and free-kicks and that is very important for us. Even if we play badly we can always score from set-pieces.

I would have been proud of his second goal.

The set-piece thing is by far the most important to me. At times we struggle to break teams down, to have that added threat is a real bonus.

The manager has been talking about teams who foul a lot. It was clear against Wigan that part of their game plan was to disrupt the flow of our football. A succession of fairly innocuous fouls prevented us really getting into our rhythm and Arsene Wenger said:

It’s a general thing. It’s the little fouls in the middle of the park. It breaks up the game from when you are attacking three against three, four against four and then you get a free kick and it’s ten against ten again.

All the work you have done is nothing. You start from scratch again. They have broken up the play. I think I will try to talk to the FA about it. It’s the same for Manchester United, Liverpool and for everybody.

If it's the same for everybody then we may just have to live with it. I can see where he's coming from. The football purist in all of us wants to see flowing moves and all the rest but stopping the other team from playing is part of the game. If you're playing a so-called lesser team you're going to have to accept that they'll probably be more physical, that they'll try and stop your more skillful players with little fouls which break up play.

I think it's just a fact of life. The only way you can stop it is to dish out more yellow cards and as it is I think players get booked too easily. On the flip-side I've thought for a little while now that we haven't had the kind of player who will commit that kind of foul to help us out when needed. If there's a break on sometimes you want to see your central defender or deep lying midfielder take the man out on the halfway line. That is a good yellow card, if it's given. Song does it, Flamini used to do it, but in the current squad we don't have enough players who will make that kind of foul - and sometimes fouling is as much a part of the game as anything else. 

If a foul on the halfway line prevents a three on two break then isn't that just good play from a defensive point of view? Frustrating for the attacking team, of course, we've been in that situation plenty of times. We just shouldn't be afraid to do the same.

The boss on Tomas Rosicky:

I am very positive. Touch wood his problem is sorted. He had not played a game for 18 months. Now he has played with the Czech Republic and us. I did not leave him out today because I was cautious. He was ready to play and for me he looks completely over his injury.

Touch wood. Light a candle. Lucky rabbit's foot. Charmed pygmy pelt. Blessed monkey scrotum. All the things we use for good fortune. I really hope he is over his problems and the manager hasn't just jinxed the ever-loving shit out of him.

With the Carling Cup on the agenda it seems Blackpool are going to ask for permission to marry play Jay Emmanuel-Thomas. His loan there has already been extended so it'll be interesting to see the outcome of that. I suspect we'll refuse, hoping to use him in later rounds if we get through.

Not much else happening from an Arsenal point of view. What about that Manchester derby though? While I would have much preferred a draw how hilarious was it to see Mary Hughes so grumpy at the injury time winner? All those times he played there benefitting from the referee's dodgy watches and he never had a complaint to make. Now, when the boot is on the other foot and the other foot is a great big cloppity foot like Christy Brown, he's annoyed by it. 

Most amusing. Then Craig Bellamy, the Gladstone Small of football, whacks a fan who came on the pitch. More FA madness. What's going to happen next? What was that film with the American football thing and maybe Al Pacino was in it and one of the players is running down the pitch and he takes out a gun and shoots the opponents out of the way to score a touchdown? That's where we're heading with Man City. I'm glad we're not playing them again until April.

Right so. Best leave it there. More tomorrow.

In an ideal world we'd be putting Saturday's defeat behind us and saying no more about it. That, however, is impossible given the furore caused by Emmanuel Adebayor.

It's likely he's going to be hit with FA charges for the celebration and the stamp on Robin van Persie. Regarding the celebration there are those who say Arsenal fans shouldn't have reacted like that and perhaps that's true to an extent. There's an accusation that football fans are very quick to dish out banter but when they get a bit back they get a bit precious, and that's also true at times.

But there's a responsibility on players to rise above it. I've read about the 'abuse' handed out to Adebayor, he's used it as an excuse himself, but eye-witness reports from the game itself don't tally with what he says and what's being said in the press. And I've heard him get worse stick when he was an Arsenal player and he didn't react like that. He wanted to wind-up Arsenal fans, it worked, but the onus is on him to be the professional. He is the one paid huge amounts of money and that there was bitterness from Arsenal fans is because they were the ones whose season tickets etc were paying him to amble about last season. 

Kolo Toure came over and dragged him away. There's a picture of both Kolo and Craig Bellamy holding their hands up to apologise. Craig Bellamy. This is a man who hit one of his own teammates about the legs with a golf club and he's more professional than Adebayor. The Greater Manchester police are less than impressed which is bound to have a bearing on the outcome on the FA investigation.

Mark Hughes, Man City manager, knows Adebayor is in the wrong but has done little but make excuses for him. While I don't expect any manager to castigate his player in public you have to laugh when he says:

He needs to be cut a little bit of slack given what he has gone through in the last 18 months

What has he gone through? Serious illness? Unemployment? A traumatic accident? A death in his family? No. He created a sticky situation for himself at work, where he was paid £80,000 a week, and then made that situation worse when it would have been easy to make it better. Then he got a different job which pays him £140,000 a week. A WEEK. What he's gone through? Give me a break and spend a few days in the real world. There are people who go through worse every single day of their lives and nobody should have any sympathy for Adebayor about what happened to him at Arsenal. It was his fault and his fault alone.

The van Persie stamp should see him banned for 3 games automatically. If the ref had seen it - and maybe he should have got laser eye surgery instead of hair implants - it would have been a red card. Adebayor claims he tried to speak to van Persie afterwards but naturally the Dutchman was having none of it. I would have liked to see more of our players follow that example than spend time hugging him afterwards but that's very much a side issue.

Any kind of violent play should be punished as severely as possible and that goes for Arsenal players who set out to deliberately injure an opponent too. What will gall City fans when they get over their crowing and stop and think about it is the fact that Adebayor went out on Saturday with nothing more than his own agenda in mind. He wanted revenge. Quite what for I don't know. As Arsene Wenger said:

At Arsenal we tried to treat him well. He came from Metz where he did not play and now he is the player he is. I do not feel we treated him badly.

And he's right. He had an issue with the fans and the fans had an issue with him but what did Cesc Fabregas ever do but create goals for him? So why the vicious stamp on his ankle? I never heard Robin van Persie say a bad word about him so why rake his studs down his face? The fact is that Adebayor was not a Man City player on Saturday, he was an Adebayor player. He'll now miss at least 3 games (maybe more if he gets banned for the celebration), including the Manchester derby this weekend, and it's the first little hint City fans have that the most important thing to Adebayor is Adebayor, not his club.

It was self-indulgent, unprofessional and when you read him saying that he has no idea why he should be banned for anything then, if you're a City fan, you've got to be a bit worried. That lack of insight applies to his performances on the pitch and his behaviour off it too. He could not understand why Arsenal fans reacted to his antics last summer because he lives in a cosseted bubble where he gets to do what he wants without worrying about the consequences. Now, perhaps, he'll get a taste of reality.

Anyway, I think we've spent enough time on him. When the verdict comes it'll be mentioned here. Then until April 24th, when he returns to the Grove for the first time, this shall remain an Adebayor-free zone*

There's not a whole lot else going on this morning, it has to be said. Eduardo's appeal against his 2 match ban takes place today in Switzerland so we'll find out if he's available for Wednesday's trip to Belgium.

What's not in doubt though is that we need to put Saturday behind us, regroup and start winning football matches. The start to the season calmed a lot of nerves, the last two results have re-opened old wounds, so to speak. Now comes a real test of the manager's belief in these players. We've got a great chance to create some momentum, both in Europe and domestically, but thoughts on that, team selections, injuries and everything else can wait until tomorrow.

Till then.

* unless he does something especially cunty in which case all bets are off

It was inevitable that the headlines this morning would be about Emmanuel Adebayor. However, while many of us thought it'd be because he scored a goal (ex-Arsenal players always score, dontcha know?), I doubt many of us thought Adebayor would sink to the depths he did yesterday.

I think the referees assessor needs to look very closely at Mark Clattenburg's performance yesterday because he allowed Adebayor to get away with an extremely nasty foul on Cesc in the first ten minutes. He went over the ball and stamped on his ankle. At the very least that was a yellow card. Clatterburg saw it and he seemed to take into account the circumstances and just gave Adebayor a ticking off. It shouldn't matter that he was fired up, it shouldn't matter what he had been saying pre-game, dangerous tackles should be punished and the ref let him away with it.

In the second half Adebayor deliberately stamped on Robin van Persie's face. Watching on the stream yesterday I first thought he'd stood on his hand, but right under the eye of the ref he raked his studs down van Persie's face. Take a look. Robin released a statement after the game, saying:

He set out to hurt me today. I knew he was aiming for a collision because he changed the angle of his body to allow contact to be made.  He moved backwards when his natural momentum would have taken him forward. I find that deeply disrespectful. He has shown a real lack of class today, to me and the fans.

So it's not unfair to suggest that when Adebayor scored City's third goal he should not have been on the pitch. That it took him causing a near riot with his provocative celebration to earn a yellow card is a sad indictment of the Clattenburg who redefined awful yesterday. As for Adebayor - I don't buy his apology. Sure he was emotional but he knew exactly what he was doing. He'd slagged off Arsenal fans before the game and the celebration was designed to wind up the travelling Gooners even more. 

It shows him up as the classless, moronic, idiot he really is. There's no excuse for the tackle on Cesc (we're lucky he wasn't badly injured), the celebration, stupid as it was, I can live with because that's the kind of thing cunts do, but there's absolutely no justification for the stamp on van Persie. It was dangerous and cowardly and he needs to be punished for it. The FA have confirmed they will be taking a look at it and I hope he's sanctioned properly and I hope Clattenburg is too. 

Now, leaving that massive cunt to one side what can you say about the game? Defensively it was not our shiningest moment, was it? City opened the scoring when a suspiciously offside Micah Richards looped a header towards our back post. It seemed to take Almunia an age to react and when he did the ball dropped over him, hit the post, hit his head and went in. You have to say there's an element of bad luck about it but the Spaniard hasn't had a great start to the season. I don't think it's any coincidence that Almunia's best season came when he had Jens waiting on the bench, that kind of competition for his place is not there any more and I think that's a factor.

Until then I thought we'd bossed the game and were playing quite well. The goal knocked the wind out of our sails a bit and we might have gone further behind. The moment that stands out is Stephen Ireland running through and Gael Clichy actually running away from him. I still don't quite know why Ireland didn't shoot, I think Clichy's bizarre movement confused him and the defender eventually came away with the ball. I may be wrong but Given didn't have a save to make in the first half.

In the second we struggled to get going until the introduction of Tomas Rosicky added something to our attacking play. He played a ball into Robin van Persie who turned Lescott brilliantly and finished with his right foot into the bottom corner to make it 1-1.

Then we self-destructed. Clichy got caught upfield, there was no effort on Diaby's part to get back, and when Song was beaten in the left back position it was easy for whichever scabby cunt it was to set up Craig Bellamy to make it 2-1. The third came from the left back position as well, some scabby cunt crossing for Adebayor to score and Shaun Wright-Phillips made it 4-1 as we got caught on the counter. Tomas Rosicky made it 4-2 with a nicely taken goal and it's good to see him back.

In the last 10-15 minutes we might have scored 3 or 4. Clattenburg ignored Barry's clear handball at 3-1, which would have made things interesting, van Persie hit the post, Adebayor cleared one off the line, another deflected just wide, Given made a goal line save and we certainly had enough chances to level things up. You might well ask why it took us being 4-1 down to play with the kind of urgency we showed in the latter stages of the game. The 4-3-3 formation is so dependent on hard work when you don't have the ball. I felt we didn't really do enough when they had possession and when we had it we seemed lethargic and sloppy. Maybe a post-Interlull hangover but then City had plenty of players away too.

The defensive instability will worry the manager but this is the same defence people were lauding as much improved a couple of weeks ago. To me the reason it was improved was because everybody, from front to back, worked really hard. I don't think you can say that was true yesterday. As well as that I think we were missing a bit of creativity. If Cesc has an off day, as I think he did, then we're going to struggle if we don't have Nasri, Rosicky or Arshavin in the team. I'm beginning to think Denilson/Song is an either/or situation, so having Rosicky back is good news. Let's hope he can stay fit. 

Overall not a great day but it's early in the season yet. Just as the win against Everton didn't mean we were the best team in the world defeat yesterday does not mean we're the worst. What is clear though is that we need to work harder, as a team, and cut out the individual errors which always seem so costly. 

Looking at the next run of games in the Premier League (Wigan, Fulham, Blackburn, Birmingham, West Ham, Spurs, Wolves, Sunderland before we play Chelsea) there's certainly the opportunity to put a decent run of results together and get some badly needed momentum going.

Next on the agenda though is Champions League action as we visit Belgium to play Standard Liege. The recovery has to start there.

It appears I have some kind of hangover. Which is something of a surprise as I didn't have one when I went to bed.

We might as well be Nirvanblog this morning as all the talk is of teen team spirit. Actually, scrap that. That would mean me blowing my head off to get away from Courtney Love and given the delicate state of my brain this morning that's the only way I can think of dealing with her if she comes crashing through my door. I suppose I could blow her head off but that's some type of misdemeanour I believe.

Anyway, team spirit. We've got it. Just listen. Robin van Persie talks about how the lads are going to 'fight' for each other in response to what the media have been saying:

Maybe being written off brings the players a little closer together but we will see what happens. I don’t want to say too much because I don’t want to make the 'enemy' cleverer than they are!

How fiendish. Keep your friends close and your enemies in a bamboo cage half submerged in a filthy river, that's what I say. Meanwhile Manuel Almunia hints that the Arsenal dressing room is a better place to be this season. Is that down to redecoration or the players that have departed? He says:

All the players, we have a better relationship with each other and, if the dressing room works, then, on the pitch, the team works as well. It’s something that is right. Everybody comes into the dressing room with a better mood. It’s crucial to have a good relationship with each other.

It’s true that this season, at the moment, we don’t have any trouble or any problems inside and we appreciate that.

Which all sounds very nice but it makes you wonder what was going on last year. While I'm trying to be reasonable and sensible, understanding fine well that within any large group there are going to be conflicts of personality no matter what the nature of said group, I think it's only fair to blame Moneybayor for all of it. The big lanky cockbadger.

Then, having opened a number of stories in tabs in my browser this morning, I was sure I had uncovered the real reason for the new togetherness. 'Arsenal have disco', says one tab, and there's nothing like some good old disco dancing to bring people together. 'Arsenal have discovered new resolve' is the disappointing real story from the Independent with quotes from Bacary Sagna but I prefer the the first version. And anyway, doesn't Robin van Persie have a touch of the Tony Maneros about him? 

Straight from the dancehall to the ... erm ... contracthall, where it's being reported that Nicklas Bendtner has agreed a new deal with the club. Now that Moneybayor is no longer around to headbutt him (and I'm told he used to loaf Nick on an almost daily basis, sometimes even during charity events which would leave disabled children weeping at the violence perpetrated in front of their very eyes) his future at the club seems somewhat brighter. Which is good news.

I have to laugh at all these stories about Arsenal making a 'pact' with Barcelona over Cesc. I know the stories came from the Spanish press, creators of the finest fiction since OJ on the witness stand, but still, even for their standards it's ludicrous. As if we would agree to any such thing. And pacts are stupid anyway. I remember when me and three of my friends found a dead body by the railway tracks we made a pact not to tell anyone but one of them had to blab his mouth off to Stephen King and then ... bam ... there's my life in a book and on film. You can't trust anyone these days. Or those days. 

Not much else happening from an Arsenal point of view. Last night's results were interesting, eh? A 1-0 defeat to Burnley means little for United, they'll still be challenging come May, while Sp*rs sticking 5 past permatanned, used car salesman's pack of cloggers up in Hull means just as little. Although it may just contribute to the eventual downfall of Phil Brown which would be rather hilarious.

Right then, that's about that. Have a good day. More, and an Arsecast, tomorrow as we look ahead to Portsmouth at the weekend.

Good morning all,

shocking news this morning to start with. Barcelona President Joan Laporta has admitted "I'm a cunt and I just can't help it".

Speaking exclusively to El Blogdo Mongativo smarmy Laporta admitted what the world has suspected for years. "I know this will be hard for people to accept but it's true. I'm a complete and utter cunt. I've been a cunt for years".

However, he refused to accept responsibility for it, blaming an innocent Arsenal fan for his misfortune.

"It all started when I was just 17", he said whilst strangling and then setting fire to a puppy. "I was a happy-go-lucky chap strolling up Las Ramblas, buying some fresh herbs in La Boqueria here, hanging out with trannies up by the Camp Nou there. 

On that fateful day I was having some tapas in my favourite tapas restaurant, Los Cojones Gigantes, when in came a chap wearing the shirt of that team they call Arsenal. I was about to order the very last portion of the squid wrapped in pigeon stuffed with snails and smothered in a delicious garlic, olive oil and guano paste, when this brute, this savage Arsenal ogre, reached over the counter and took it for himself.

He wolfed it down, like a wolf, washed it down with a litre of Estrella, then let out the most enormous belch I have ever heard. Oh dear sweet holy Jesus on the cross with the blessed Mary weeping at his feet, the smell. It was like the rotting anus of a three-week dead gibbon, and trust me, I know my dead gibbons having spent many years in technical college studying their ringpieces.

From that day forth I swore that I would have revenge, not only on Arsenal and its fans but on the world at large. I came home, stood proud and announced to my parents 'From now on your son, Joan Laporta, is going to be a cunt!!'.

'From now on?', said my confused father, but I paid him no heed. Now I have the power to make the life of Arsenal miserable. I shall redouble, no retriple, my efforts to sign Cesc Fabregas", he said, listening to Glen Hoddle and Chris Waddle sing the songs of Phil Collins.

"That Arsenal fan will rue the day he stole that portion of tapas from me. They will all rue it. Rue, I say. Not a day shall pass when I fail to make some kind of comment about the Arsenal captain who has committed himself to the club more often than El Harry del Rojoknapp's face twitches in a minute. They will pay for what they did. Oh yes".

At this point Laporta excused himself as he had to teach a class of teenagers how to talk really, really loudly non-stop when they went to Ireland or England for the summer to learn English.

These scandalous revelations will be of little comfort to Arsenal fans around the world as they have to contend with daily headlines about Spanish clubs signing Fabregas, but they can take some solace in the fact that the public record will show that Joan Laporta, is indeed, and always will be, a huge, enormous, disrespectful, tedious, megahyperglobalsuper elephantine cunt.

--

In other news this morning Robin van Persie says he's 100% behind Arsene Wenger. The Dutchman says:

There is ambition. I have spoken to both the boss and Ivan Gazidis about it. The boss got some stick from some of the fans last season, but if you look at the reaction at the end of the last game, that was tremendous and is the way all of the fans should react.

I trust him and my message to everyone is: be patient, trust the team and the people above.

Splendid. The best bit about the new season is the clean slate. Everything starts fresh and optimism is high. A 14-0 win over some minnows in pre-season will get the ball rolling soon enough. And van Persie had some words about Jack Wilshere too, saying:

It almost makes me scared when I see him play, so he has massive potential.

I love that the level to which Robin is scared can be used to measure potential in young players. Wilshere - almost scared. Gibbs - nearly frightened. Anton Blackwood who has left us to join Sp*rs - not even remotely startled. Still, Wilshere is someone I'm really looking forward to seeing more of in the season ahead.

Manuel Almunia has urged the club to bring in experience saying youth can only take us so far. The keeper says:

It's great to have a young team but youth doesn't give you titles. We need the manager to work harder to get what we need, the club to make an extra effort to make us more competitive. We need more than youth.

Interesting to hear that from one of the senior players in the squad. He also goes on to talk about his relationship with Jens Lehmann and funnily it's easy to see how the negativity between them helped Almunia, as if he were going to prove Jens wrong. Things are better between them now and they recently enjoyed a day out at Alton Towers and both of them treasure the picture of them getting soaked as the rollercoaster goes through the puddle thing.

Sport.co.uk links us with Ever Banega whose only quality as far as I can see is that an anagram of his name is 'Avenge Bear' which is kinda cool. 

Weird and interesting stuff is emerging from the News of the World phone tapping affair. PFA chief Gordon Taylor's phone was tapped by a private investigator working for the Sunday rag and messages about Arsene Wenger, presumably from either Shearer or Alex Ferguson, as mentioned in this Guardian piece, were intercepted. 

There was also one left about Jamie Redknapp which was someone just going 'Cunt. Cunt. Cunt. Cunt. Cunt' for 10 minutes solid. Police did not need to investigate that one.

And that'll be about that. The first week of pre-season training over. Monday will see the return of players like van Persie, Toure, Adebayor, Sagna, Eboue etc, and then we start getting closer and closer to some actual football. Sweet.

Till tomorrow.