Arsenal fell flat on their tummies last Sunday, flat as flat can be.

OK, it was one of the worst pitches that they've played on in centuries, and it was impossible for their Gunners to play their slick passing game, but we knew about this already. Chris Kirkland kindly informed us about a week ago that their pitch was utter shite, saying something along the lines of - "They've got skillful world class players, but goodness knows how they are going to pass the ball on our pitch". Steve Bruce said something along those lines a few days ago, and really everybody knew that trying to pass a football at the JJB was going to be something akin to passing gas on a first date with the girl of your dreams... i.e. this was not the place for it.

Arsene actually seemed to have the right idea up front - big boys Ade and Bendtner starting together for the first time should have provided an aerial threat. However, what seemed like a ploy to play more "direct" football was in reality just the fact that we only had two fit strikers in the squad.

And the great irony in this game was that we consistently refused to try the long ball apart from a short spell in the first half, opting instead to try our quick, short passing game on a pitch that had "DON'T PLAY A QUICK. SHORT PASSING GAME ON ME" written all over it. Or something like that.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, utterly outplaying Milan one night, and utterly dismaying on another

Well, Arsenal are back at the Emirates briefly (Chelsea up next week, so at least that's still in London). Boro are the visiting side, and Arsenal will be wanting to put this one right - they have lost just one game this season in the league, away to Middlesborough, and it was an embarrassing, excuse-less night for the Arsenal, they were poor.

The big news for this game is that Robin Van Persie might start - it's a welcome bit of news given that he needs match fitness for the run-in, and Middlesborough are a decent side that try to play football, and (hopefully) won't try to break anyone's legs. 

Theo Walcott is back in the frame, and that's another (albeit unreliable) goalscoring option to help relieve the burden on the somewhat exhausted, stretched Emmanuel Adebayor, who has performed well above expectations this season.

Predictions? 

Well, that's only half the story, but yes, the usually uninvolved Arsene Wenger has decided to interfere in player affairs.

Adebayor's celebration this season has largely involved running towards the fans, sliding across the turf on his knees. However, Wenger has asked him not to celebrate in this way because of an incident that happened in 1997 with Patrick Vieira.

Vieira went for exactly the came celebration, but ended up injuring his knee, and spent 5 weeks out. At the time, Arsenal still had David Platt, Manu Petit, Ray Parlour and Gilles Grimandi to provide cover in central midfield, but if Adebayor got injured now, the team would be in serious trouble.

This also reminds me of another incident back in 2000 (or maybe it was 1999), where Thierry Henry ran towards the corner flag to celebrate - he pulled it back, and unfortunately was injured when it rebounded and hit him!

Do you know of any weird celebration related injuries? Let us know below! 

A professional counter-attacking performance from Arsenal saw them prevail 1-0 in a tough away fixture in Romania. Robin Van Persie scored the only goal of the game with 15 minutes left to play, absolutely hammering a left-shooted shot from Emmanuel Adebayor's square pass across the face of goal.

The interesting statistic in this game was that although Steaua had a fair share of the possession, the Gunners had 21 shots to Steaua's 7. The win was achieved on the basis of efficient counter-attacking, although you might say that Arsenal were hardly efficient given that despite all the chances that they created, there was only one late goal to show for it. Still, it is an improvement on many of the performances they had last season in the Premiership and in Europe, where they created and wasted countless chances and drew or lost many games as a result. Cesc Fabregas even provided a reminder of those days when he missed an easy chance from about 3 yards out.

Still, this Arsenal looks more purposeful, patient and composed. Alexander Hleb was a darting, menacing presence throughout. Van Persie made life tough for opponents with his aggression and technique, Fabregas was controlling as always, Flamini was busy and "bossy", Kolo Toure was heroic, and Emmanuel Adebayor continued to show his curious duality of being profligate but good at the same time. Senderos had a very good game apart from a few moments, and both fullbacks were very solid (Clichy having a few suspect moments). Eboue looked rusty, but did his job, and Gilberto came on in the second half for him to stem Steaua's attacking pressure. The team always looked confident that the goal would come, and it did, unlike last season where they would start to panic more and more, with desperation creeping into the play.

It could have been quite different though if Steaua had made the most of their chances. First, Manuel Almunia rushed out to head clear, but didn't manage to get too much distance on the header. He was also unlucky that the ball fell to the clever number 10 Dica, who took a touch and lobbed him. However, Captain Kolo was on hand to perfectly anticipate the lob and head it away with Almunia completely stranded - whether the sequence just happened that quickly, or Almunia was ballwatching and didn't get back soon enough, I don't know. Their second chance came when Iacob went clean through on the left-side of the box, opened up his body and curled a far-post shot high and wide of both Almunia and the goal. Perhaps he thought he would try to score a Thierry Henry goal since he was playing against the Arsenal, but it ended up being more Adebayor (on a bad day) than anything else.

And that was about it for the Romanians. They had some clever, technically gifted players, but Arsenal were the superior team, and should have had at least a goal or two more to show for their efforts.

One can't help but feel sad at their disappointment at the end though. Gigi Becali, their mad owner had already said the coach Pedrazzini would be sacked if he couldn't get a result against Arsenal, and the players would all have received £20,000 each as a win bonus, and they must have been devastated by Iacob's missed chance.

Those of you who've watched Arsenal this season, will have known the eventual outcome within 15 minutes of the start of yesterday's game against West Ham. It was the same old story. Arsenal created a glut of chances and didn't score. You wondered whether West Ham would pinch one off a counter-attack, and sure enough on the stroke of half-time they did. And then Arsenal continued to create a glut of chances but to no avail. SAME. OLD. STORY. One-nil not to the Arsenal.

There was all the intricate passing, pretty football, and scintillating build-up play and movement that you'd expect of Arsene Wenger's sides, but nothing at the end of it. To take Arjun's “just can't score” metaphor a step farther, this Arsenal team have all the foreplay imaginable, but when it comes down to getting the job done, they just can't raise themselves to the task. There's far too much fannying around, and the look completely impotent without their big guns. Excuse me for that series of puntences please. I just couldn't help myself.

The point is that Arsenal can't really find a goal from anywhere at the moment with Robin Van Persie and Thierry Henry both out for the rest of the season. Judging by his overall lack of mobility and effectiveness, Julio Baptista has proved to be more of an “immovable object” than an “unstoppable force” - talk about the biggest let down of the season.

Emmanuel Adebayor, is always a threat, but is not prolific, and can't be expected to shoulder the goalscoring burden alone for long periods. He does so much, so well, but needs people around him to finish. Aliadiere? Well he's quick, slippery, works hard and holds up the ball well, but has all the threat and accuracy of a water pistol. And that's about it.

It was a 3^rd straight league defeat, and things are becoming pretty serious now. They are 5 points behind Liverpool, and 3 ahead of Bolton, and barely clinging onto that last Champions League spot with a game in hand. The problem is that there is absolutely nothing to look forward to in terms of personnel, because everyone who could be fit right now is fit, they're just not good enough to score goals, and ultimately that is the basis of football. Wenger might wax lyrical about how Cesc, Hleb, Rosicky, Denilson and Freddie pass and move and dribble, and how unlucky Arsenal are to not be winning, but he's not fooling anyone. It's the old cliché of “goals win games”, except by having a team devoid of finishers, he's in a way responsible for them being unlucky. Some solution will have to be found to solve this problem for the remaining league games, then come the summertime, it's time for some investment.

First off, Chelsea are a bunch of fucking horrible cunts. Now that we've established that, we can move on (briefly) to the football, where Arsenal went ahead 1-0 with a great Theo Walcott finish. Chelsea equalised not too long after with a goal from Drogba, where he was clearly offside, but we're Arsenal, and they're Chelsea, so obviously nothing more can be expected of the officiating. Robin Van Persie scored a perfectly good goal last season against Chelsea, which was ruled out for offside, and Drogba was a good 2 yards further on this effort, so it was pretty poor officiating. The young, inexperienced Traore didn't help by being sucked upfield, and Drogba had time to take 5 or 6 steps to settle himself before slotting through Almunia's legs - no challenge on him at all. Then late in the game Arsenal gave the ball away cheaply in their own half, Robben crossed, and Drogba easily beat Senderos to the ball to make it 2-1. Another Drogba goal that is down to very poor defending from Senderos, and I don't know why Djourou wasn't playing. Almunia was OK without being great, but Cech was monstrious for them and it could have been 2-0 long before they scored if it wasn't for him.

So on paper, Chelsea win 2-1. Anyone who watched the game would have seen the real story - Arsenal's young players playing brilliant football, controlling the game, and running circles around a bunch of unambitious overpaid shitheads. Chelsea celebrated afterwards as if they had just won the Champions League (regardez the "Winners 07" shirt that they put on), and Drogba's over-exaggerated celebrations are always hard to take given the cheapness of some of his goals. I'm angry about this not just because of the late brawl, but also because the Arsenal kids didn't get the result they deserved. It was gutting. Overall there are definitely more positives to take out of this game than negatives, but footballwise only.

And now to the incident. Kolo and Mikel were challenging for the ball, and Lampard was around. Toure and Mikel were getting heated, and then Lampard wades in and says something and suddenly Toure went mental like you could never imagine and that sparked a huge brawl. Lampard was definitely involved in the middle of it, not sure exactly what John Obi Mikel did, and there were several players in the thick of things. Watch the highlights carefully, Kolo and Mikel are angry, but then Lampard steps in, and Kolo absolutely loses it like he's never lost it before, and that sparks a huge brawl. Cesc, who always gets involved, got involved, stepping in to let Lampard know that he can't just say and do whatever he wants, and then Lampard and him went at it, and Drogba came and had a go at Cesc as well, and once they were all separated, Lampard went after the little Spaniard again. I love that Cesc plays with so much heart, but i'm worried it will burn him out.



Kolo and Mikel did nothing but shove like crazy, maybe they deserved their reds, but Lampard got away with just the yellow. As always, it's Arsenal who are portrayed as the dirty ones, but Lampard is as fucking horrible as anyone else you'll find. But what else is he? He's English, he's one of England's only half-decent midfielders, and he's a fat overrated overpaid cunt playing for a team run by an arrogant monkey and owned and funded by a criminal. As you can see neutrality is not my concern at the moment. Cesc stepped in, alternating between aggressor and peacemaker, but Lampard was the one who waded in to start with, and shove, and say something, and then just kept going at it. Cesc was booked, and he was frustrated but he understood. Lampard you could almost see smirking as he received his token yellow - he knows he's untouchable.

Most ridiculous though, was the sending off of Emmanuel Adebayor, who stepped in 3 times as a peacemaker when everything was going crazy. He did absolutely nothing, and he was quite rightly absolutely livid when the assistant ref told the linesman to send him off. He was furious, he had to be restrained, and it took the physio Gary Lewin, Henry and everyone else to get him off the pitch. This was the problem with the replays not being shown, but to everyone watching it just looked like a bunch of angry thugs being sent off. Adebayor did NOTHING at all, and that was why he was angry. I'm told that Emmanuel Eboue might have clashed with Wayne Bridge and that Adebayor was sent off for this. What kind of stone age are we in where the linesman can't tell a 6'3" ponytailed black man from a 5'10" shaven headed one? This was nonsense. African football fans will be very, very unhappy.

It's very dissatisfying as you could imagine. Lots of positives for the youngsters to take, because they outplayed Chelsea, but the red cards are a horrible after-effect - Toure and Adebayor suspended for 3 matches. Cesc's yellow will mean that he needs to be careful, because he's gotten a few this season. Diaby and Denilson were oustanding, and the team was in general. Up front Aliadiere worked hard, and Baptista tried (but was sluggish and off the pace). Once again, Senderos was at fault for Drogba scoring a winner, and despite all the qualities of the Swiss defender, his mistakes seem to outweight them.

John Terry was injured in the game as well, heading a 50-50 ball and getting a kick in the head from Diaby for his troubles. It looked like a very serious injury, and I was concerned for him at the time, but right now i'm just disappointed that the big fucking r***ist hasn't ended up in a coma. Diaby had a wonderful game, but he looked quite distressed by what he'd done to Terry, and I think that's probably more the reason why he was substituted.



Unbelievable bitterness stemming from undeserved loss is what the doctor would probably diagnose right now, but Chelsea really do make it difficult with the way they behave, and the media compound it by always pointing the finger at Arsenal and their "foreigners", and always backing up Chelsea's nonsense, especially as far as Lampard and Terry are involved. I'm sure Zokora and King and Chimbonda over at Spurs were quite happy to see TheWorld'sBestDefenderAndBestPlayerInEnglandCosHe'sEnglishJohnTerry flat out on the turf.



Anyhow. Enough. That's two losses on the bounce now for the Arsenal, and it's tough for the team. The lack of an offside call for Drogba's goal was pretty gutting as well, especially when the big fucker acts like he's just scored the best goal ever. Last year Robin Van Persie had a brilliant left-footed effort disallowed for offside when he was at least 2-3 yards more onside than Drobga. But it's Chelsea, or it's Arsenal, or maybe it's both. Explain why Michael Essien wasn't given a second yellow, while poor Denilson good booked for a harmless foul. Early on, a cross was put in from Walcott, and Baptista dragged it back instead of taking a shot, but was tackled, and the defender was nowhere near the ball. Where was the Penalty? Where was the penalty when Aliadiere was brought down clearly at Blackburn? Where was the penalty when Hleb was chopped down at West Ham? Where was the penalty when Flamini was brought down at Highbury a couple of years ago against Chelsea?

Arggghh. Big, tough week of football up ahead. Congratulations to Chelsea, good luck to the Arsenal, and fuck off to Fat Franky Lampard. Look out for some heavily biased, heavily edited highlights to start circulating all over the place soon. I'm sure you can guess by now what the purpose of those will be. Rupert Murdoch can't die soon enough, the disgusting prick.

Apologies for all the expletives.