The worst kept secret in football finally came to pass yesterday as Kolo Toure put pen to paper and joined Man City for a fee believed to be about £15 million. He was the last member of the invincibles to leave the club and smiling face and cheerful personality will be missed on the pitch for Arsenal. I have always had a soft spot for Kolo and it will be strange to see him playing for Man City. I personally thought that he would be our third choice centre back this season with Vermaelen and Gallas as the 2 first choice centre backs. Djourou probably deserves his chance to challenge for a place in the team too and it would appear now that Senderos and Silvestre will be staying. I hope I am wrong about Silvestre but we will have to keep Senderos unless we buy another centre back.

The boss says Song can play there too but surely he's our first choice holding midfielder at the moment. In my opinion the boss must spend some if not all of the money he has taken. There must be some players available out there who will improve our them as I don't think the fans will be happy if we sell more players than we buy yet again this summer. Speaking of selling players the rumours about Fiorentina buying Eboue are now gathering pace and it appears that we may lose him as well. Whatever the boss has said about having cover for strikers and centre backs he cannot think that we have anyone to cover Sagna at right back if we sell Eboue. I'm not Eboue's biggest fan and I wouldn't mind seeing him going but again I feel we need to sign cover immediatly. The boss said he wanted to make his signings early in the summer and that stage is long gone. Any player we sign from here on in won't have too much time to settle before the season begins particularly if we sing him at 11.59pm on deadline day. I hope he can identify the players we want and work hard to sign them as soon as possible. It will be interesting to see what prices are quoted to us when we bid for players as we are now percieved as having a large transfer kitty.

We had a match against Hannover 96 last night and we won 1-0 with an early goal that was taken very well by Cesc after good work from RVP. It wasn't the most convincing display but there's still a while to go before we need to be on our top form for a trip to Everton in a couple of weeks. As I did last season I will be giving my thoughts on our chances for the coming season on September 1st when the transfer window has closed and not beforehand as things can change so much on that day. It appears that even though he is only just back from his career threatening injury Eduardo has been called up to play for his country in a World Cup qualifier 3 days before we kick at Everton.

Finally for today I have been a member on Oleole exactly 1 year today and the anniversary of the creation of this blog is coming up next week too. I'll partake in a drink or 2 this weekend to celebrate and hopefully it will be with my fellow Wicklow Gunners on Sunday watching the Emirates cup in the Strand bar in Bray.

Here's the highlights fom yesterday's game.

LINK

And to finish today's title track from UB40. Depending on your point of view we are either preparing for the new season little by little or falling apart little by little. I don't think we're falling apart quite yet though. I still trust in the manager but I am getting a little nervous.

LINK

See You Tomorrow.

ps I got a stream for yesterday's match from Captain Arsenal on Twitter and it was an excellent stream. I'll try to find it in future and give it to anyone who wants it if I can.

pps Don't forget the Fantasy Football. All the details are in Tuesday's blog and they will be in tomorrow's too. If you want some good advice on the Fantasy Football check out The Football Guy's blog as it's well worth a read.

As I write this I'm still not certain whether Kolo is a Man City player or an Arsenal player. It does seem that he will be leaving us though and when he does it will mean that the whole of the invincible team has left or retired. His departure will be very different from that of Adebayor as he hasn't courted other clubs that we know of. I know he put in a transfer request last January after his row with Gallas but the club told him he was going nowhere and that was the end of that. To the best of my knowledge he has only 1 year left on his contract and his chances would be very limited this season. If that was the case he probably wouldn't have extended his contract and gone on a free transfer next summer. If the £15 million price being quoted is right it's good business if he has only left on his contract.

It will leave the manager with £40 million to add to the transfer kitty which should have had at least £10 million still in it anyway. That means he has £50 million to spend on new players and he might not be finished selling yet. Senderos is available and I wouldn't be surprised if Eboue & Silvestre were too. That would leave us with Sagna, Clichy, Gibbs, Traore, Vermaelen, Gallas & Djourou at the back and they will have to be supplemented by a right back and a central defender. Of course if Eboue & Senderos stay he might decide to keep things as they are. I would prefer if he sold them and added Silvestre to any package taking either of them. Our defence was not good enough last season and it hasn't changed too much at the moment. Of course one of the reasons for that was that they didn't get enough protection from midfield and that's something else that needs to be addressed. With the money the manager has available he can afford the players we need and I'll be amazed if he doesn't sign them now. The only reason I can think of that might stop him is the current economic situation and his belief that it will effect football very soon. I sincerely hope he doesn't take this road because it's a huge gamble that could backfire on him.

We also heard from Henry yesterday in response to the claims that he told Vieira to join The Spuds. He said that he would never tell anyone to join them as he is Arsenal through and through. It's good to hear that he still loves us and I'm sure if he came back to play for another club he would still get a heroe's reception. Speaking of former players having their say I hope that Kolo, unlike Adebayor, doesn't have too much to say about his former club if he joins City. The fans at Arsenal still love Kolo and he will be fondly remembered if he does the right thing and just says it was the right time for him to move on.

Derby decided not to take Randall on loan and he ended up playing for an Arsenal XI against Maidenhead United last night when they came from 1-0 down at half time to win 7-1. The goals came from Randall, Watt, Simpson, Sunu, Barazite, Freeman & Aneke and the players on show will make up the reserves and some of the youth team this season. We are rumoured to be chasing Tim Krul who is a 21 year old goalkeeper at Newcastle.

We have another pre season friendly this evening against Hannover 96 at 6pm and it's live on the club on line TV station. I'm sure we will see the majority of players getting a run out again and maybe even 1 or 2 players who haven't made an appearence yet. I'll be following it on Lady Arse's Twitter as I did on Monday. I also managed to see the goals soon after they happened on Arsenal list I think. I'll leave it there for today and just remind you if you want to join the Fantasy Football the links and codes are on yesterday's blog.

Here's a clip of Kolo at his best for us.

LINK

And to finish today's title track from New Model Army. If Kolo is indeed gone the lights will have gone out on the invincibles.

LINK

See You Tomorrow.

It's Monday morning and after missing yesterday's blog due to a very hectic weekend it's back to normal for me again. It would appear that while I spent 24 hours away from the world of Arsenal that a little bit of news cropped up for me to talk about. This makes a pleasent change from what we had at the end of last week when there was nothing at all to talk about.

First of all we have had to listen to Usmanov's monkey telling us that the club were wrong to sell Adebayor and especially to City as they are a big rival in the chase for 4th spot. Is this what it has come to that our ambition is to finish 4th. I don't think so and I hope not because with none of our rivals stronger, indeed some of them are weaker, this season we should be challenging for the league in my opinion. He also claimed that we have never replaced David Dein properly which is probably ignoring the job that Gazidis is doing at the club at the moment. On transfers he claimed that we won't spend any more money unless it is reinvesting the money we got for Adebayor. I seem to remember that we got £25 million for him and with the possible sales of 2 or 3 more players that could leave the manager with up  to £50 million to spend. If that was to be reinvested in the squad I think we could get 2 top class players in the positions that we need them. A little bit of faith in the boss would go a long way at the moment.

The players that may be on the way out are Kolo & Eboue and of course Senderos is for sale too. I don't know if we have had bids for Senderos yet but I think if we offered him and £10 million to Fulham we would have a good chance of landing Hangeland. The rumours are persisting about Kolo joining Man City and there does seem to be something to them. If we allow City to talk to the player it is a sign we are willing to sell which is a big turnaround since last January when we told City they could not have him. With Fiorentina supposedly chasing Eboue we could find ourselves with no players departing to the African Cup of Nations with the exception of Song. A lot of doom merchants have been predicting the demise of our league status come next January but if we have bought another central midfielder we probably won't have any first team regulars over there anyway. In fact if Kolo, Eboue and Senderos were to leave it would weaken our defensive reserves only as none of them are first team starters in my opinion at this stage. If we could just get rid of Silvestre too it would be a great bit of business. We would have to buy Hangeland as I said and with Vermaelen, Gallas & Djourou available it would leave us with plenty of options at centre back with Song as back up in an emergency. I always said Gallas was at his best alongside a ball winning centre back and Vermaelen fits that bill as would Hangeland too. However it would mean that we would need a back up for Sagna if we sold Eboue and that might cause a problem or two as Sagna had a few niggling injuries last season after his bad injury against Chelsea near the end of the previous season.

Young Carlos Vela played a pivotal role in Mexico's 5-0 demolition of the U.S.A. team in the Gold Cup final yesterday. He came on at half time with the scores at 0-0 and he proceded to score a very good goal as he clipped the ball over an advancing keeper in typical fashion. He also managed a couple of assists and hopefully we can get him back now and integrate him into the team as soon as possible. He's a player I believe should have had a lot more game time last season and I really hope he gets it this season. He's fast, tricky, intelligent and he can finish expertly in a one on one situation with the keeper.

The rumours linking Vieira with The Spuds just won't go away either and as I have said before I really hope that he doesn't join them. He was and is a true Arsenal legend and there must be some other club he can join instead of our closest rivals. When I say closest rivals I obviously mean proximity in mileage as they are nowhere near us in terms of footballing ability or history or even trophies won. I think he would enjoy playing the last few years of his career in French football so I hope that a French team can tempt him back home.

I missed out on reporting the comments from Clichy over the weekend but what he seemed to be saying is that some players only join certain clubs for the maoney. I wonder if that was a dig at a certain big mouthed former team mate of his who is encouraging his new club to chase Kolo. As I said earlier I could take Kolo joining City if we reinvest the money along with the money from other sales. Speaking of Adebayor it was interesting to hear Sir Shit's His Pants A Lot saying that he had tried to get Manure & Chelsea to buy him after he had agreed terms with City. There was a delay of a few days as Adebayor supposedly considered how it would go down in Africa if their player of the year left one of the top clubs in the world to join Man City but the rumour at the time was taht he wanted Chelsea to buy him and this would give some backing to that rumour.

Finally for today we have a match tonight against a team called Szombathelyi H who I have never heard of before so I expect us to thump them before we play Hannover 96 on Wednesday. The kick off is at 6pm and it's live on the Arsenal TV online for any of you that have it. Eduardo should be playing tonight and I'll have my fingers crossed that everything goes well for him as I think we will really need his goal scoring ability this season. I'm sure we'll see some other players making their first appearence of pre season too. If you can't watch the game I'm sure you can follow it on Lady Arse's twitter which she tends to update on almost a shot by shot basis during matches.  

Here's Carlos Vela playing in the Gold Cup Final for Mexico.

LINK

And to finish today's title track from New Order. It comes from the faith we have to show in our boss at the moment as the new season draws closer.

LINK

See You Tomorrow.

It emerged yesterday that Stan Kroenke has increased his stake in the club yet again. His stake now stands at 28.58% and he is getting closer to the stage where he has to make an offer to other shareholders to buy their shares. That limit is set at 30% and he doesn't have very far to go now. He is a fairly media shy man but his personal wealth is estimated to be $3.5 million which he has acquired from his property development company. This figure might be a little out of date as the value of property worldwide has decreased over the last few years but I'm sure he is still worth a pretty penny. He is listed in the Forbes 400 list of the 400 richest Americans and he is joint 105 th on that list at the moment. He has interests in various Sports franchises in America and he is married to Anne Walton whose family own Wal-Mart and are worth an absolute family. He will be 62 years old later this month and that's not too much else that can be said about him. The club weren't interested in him originally but when Usmanov showed up they turned to him fairly quickly as he was by far the lesswe of 2 evils.

In transfer news Cesc is again being linked with both Madrid & Barcelona with Barcelona's president in particular making statements about Cesc being his best option in the current market. I was under the illusion that players under contract could not be approached but obviously the rules don't apply to Barcelona. When will UEFA clamp down on the likes of Barcelona trying to unsettle players through the press? We all know that Platini would prefer to spend his time inventing ways to stop English teams winning the Champions league and signing top class players. It would appear that he has been helped in this task by Alistar Darling who seems to have scared off a lot of top earning foreign players by raising the tax rate to 50% for anyone earning over £150,000 a year. Has anyone else noticed the lack of top class players coming into the Premiership in this transfer window? Another thing that struck me is that Manure don't seem to be able to sign anyone of note. It looks like Madrid have told all clubs that they will beat any offer Manure make for 1 of their players this summer and it will be interesting to see if they can get any good players to replace the ones that left.

Carlos Vela seems to have recovered from his injury scare and he will be available for Mexico's last group match in the Gold Cup. Their last match ended 1-1 with Panama with crowd trouble and a stream of red cards & fights. The latest Arsenal player to say that we will have learned from last season is Aaron Ramsey and I hope they are all right. The Ladies fixtures for next season have been announced and they start off with a home game against Chelsea. That's more or less it for today except to say that I have a barbeque planned for later in the day and it looks like there might be a deluge. Thankfully we will have plenty of beer and food. I was also hoping to go to Oxegen on Sunday to see The Specials but circumstances did not allow it. It now transpires that I have a very good chance of getting 2 VIP passes and if that's the case I will be there for sure.

Here's a clip of Kolo in action for us as I can't remember linking him before.

LINK

And to finish today's title track from Simple Minds which is for our possible future sole owner.

LINK

See You Tomorrow.

Don't forget to sign up to the fantasy football.

LINK

Here's the codes

Oleole League - 4383-1847

Oleole Arsenal League - 4383-1835

Oleole Head to Head League(limited to 20 teams) - 4383-1828(10 teams still needed).

And finally don't forget Lady Arse's league which is on her blog today.

LINK 

On The Ball - 4383-1777

The list of fixtures to be televised live by Sky & ESPN up until the end of November has been published and Arsenal will be playing live on the TV 6 times in that period. Out of those 6 games we are away from home in 5 of them and the only home game is against The Spuds. The away games are against Everton, Manure, Fulham, West Ham & Wolves and it's fairly obvious from the choices made that the TV executives see us as a soft target away from home and they are hoping for an upset or 2. As I said a few days ago we have a tough start with 3 of our first 4 games away from home against tough opposition because our 2nd league match of the season, against Bolton, was cancelled due to our Champions league committments.

Our 1st game against Everton on Saturday August 15th has been put back to 5.15 pm and it will be live on ESPN. I just hope that the Strand hotel in Bray has subscribed to ESPN by then and I can join the other members of the supporters club in cheering on Arsenal with the aid of a drink or 2. The good news about so many games being televised away from home is that we will have the majority of our home games at the traditional kick off time of 3pm Saturday afternoon. As a result I will have to look into the possibility of getting over to watch my beloved Gunners on either Saturday September 19th against Wigan or Saturday October 17th against Birmingham. I purposely didn't go to Oxegen this weekend(well on Sunday anyway) to see The Specials as I have promised to make a trip to The Emirates as soon as possible to meet a few fellow Gooners and have a Shandy or 2 whilst watching our team. Missing The Specials is making me sick at the moment but I'll recover. It's made a little tougher by the fact that my 18 year old son left for the festival this morning with his mates for a great weekend. I shared a few drinks(including my litre of Sambuka) with them until the small hours last Friday night and they were all trying to talk me into buying a day pass for Sunday. To say I'm sorely tempted to join them is an understatement and I might still crack. The only thing to keep me on the straight and narrow is the thought of 60,000 people at The Emirates and the bars outside before and afterwards. It's a tough life having to make choices like that.

Back to things Arsenal and the majority of our pre season games will be on ATV on line but not on Arsenal TV. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that Setanta are broadcasting Arsenal TV and they are almost extinct at this stage. Cliff Bastin and Frank McLintock will both be inducted to The National Football Museum Hall of Fame along with former Arsenal ladies player Marianne Spacey and 5 other greats of football. The induction takes place on Wednesday September 23rd in London. We are reported to be after Ever Banega of Valencia who is a holding midfielder as is Blaise Matuidi of St. Etienne who we are supposedly also interested in yet again. Leeds turned down offers from 2 Premier league clubs for Faian Delph and we are rumoured to be 1 of those clubs. He does fit the profile for a typical Arsenal signing so we can watch to see if things develop. It looks like Juventus have eventually tied up the signing of Felipe Melo from Fiorentina and as I said yesterday I don't think we were ever in the running at that price. That would appear to be it for today.

Here's a clip of what happened the last time we played at home to Wigan which is a game I might be going to this season. You might have to scroll down the page a little to see the highlights but it was an eventful game. In the highlights Arsenal look good but it was awful on the day. You can see Eboue tackling Kolo and getting booed off at the end. I was there and he deserved it in my opinion even though I didn't take part.

LINK

And to finish here's today's title track from The Smiths which comes from my intended destination in September or October.

LINK

See You Tomorrow.

ps I've just checked out the price for flights to London for the Wigan game and it's €19 return. The bus to Oxegen is €20 and it takes longer. I think I made the right choice.

pps Don't forget to sign up to my Fantasy Premier League(s). All the details are in yesterday's blog.

I´m on my summer holidays at the moment in sunny Spain and I´ve also taken in my brother´s wedding where I was best man for good measure. We have had a whale of a time so far with the typical time to finish the night being about 4am. As a result I have been very lax in blogging and I am only getting around to it now 2 days after we have signed a new player. That player was obviously Thomas Vermaelen from Ajax and we signed him for a fee of a little over €10 million if the reports are to be believed. He plays at centre back and appearently he is voiciferous on the pitch which is something we are missing at the moment. He was captain of Ajax at a fairly young age and he is also a Belgian international. Personally I think that we should still attempt to buy Hangeland from Fulham and keep Gallas and Djourou too. It would make for an interesting duel to see who plays for us on a regular basis and the competition could only do the team good.

If we were to lose Kolo it would be a bit of a disappointment but to be honest, even though he is Arsenal through and through, he isn´t the player he once was and we could survive without him. As for Silvestre I think that the quicker he leaves the better for Arsenal as his signing was a complete disaster. I also can´t see how Senderos can come back into the fold and I fully expect him to leave too. Let´s hope that with our early acquisition we can now move on and hopefully sign a central midfielder and we may well be in with a shout next season.

We have been linked with Felipe Melo of Fiorentina and there is also some talk of Eboue moving to PSG and Kolo is again being linked with Man City. I´m not sure if Melo is the player we need at the moment as I haven´t seen too much of him but I would be happy to see the back of Eboue as I have always considered him a liability. If Man City offer us good money for Kolo I think we should take it and as I said above we should continue the pursuit of Hangeland. I do think the boss has something up his sleeve and we will see some more action in the transfer market before the players return for pre season training. The transfer window still does not officially open until July 1st as far as I know but it is encouraging to see that we have acted so early. I´m going to leave it there as it´s after midnight here in Spain and after 8 nights in a row on the batter I´m finally getting an early night of a sort after only 4 beers tonight.

Here´s a clip of our new signing scoring for Ajax.

LINK 

And to finish today´s title track from Dodgy which I hope will work as I have no sound on the computer I am working on at the moment.

LINK

With our Champions league semi final just over a day away the nerves are starting to jangle for all of us fans. Hopefully the players aren't feeling too nervous before the biggest match the club has played in three years. We are definite underdogs not only tomorrow night but over the 2 legs as well. That probably suits us as United will be expected to make all the running at Old Trafford and hopefully we can pick them off on the break. I suppose it depends on how they approach the game as they tend to play differently in European games. However tomorrow night may be a European night but it is also an English night as well and they might well decide to play their natural game. As we have seen before this season teams who come out and play an open game against us can be made to pay and I hope this is the case tomorrow night.

Ahead of the game Kolo has been in bullish mood. He says young Gibbs can handle the diver and that United have had their troubles at the back recently just like us but if we are focussed and defend togrther we can keep them out. He hopes that we have got all of our mistakes out of the way and to be honest I don't think we can afford to make any defensive mistakes as they will be severely punished as were those made by The Spuds on Saturday. He made the point that United have found it hard to play against us in the past when we play our own game. It is vitally important that we set out to play our game and not do what we did against Chelsea and play to counter them.

The boss made a point about this semi final being different to the Wembley one against Chelsea because United are a more technical team than Chelsea who posed us more of a physical threat in his opinion. I won't harp on too much about how, in my opinion, he got it wrong against Chelsea but all will be forgiven if he can get it right over 2 legs against United starting tomorrow night at Old Trafford. Djourou & Eboue both gave interviews on the club's channel and subscribers can watch them if they want but basically it's the same as Kolo about going up there to do our best etc. etc.

Adebayor has said that Vidic is the toughest defender he has come up against and he is a player I have always wished we had signed. When we are talking about buying any centre back he is always the current measure that I use to judge any potential target against. Adebayor says he is a very good defender who knows how to handle strikers, how to stop goals and how to score them too. He also says that he was flattered by the interest shown in him by Milan last summer and that it is like being told that Beyonce fancied him. To be honest I can't see the thrill in that. She would only use you for her vile purposes and cast you aside afterwards. I'm afraid that's not for me.

Ryan Giggs has had his say also and he mentioned that goal he scored against us in the 1999 FA Cup semi final. To this day it still sticks in my throat that we didn't hack him down like Keane did to Overmars earlier in that game to get his second yellow. That season should have been our second double in a row but we ended up with nothing. I'm sure all other fans just knew Bergkamp would miss that last minute penalty as his penalties were very poor at the time despite him being an absolute legend. It's an absolute disgrace that Giggs has won the PFA player of the year award after starting 12 matces in the league this season and it shows you how little players know. I suppose he won it because of his lifetime achievements but that's not what the award is for.

Anyway I'll leave it there for today and I'll preview the game in full tomorrow.

Here's the goals from our league victory against them in November.

LINK

And to finish today's title track from Bob Marley in which he says " If you are a big tree, we are a small axe, sharpened to cut you down, ready to cut you down" or something like that which is why I have used it because Arsenal can be that small but sharp axe.

LINK

See You Tomorrow.

After all the drama of last night's dramatic penalty shoot out win in Rome it was very disappointing to hear that an Arsenal fan was stabbed outside the stadium before the game. However it was hardly surprising given the history of Roma's ultras and the threats issued to our fans. The question to be asked now is will UEFA react by punishing Roma and removing the Champions League final from the city. I'm sure they will find some way of weaseling out of it like usual and it will take a lot more for any action to be taken. As the title suggests UEFA will probably suggest that it was only a minor attack and he didn't really mean to hurt the Arsenal fan who, after all, still managed to watch the game after some treatment. They weren't real hooligans at all they were just playing a game and I'm sure Roma will promise that they won't do it again. To be honest they are just misunderstood in reality and to think that any attack was premeditated is misjudgement on our part as any threats issued beforehand were just playfull banter. While they're at it UEFA will also announce that they have found a cure for poverty, hunger & AIDS and they're going to make the world a far better place to live in.

On to the actual match and in particular our performance. It has been stated elsewhere that the most important thing is the win and I do agree with that but we have to analyse the performance and not gloss over what we saw last night. RVP is no lone striker and to play him up front on his own is not fair to him or the rest of the team. He had a poor game last night and his form seems to have completely deserted him. Bendtner is no left sided midfielder and his inability to provide a service for RVP only made that more obvious. Eboue is a headless chicken and is incapable of making a decision when faced with a choice. For the manager to have picked these three players in these positions was a mistake and we were lucky to get the result we did as we were left with virtually no attacking threat. We played our way up to the edge of the box and everything broke down there. There was nobody able to play an incisive pass and nobody making a run looking for one. This team misses Cesc so badly that it hurts. I hope he comes back full of energy and raring to go in 3 weeks time.

On a positive note I thought Diaby did fairly well and he won a lot of tackles in midfield. He still tends to overplay the ball sometimes and he needs to cut that out of his game. If he can do that he might just be the partner that Cesc needs in the centre. Denilson was again guilty of an awful lot of misplaced passes and he just doesn't seem to think quickly enough. Luckily for us Roma's passing was no better. I know we were spoiled for years by having some of the best players in the world at our club but some of their replacements aren't fit to clean their boots in my opinion. Nasri drifted in and out of the game but you can see that with better players around him he has bags of potential. Sagna had a hard night at times but he did well enough and recovered well when beaten. As for Clichy, what has happened to the best left back in the Premiership? Gibbs has to be pushing to make that spot his own because Clichy was torn a new one last night. He was caught out of position too often and beaten in the tackle too easily. we were lucky he didn't give a penalty away just before half time. everybody but Clichy knew what the Roma player would do and it seems his judgement has gone. Also unlike Sagna he doesn't seem to recover when beaten. Kolo and Gallas performed well enough except for the goal which was a disaster in defending terms. Kolo had the best view of what was happening as he was facing the right way and he should have called for the ball and put his foot through it. If he didn't call then Gallas had to deal with it but they both more or less left it for each other and Clichy had drifted in and Bendtner(Tommy - I almost forgot) was a spectator at the edge of the box. It was an easy enough finish for Juan in the end.

The boss said beforehand that we needed to show mental strength to win through and I don't think we showed enough of it in the game itself but that changed in the penalty shoot out where after Eduardo's miss we went on to score 7 in a row before Roma folded and blasted a penalty over the bar. As I watched the game in the supporters club in Bray we burst into a spontaneous bout of singing after that miss and everybody seemed happy and relieved. We almost paid the price for not putting them away in the home leg but we got through in the end(just about). I know I haven't mentioned Almunia yet and I suppose that means he had a good game as there was very little he did wrong except not coming off his line quickly enough once or twice but the defenders dealt with that anyway. The 2 subs(Theo & Eduardo) didn't make a huge impact either and they still need to get more games under their belt to perform at this level.  All our our problems are by no means solved but we are still on course in The Champions League and FA Cup and can still get 4th spot in the league. So it's all to play for still. Roll on Blackburn on Saturday afternoon and let's see who else is back for that one.

Here's the highlights from last nights shoot out.

http://www.101greatgoals.com/videodisplay/2202648/

And to finish the title track from The Smiths.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=526GPD_hCi4

See You Tomorrow.

Young Theo Walcott has spoken about his return from his shoulder injury and he says he expects a rough ride if he plays against Roma. He dais that the Arsenal players have tried to give him a rough ride in training and he is prepared for the worst. Today's title track is dedicated to him but somehow I think it's not about the same thing.

There isn't too much news about today but Kolo has been declared fit to travel to Rome for our Champions League game and he's a welcome addition to the squad. I was in Rome in 2007 for a long weekend and it's a great place but there is a nasty element to their fans and the Lazio fans too. I saw it myself in Termini station where I saw skinheads in 14 hole docks and bomber jackets sporting the Lazio colours and their Champions League game wasn't on until the next day. It was a strange reminder of days gone by and I half expected to hear them sing "You'll get a boot wrapped round your head". I hope all of Arsenal's travelling fans will be safe and sound before, during & after the game.

In other news RVP appearently wants to stay at the club even though the terms for a new contract have not been agreed yet. Let's hope that he does stay because it would be a disgrace if we lost him on a free transfer in just over a year. Theo has said that there was nothing extra special about Eduardo's goal as he does that sort of thing and better in training all the time. I can't wait to see how he will better that goal because it was an absolute beaut. It's a pity we can't play Arshavin tomorrow night because he seems to be finding his feet and picking his passes well. I would love to see him feeding through balls to Theo all night as Roma push forward but alas it won't happen. That's about it for today.

I'll leave you with a little bit of Theo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oQHlSdig4U 

And to finish today's title track from The Beat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRmDw6ZhAPo

See You Tomorrow.

I'm going to give you my prediction for our game against Fulham today because I'll be setting out at about 5.30 tomorrow morning to go to the game myself and I won't be thinking rationally at that hour. I might try a trick that Stereotype told me about and time my post to come on later but I'm not certain I know what I'm doing so anything could go wrong. I'm going for a 2-0 win for Arsenal with RVP & Arshavin scoring. If the Fulham team that turned up at Old trafford turns up tomorrow we should win easily enough but if they decide to defend properly it won't be easy to break them down.

We need to play with the tempo we had when we had Diaby on the pitch against Roma. Diaby is out with a calf strain I believe(though some reports have said he will play). As a result I think we cannot afford to play Song and we should play Ramsey in that position or ideally Arshavin should play there with Denilson doing the donkey work as he did for Cesc. I honestly feel that a lone striker will suit us with Vela & Nasri & Rasey or Wilshere also in midfield but I know either Bendtner or Eboue will start and probably even both of them.

 Every week I hope that we will eventually kick start our recovery in the league and a win tomorrow is a must. If we drop any further behind Villa they will be virtually out of sight barring a disaster for them. There is no room for mistakes anymore and the manager must play our best team in all league matches regardless.

In injury news it seems that Theo will be our first player back and he will be quickly followed by Eduardo & Adebayor. we need them all as soon as possible. Cesc is scheudled to be back in Early April but Rosicky will probably take longer to come back because he will have to build up his match fitness after 14 months out. Eduardo came back in December and he still isn't a regular feature so Rosicky will probably have to write off the remainder of this season and concentrate on pre season. I have read a couple of reports today that said Diaby will play tomorrow but West Brom on Wednesday seems to be more realistic to be honest with his injury record.

Next weekend we play Burnley in a revenge match in the FA Cup and if we can beat them at home we now know we will have another revenge mission against Hull who overcame Sheffield United last night in their replay. Our path to the semi final is clearly mapped out and our season can still be rescued if we can keep ourselves in the cup. Those returning players are needed an awful lot at the moment as we have a massive task on 3 fronts now.

The club have frozen the price of season tickets for next season and I suppose that's a good thing but a lot of other organisations are dropping prices in the present economic climate and I'm sure a small price drop would have made the fans renew their tickets a bit quicker. There is a long list of people who want season tickets(45-50 thousand I think) but money is tight for most of us at the moment and every little bit helps.

To finish up today Kolo has said our team spirit will bring us success and while I hope he is right there has been a lot of disharmony at the club this season. Maybe now that he seems to have patched things up with Gallas things are better and it all helps. Personally I don't care how good or bad the spirit is as long as the players do their job on the pitch. Almunia says we must end our goal drought and he's obviously an insightful guy because I hadn't thought about that until now. Sometimes reading the tripe that is out there can be a pain because players just spout out the tried and trusted answers and never say anything controversial unless they are Gallas of course. Every fan knows we have to start scoring and we don't need to waste our time reading articles where the players say this too.

Here's a clip of how to take a penalty against Fulham courtesy of RVP.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gge5bpIcr1Q

And to finish today's title track which is dedicated to my destination for tomorrow(it's by The Smiths).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clPhtitSpes

P.S. Happy 7th birthday to Arseblog.

p.p.s. I wrote this blog over the space of a few hours when ever I could snatch 5 minutes in work and it now appears that the Diaby news was right and he will play tomorrow. Great news as it means Song surely cannot start now.

See You Tomorrow.