Eduardo is to be charged by UEFA for the alleged dive during our dismantling of Celtic at the Emirates on Wednesday night. I say alleged, but I think even the most ardent Gooner would find it hard to dispute his guilt. I do dispute the reactionary nature of UEFA. Would they have charged him without the media furore? Of course they wouldn’t. If UEFA investigation is to be used in incidents of this nature I sincerely hope that all future incidents will be treated equally. Of course, they wont be. I know a witch-hunt when I see one. The silly sod looks to be guilty, he probably deserves a suspension, I just want all players to be treated the same.  

An impassioned defence of the superb Crozillian is not the point of this little diatribe. I think our squad needs this sort of persecution. All the best squads have a togetherness born of adversity. This is precisely the kind of perceptibly anti-Arsenal treatment that will give our young oiks the siege mentality they need. Bring on the prosecution, ban Eduardo, and it will bind the Arsenal dressing room together like never before. Remember how indignant the team was back when Vieira got sent off all the time, they were angry and they used that on the pitch as motivation. That is precisely what we need.  

Changing the subject, the Champions League draw was extraordinarily kind to us this year, and about time too, I was certain we would be facing Kyiv again this year or trudging off to some other miserably cold part of the world to play on a pitch comprising two metres of permafrost with a barely playable toupee of grass. We can look to an early qualification and all the benefits that will bring to our threadbare squad. Having said that, the squad isn’t looking too bad is it. Our current injury-free players are all performing well and we still have Nasri, Rosicky and Walcott to come back.

Tomorrow we play United. I can’t help but feel quite positive about this tie, I realise that uttering such things is tantamount to a voodoo hex, but you know what, our boys are looking sh!t hot and United are still looking to find their feet, despite their flattering result last week. This is an Arsenal Blog, I am a Gooner and therefore I dislike all other teams (with the exception of Brighton & Hove Albion), however, despite them being a team of world class buttmunchers I just don’t hate United as much as Chelsea, Liverpool and of course Sperz. This has nothing to do with the fact that I have started dating an astonishingly pretty girl from Warrington, rather that of all the other top teams, United are most like us. They aren’t obscene like Chelsea, they have decent youth policies, they build teams and they operate as a business, not as a rich twats plaything.

They’re still a bunch of c*nts though obviously!

Burgervan Prediction: Manchester United 1-2 Arsenal (Yes that’s right, I predict a win).

1. Eduardo dived – whether this was deliberate or not.
2. Celtic conceded 5 goals over two legs and had two shots on goal over 180 minutes.
3. Prior to the penalty incident Arsenal were dominating the game as they did the entire tie.

It seems an eternity since the last football match in the Premiership and in this crazy world of games every three or four days I suppose that a fortnight is a long time. Today we face Bolton at the Emirates, forgetting for a moment that foolish Megson fellow that is in charge of them we should collect another three points today. We all know that maximum points from ‘easy’ games is vital if we are to overhaul Aston Villa and regain our place in the top four. The players, and Adebayor in particular have been harping on all week about fighting for this and that n never giving up, so let’s see them walk the walk for once! Plus I had a dream last night that Arsenal beat Fulham 18-5 at the Emirates so that has to be a good omen right?!

We have injuries to Silvestre and Gallas, both of whom ar out for three weeks, giving a chance to Kolo and Johann to carve out a mean defensive partnership. I am over the moon that the manager has stated that Kolo Toure is not going to be transferred, we owe it to our last remaining Invincible to help him back to the form he (and we) once enjoyed. He also has the added incentive of being Captain in the absence of Fabregas, a job I’m sure that he is very proud of having. Toure and Djourou haven’t had much of a chance to show what they have got playing together so I hope that they prove to be a winning formula. I prefer them both to Gallas and Silvestre and would rather that they played if they are good enough.

Mr Wenger has also said that Eduardo is fit at long last. Congratulations to the little fella, his hard work and optimism should be an example to everyone. He has only played 45 minutes in 9 months though so the chances of him playing any part today look pretty slim!

The manager proved himself expert in the art of the tease yesterday, not in the sexy burlesque sense of the word but in the keep the fans guessing and hoping about transfers sense of the word. Heneither confirmed or denied anything about Andrei Arshavin. Although most who have listened to Wenger down the years will recognise that something is happening with that story. He was also very coy about other transfer targets we may be going for. Aside from categorically denying that we would be bringing in a defender he didn’t say very much at all. One thing is for certain though, the club are trying to bring in one or maybe two established players and damn it I find that very exciting! No doubt more red herrings will abound next week, but maybe, just maybe we might actually see some transfer activity in the coming few days.

Burgervan Prediction: Arsenal 3 – 1 Bolton

Welcome to the Burgervan for 2009. I have one critical piece of advice for anyone out there who is listening. GET THE FLU JAB! The Burgervan’s Christmas and New Years has been spent in a miasma of influenza misery. Hence why there has been no blog for a few days. When one can barely sit up in bed, writing a blog comes very low down the list of activities, firmly behind staying alive, attempting to move, and trying to open my eyes.

So much has happened since the last blog entry that I could write a novella, but seeing as today is also my first day back at work, I will be a tad more succinct than that. Firstly, I hope that everybody had a good Christmas and a Happy New Year, hopefully Father Christmas brought you all everything that you were hoping for and if he didn’t you were probably on the ‘bad boys/girls’ list and therefore not deserving anyway.

The Arsenal flattered to deceive a bit in their Christmas period games but at least they continued their undefeated run of games. Stopping the rot is still the name of game and the Arsenal seem to be doing it. Draws against Liverpool and Villa were disappointing, particularly throwing away yet another two goal lead to draw at Villa Park. I know that ultimately it was a miracle that we weren’t 4 goals down at half time but even so. To throw away two goals in injury time in a game as important as that was very disappointing. One hopes that come May we don’t miss out on a Champions League place by a couple of points to Villa. But, since then we have come back and beaten Tony Adams’s Pompey and then Plymouth in the FA Cup. The Portsmouth result was less than convincing but it was a win and three crucial points. Its all we can do now to keep grabbing points anyway that we can to ensure that we give ourselves as good a chance of getting back in to the Champions League as possible.

I was very glad to see that le Boss treated the FA Cup with the respect it deserves. I love the FA Cup and I have many happy memories from our victories in the past. Last year’s performance against United was shameful, but it looks as though this year we are really going to go for it. We all know that realistically it is our best chance of silverware so we need to be sensible about it. In the next game we are away to last years beaten finalists Cardiff, so although it may be a battle we should move safely into the next round.

I cannot believe how unlucky we are with injuries It is appallingly bad karma that we have Rosicky, Walcott, Eduardo and Fabregas all out with long term injuries. Add to that ongoing injuries to other players like Toure, Diaby etc and you can see why we struggle. One of the gifts that Father Christmas brought me was the 2007/2008 Season Review DVD. We were astonishingly good for most of last season and you could see us drop when Rosicky, Eduardo and RVP were injured. The balance of the team was lost and we have never got it back. I wasn’t that sad when Hleb and Flamini left in the summer, but after watching the DVD I can see that what they brought to the team hasn’t been replaced. I didn’t understand why Wenger is being linked with attacking midfielders but we do need one, we lack a link between the midfield and the attack. We also lack a midfield but that is something that has been discussed many times before. I hope that Rosicky can play for us again in the future. He is a great talent and with him on one wing and Walcott on the other we have genuine width and pace. Our team at the moment is very unbalanced with under par players playing out of position and no real variation of approach, togetherness, camaraderie or grit. It was a telling moment when I felt a pang of regret that we had allowed Senderos off on loan all season. At least he gave a sh!t. By the way, we will certainly get him back, I cannot imagine AC Milan taking up the option to buy Senderos at the end of his loan spell. I hope that he comes back to us having learned some tricks off Paulo Maldini and co. I wonder if he taught Paulo how to score own goals?

So that brings us on nicely to the transfer window. We are in it and I have the same feeling that I had in January….. namely that we desperately need people in but I cant help feeling that we wont get anybody. Particularly as we are being fed the same Wengorian rhetoric that we had during the summer. I don’t believe for a minute the bullsh!t issuing forth from the Daily mail regarding a split between Wenger and the board regarding Arshavin. I firmly believe that the board would always back Wenger’s decisions even if he wanted to spend big, which I don’t believe for a moment that we will do. Spending 24 million Euros or whatever has been quoted on a player like Arshavin is ludicrous, we have no idea how he will fare in the Premiership and 24 million is a lot of money to risk. Even if the player was a guaranteed success it would still be difficult to justify such a fee, how can the club make money back on a player like that, we’d have to win everything every year and that is just fantasy. I hope that Wenger brings in a couple of 8-10 million level players and secures the contracts of Walcott and RVP.  I wouldn’t mind it if we sold Bendtner also. He has failed to live up to expectations and seems to be a malcontent. We have plenty of striking talent with Ade, RVP, Eduardo and Vela, so Bendy is surplus to requirements. Perhaps offering Zenit St Petersburg a Bendy plus cash deal for Arshavin could be a possibility if the manager wants him. Also rubbish is the story linking Wenger with a move to Real Madrid. Real are the sort of club that are contrary to everything that Wenger believes, he likes to work in an environment where he has total control over footballing matters. That is not the case at Madrid, where transfer policy is dictated by the board and used more as a political manoeuvring tool than to improve the team. If Wenger were to leave, and one hopes to goodness that he doesn’t, then it would surely be to manage the French (or possibly German) national team.

Quickly going back to transfers. My brother asked a question the other day, namely where does all of our money go? I can understand that in times of recession, one needs to be careful, however, on balance Wenger has spent very little on transfers in comparison to other clubs, we have massive gates every week, huge merchandising income, massive sums of money from TV rights, the club get money from using the Emirates for other activities (concerts, friendly internationals etc) and we have some of the highest ticket prices in the country if not the world. Plus we make a lot of money from selling on players that haven’t quite made it. Now, the stadium repayments are set and planned in advance so it can’t all be going on that, our wage bill is high but no higher than it has been in the last ten years or so….. So where is all the money going? Why is so little put aside for transfers? How is it we have less available now than when we were at Highbury? It is curious. There is something amiss. The club is well run, that much we know, and we are in a good position in terms of self-sustainability if the sh!t hits the fan, which it probably will, but even so, what position will we be in if the sh!t does indeed hit the fan? Languishing in the UEFA cup? With Chelsea, Liverpool and United out of reach, with clubs like Villa, Everton etc on an equal footing (league table wise?). I hope that the board know what they are doing, because success breeds success in football and likewise failure on the pitch can spiral very quickly. I guess that we will just have to wait and see.

Hopefully Toure will stay and work hard to regain his previous form.

The Arsenal announced a restructure at board level yesterday and Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark has maintained that ownership of the club will remain in-house despite the reshuffle. Major shareholder Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith has left the board of directors and Richard Carr, a director for 27 years, has left the company board, although he will remain on the football club board (how many boards are there?!). New boy Ivan Gazidis will join the Board of Directors and Company Board on January 1^st 2009.

It sounds very fishy to me. Prince Phil stated yesterday that “Lady Nina is an advocate of the policies we have been following to make the club self-sustaining and free from external injections of money. We hope she would remain a shareholder but she has not spoken to me about it lately. The board is very keen to retain control of the club to ensure its values and traditions are upheld and live on for many years to come.”

The crucial point here is that by standing down from the board Lady Nina’s 16% stake is no longer tied into the lockdown agreement which restrains the rest of the board from selling shares until 2012. Nina however, can now sell whenever she wants, to whomever she wants.

Obviously Alisher Usmanov will be interested in this latest development, as may Stan Kroenke. If either of these two reach a 30% shareholding, then under financial legislation a formal takeover bid would have to be launched.

Nina and her family have been involved in the club for a long time, a point that Prince Philip was quick to underline, however, he has admitted to not knowing what she will do with her shares, which to me is a little concerning as one would think that such an important issue would have warranted a discussion with the rest of the board. Apparently other members of the board have expressed an interest in increasing their own shareholdings, so it is possible that if Nina does decide to sell then perhaps her wedge of shares could be split between other board members.

However, we are in a time of financial crisis, this move by lady Nina could indicate that she needs to sell her shares, in which case someone like Usmanov would be in a position to give a her a good price. It’s all speculation of course, and there is bugger all we can do about it (unless any of the readers of this blog have £ 100, 000,000 to spare). There do seem to be a lot of funny things going on with the board. First David Dein leaves, then Edelman, now Bracewell-Smith and Richard Carr. That is a lot of change in a short space of time, not least when you consider that Kroenke and Gazidis have also joined the board. It feels like something is going on. I wish I knew what it was! Watch this space and see how the City reacts to this news.

Moving down the hierarchy into the dressing room, Arsene has said that Eduardo will be fine physically but faces a mental test. Apparently in training the Arsenal squad have been a bit soft on him for fear of re-injuring the poor sod, so according to le Boss Eddie needs to face some real opposition to get his confidence back. I am sure he’ll be fine. Eddie has shown such mental fortitude over the last year that this final hurdle will not cause him any difficulties. I can’t wait for his return to first team action. It’ll be like the signing we never had in the summer. I hope that Wenger doesn’t use his return as his excuse not to sign anybody in January….

The weird news of the day is of course that Lassana Diarra is set for a £20 million move to Real Madrid. Strange that a player who failed to make an impact at Chelsea and Arsenal can have such an extravagant price tag. Is this a sign of the madness of Juande Ramos? Also strange is the fact that Real have again been linked to serial ingrate Christiano Ronaldo in the summer. How can they afford to spend £20 million now and then God only knows how much in Ronaldo in the summer? It’s insane. While we are on the subject of Spain, Fabregas has said he is keen to avoid Barca in the Champions League, which almost certainly has jinxed us into facing them.

Le Boss has admitted that the William Gallas affair was the toughest moment of his managerial career to date, considering the numerous ups and downs of over 20 years in management that is quite a statement. There are numerous stories circulating today regarding the former captain’s future at the club with many touting him to leave in January. While I wouldn’t be too upset to see the back of him it would represent one more experienced player leaving so maybe we should hang on to him until the summer. Some unconfirmed chatter on the internet suggests that Gallas hasn’t been behaving himself with regards to Pat Rice’s pre-match training at Boro. If any of this is true then we should move Gallas on in January - with a confidence as fragile as ours we need to weed out any malign influences in the squad and move forward.

Welcome back Eduardo!! Good to see the smiley little fella again. He played 45 minutes and had a little bit of a hamstring twinge, but that sort of thing is only to be expected after such a long time out of the action. I can’t wait until he is back in first team contention. He was starting to look excellent before his sickening injury and his clinical finishing will hopefully improve our possession to goals ratio.

Lots of people have been coming out in the press and saying the title is beyond us. Redknapp, Rio Ferdinand and so on. Even though we all know that the title is now a dream for us it still pisses me right off that we have to listen to these a-holes harping on about our chances. Rio is still smarting from the fact that we kicked his candy ass and Redknapp, well, Redknapp can go f*ck himself.

Patrick Vieira. The great man says we lack experience, that the talent is there but the crucial factors to make us winners are missing. He's right of course, and he he also one of the very few ex-players whose comments I am happy to listen to. He questions those who question le Boss, and while I question those whose views about Wenger are extreme (e.g. the lets sack him brigade) I do think fans should be able to criticise when things have gone wrong which could have been avoided.

Vieira is still marshalling the Inter Milan team. You wonder why we sold him. It was bullshit that he and Fabregas couldn't play together. Imagine how awesome our midfield would be if it comprised Vieira and Fabregas. Fabregas and the other young players could have learned so much from the great man and how he would have provided the steely edge we so desperately lack. Oh well, the past is the past, but that was a bad decision and really the beginning of the end of the last great Arsenal era.

Tonight Eduardo makes his reserve comeback bringing him a step closer to fist team action and bringing us a step closer to having a clinical striker again. His determination and attitude during his rehabilition have been inspirational and one hopes that his presence on the pitch is similarly motivating. He was looking shit hot before that numbnuts smashed his ankle and I hope that he can come back mentally as well as he has physically. The Croatians will be happy as well, their international side have looked a shadow of themselves since the poor little sod was knackered.

A lot of players, current and ex, seem to be talking about how divided our squad is. Yesterday Adebayor mentioned it, Vieiraalso highlighted in in his interview. How was the squad allowed to become so fractured, why didn't Wenger sort it out? I know that is part of the Captains role and Gallas was more Bligh that Nelson but even so, Wenger has eyes and knows that harmony is a necessity if a challenge for honours is to be made. He should have stopped the rot before it became debilitating.

Anyway, i'm tired now, time to go.

The gauge of a football teams progress in a season is measured, at its most basic level, in the number of defeats. X number of defeats is too many to win the league and so forth. This is usually measured in the league only. But the league often hides the true scale of a problem. For example, this season Arsenal have lost 7 times, although thankfully not 7 times in the league. Even the Invincibles lost matches in the FA Cup, Champions League and League Cup. I have digressed slightly here. My point is that we have lost 7 games this season and it is only the 12^th December. Remember also that we last won the Premiership in 2004 and the FA Cup in 2005. Despite this Arsene has stated that he thinks the team will end their trophyless run this year. Hmmm. More Wengerian rhetoric. The burgervan knows that Arsene must try to reinforce the players confidence, that he cannot go on record and say he doesn’t think that we will win anything this year. But, the burgervan also knows that that is precisely what Arsene really thinks. It would be better for everyone if instead of saying we can win this and that and everything he just avoided such blatantly ridiculous prophesising altogether. It is vaguely embarrassing and has an air of desperation about it that I don’t like reading about.

Tony Freaking Cascarino. TC. It’s been a little while since I have felt the need to attack this Times Columnist. I like the Times, it is a great paper with a great tradition but I am still flabbergasted that they employ Tony Cascarino to write for their otherwise superb Sports Section. I read his column and it is as though I have been transported to the pub on matchday and I am unluckily seated next to the guy who feels compelled to impart his vapid insights to me for the full 90 minutes. Cascarino is such an uninteresting read. He never provides the insight that one would hope that an ex-professional might impart to the man in the street. And he is so repetitive. How many times is he going to say that we need leaders, that we need to ‘get back to basics’, that we take too many passes in front of goal, that we cant defend set pieces blah blah blah. Surely if one is privileged enough to write a newspaper column for a national institution like The Times then one has the duty to at least write something different each time? It his latest regurgitation, TC has really had a go at the Arsenal team that lost to Porto in the week. But honestly, what’s the point? It was virtually a reserve side. One can’t take that performance and apply it to the rest of the squad, it isn’t true and it isn’t fair. The Arsenal have just defeated Chelsea at Stamford Bridge and we are getting a bit of momentum in the league. If anything we are coming out of the dip we have been in and are addressing the problems that he has once again mentioned. In short, TC needs to think, I realise that this is difficult for him, his tic tac of a brain isn’t very capable, but please, this is The Times, not Leyton Orient programme notes.

The papers seem to be united in the opinion that the January transfer window will see the departure of Gallas and Bendtner. Gallas is strongly mooted to move to AC Milan or Juventus, with Juve believed to be in pole position for the troublemakers signature. Bendtner has less glamorous options but ultimately I wouldn’t be upset if he went. He had a great chance to prove himself this season but has shown that he is not good enough. Plus he has an ego problem that I’m sure has led to divisions in the squad. Add to that his propensity for lurid footwear and you have all the ingredients for his sale. If we could get between £8-10 million for the pair of them that would provide a nice wedge of cash for Wenger to spend on somebody without a bad attitude.

Fabregas has once again reiterated that he wants to stay at the Arsenal, at least until the end of his contract in 2014, but that one day he will return to Spain. I suspect that it will be well before 2014 if we don’t start looking like we are going to win something.

The Times says Fabregas, Clichy and RVP will shake off injuries and be back in the squad for the games against Middlesbrough at the weekend. We also welcome back Adebayor after his rest, and I hope that he will follow up his winner against Wigan with a couple more against Boro, a team we haven’t beaten at the Riverside for ages. Sagna and Toure are also in doubt and Nasri is definitely out alongside long-term absentees Walcott, Rosicky and Eduardo (who makes his reserve comeback in 4 days).

Oh dear. Is there anyone out there who actually thought we would win last nights game? I know that I was trying to talk them up in yesterday’s blog but as soon as the team was announced defeat became a matter of when and not if. The manager stated that he put out a team which he thought was capable of winning the game, but that was just more of the Wengerian rhetoric that we can all recognise so easily now. The power of positive thinking will only take you so far. Eventually, quality, or the lack of it, will be exposed. We surrendered top spot in our group without so much as a whimper of protest. That’s the Arsenal that I don’t like to see. As I have said before, I don’t mind losing as long as we go down fighting.  

Ultimately though, despite the disappointment of this performance I agree with Wenger’s selection last night. It is vital that players are saved for the league, we are just coming out of a dip in the Premiership and need to keep the improvement going at all costs and build some momentum. Somehow we aren’t completely eliminated from the title hunt, I don’t know how that has happened but we must stay within touching distance of the league leaders. This game once again demonstrates the weakness of our squad, this was very much a squad defeat. But this is old ground that doesn’t need to be repeated.

Will last nights game adversely affect the unstable form of the side? In the past it has and we aren’t in possession of a particularly stout constitution at the moment. The key player for us against Middlesbrough will be Fabregas. He seems to infect the rest of the team with his own confidence and we are yet lose or draw when he has captained the side.

The easiest draw we can get in the next round is probably Panathinaikos, which is never an easy game, particularly away. The other teams that we may be potentially drawn against are AS Roma, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid. The team I would most like to avoid there are Bayern, who I really think that we would have trouble with. It’s a silly situation really  considering that we topped the group for the whole of the group stage, but the fact that we qualified at all is slightly miraculous considering the dubious quality of our squad, our total lack of maturity, injuries and not least the atrocious quality of our play this season. We will find out soon who our next opponents will be, hopefully by then we will have players back after injury, certainly Eduardo should be available and who knows, maybe we will even have strengthened the squad in the January transfer window. If there are any decent players available who aren’t cup-tied. It feels scripted to me that we will face Barcelona and Thierry Henry. I hope not though, I don’t want to see Henry play against us. I still operate in a world of denial that he isn’t our player anymore.

I saw that we were linked with Xabi Alonso again earlier this week. I would have to ask, why would he want to leave Liverpool at the moment? They are top of the Premiership, qualified in the Champions League and on a real high. You have to ask why a player would leave that for a club that are clearly struggling. A club that have been in transition for four years!  Why would Liverpool sell him to us as well? The whole story doesn’t make any sense and I don’t believe a word of it. If we were to buy him I think my first reaction would be annoyance that we hadn’t splashed out an extra couple of hundred thousand to pick him up in the summer, which may have improved our early season form. It’s all conjecture and completely pointless anyway.

Good morning Sports Fans! Only nine working days left until the Burgervan’s Christmas break begins. Getting that number into single figures is an important psychological milestone and that’s why today’s blog starts with a positive and jolly ambience.

The Eboue story rumbles on like a very slow moving juggernaut, nay, it’s more akin to a combination betwixt (the legendary) Giant Haystacks and a zombie. The latest player to come out and lend the troubled Ivorian his support is none other than the super gangly one and Eboue namesake, Emmanuel Adebayor (give him the ball and he might score – if you’re lucky). Mr Wenger has said that in light of Samir Nasri’s ankle problem, due to the tackle that took him out of Saturdays game and started this drama, Eboue will get the chance to prove to himself and everybody else that he has what it takes to be an Arsenal player against Porto tomorrow evening in the Champions League. Good luck to him, the Burgervan for one hopes that he has the game of his life and he scores a hat-trick. Unlikely I know, but Christmas is the time for miracles after all. The Eboue saga has generated significant debate in football and within the Arsenal fanbase, however, I for one am bored with it now and can’t be bothered to say anything else about it.

The latest news on Tomas Rosicky is that he probably won’t be available until at least March 2009, although even that looks dubious and Burgervan wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t see him in an Arsenal shirt again until the 2009/2010 season. It must be very difficult for a sportsman to be in that situation, particularly when his team-mates are going through a difficult period. However, hopefully the operation he recently underwent will finally correct whatever the problem was and now it is just a matter of rehabilitation. It is a cliché, but when Tomas does finally make it back into the squad it will be like a new signing. He never really had the chance to make his name at Arsenal, but I have no doubt that he is a quality player and will be very important for us in the coming years. Burgervan is also looking forward to seeing that raking super-hard shot from distance that seems to be his speciality.

Conversely, Eduardo’s recovery has been excellent, so much so that Arsene has informed us that the wily Brazilio-Croat will play a reserve game on December 16^th. Presuming that he comes through that game unscathed he will be in contention for some role in the Liverpool game a few days later. I can’t wait for the little fella’s return, not only doe it mean that we have decent options front again, but it also provides some much needed competition for RVP and Adebayor. Before his injury Eduardo displayed truly excellent finishing, in fact, just the quality that we have been missing this season.

Tomorrow we have a tough away game against Porto and I cannot emphasise enough the importance of not losing this match. Not only will this enable us to finish top of the group and therefore do ourselves a favour for the next round, but also, and more importantly, there is the psychological boost we will get from a good result. We have shown ourselves to have incredibly fragile confidence over the last couple of years and defeat in this game could adversely affect our improving form in the league. So, Mr Wenger, please don’t put out a pony side, let’s really go for this game.

And finally, Big Red Al has given an interview in which the United boss says that Arsenal will play a crucial role in the destination of the Championship this season, largely due to our good results against the other members of the big four. Although he did intimate that we didn’t have much of a chance to win it ourselves. The mad boot kicking hairdryer has been increasingly nice about the Arsenal over the last couple of years, no doubt since our star has been on the wane. Despite this new attitude Burgervan would very much like Swalex to go f*ck himself!!