Ha ha ha ha, Ho ho ho ho. I think that the Joker has given up on Gotham, well defended as it is by the Batman, and has turned his comical attention to Premiership transfer speculation, resulting in today’s hilarious reports. The Daily Star, intellectual tome that it is has reported that Cesc and RVP are on there way to Barcelona in the summer for a combined 45million quid, and that the Catalans will be throwing in Yaya as a makeweight. So ridiculous that I will mention in no more. Other news is that Eboue has stated that Inter are interested in signing him but he is happy at Arsenal. Right, Inter are interested in signing Eboue…..Ha ha ha ha, whheeeeeze. Who writes this crap, I mean honestly.

The story regarding the rosy cheeked Russian playmaker Arshavin continues to bubble along. It’s a right load of old cobblers with every journalist trying to make something out of nothing and find a new angle every five minutes. The latest on this is that apparently there is a problem as Zenit want the full amount in one payment. Andrei has also said that he wants to test himself at a top club.. blah blah blah. If we are going to sign him, I’d like Mr Gazidis to get the hell on with it so that we don’t get left with nada when the deal inevitably falls through and the player moves to Juventus/Milan/Barca/Madrid.

As an aside, I read a blog yesterday in which the blogger, who is clearly as mad as a march hare, maybe even the Joker himself, suggested that we sign Joey Barton….What the Hell?! I haven’t heard any other nonsense but I’m sure that as the day progresses more craziness will come to light.

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.

Four months. Maybe sooner?! (we hope). Oh Good God! Our midfield is now frightful to behold. I find it difficult to grasp the sheer bad luck of having Rosicky, Eduardo, Walcott and Fabregas out with long-term injuries. In fact, our injury record over the last two years has been appalling. One wonders if it is due to having such a small squad made up of young players whose bodies aren’t prepared for the large number of games which they are playing. Our midfield must now be selected from Nasri; Song; Denilson; Eboue; Diaby; Ramsey; Wilshere. This is really worrying. The quality of our midfield is really low. Lets analyse!

Nasri: Great potential, could finally replace Pires (maybe) but is constantly getting injuries that keep him out for 3 or 4 games.

Song: Lacks the awareness that differentiates between the top flight and all the rest. Could have made it if he had the benefit of a slow integration into the team with advice and influence from senior professionals.

Denilson: Suffers from chronic confidence crises. Another player who, if integrated into a successful team alongside experienced professionals would probably go to be an excellent player, as it is he is forced to play every week, often out of position and is probably the next candidate for serious injury. Frighteningly Denilson is probably the best midfielder we have left, hard to believe when one thinks back to the midfields of Vieira, Petit, Edu, Gilberto, Pires, Ljungberg etc.

Eboue: Bloody loves playing for the Arsenal and for that alone I like him. He has an unfortunate penchant for cheating and can barely control his limbs let alone his temper. A utility man that provides energy but little else. Eboue is a guy I would want in the squad but one should ask serious questions if he starts multiple games.

Diaby: Had the greatest potential of our midfield. Early signs were that he would be another great Wenger find. Sadly that horror injury has left its mark. He is now devoid of confidence and his game is perpetually interrupted by niggling injuries. Maybe, if he could stay fit, he could still be great, but I doubt it.

Ramsey: Clearly a star in the making but is just a kid. Ramsey mustn’t be sacrificed as the above players have been. What I mean by that is that he mustn’t be forced into playing every game due to injuries and desperation, thereby preventing his learning process and integration.

Wilshere: If Ramsey is just a kid then Wilshire is little more than a toddler. Wonderful potential, England’s next great hope, but way too young to even be considered as a solution to our midfield crisis.

So there we have it. We don’t have the playing staff to cope with one senior injury, now we have three. The answer unfortunately is to buy. It’s sad that we are now a club that buys out of desperation. Not only does it mean that we are unlikely to be able to pick up a bargain, but more worryingly it shows a total lack of strategic planning. Le Boss would no doubt argue that you cannot predict the extent of injuries that we have had. But that’s not the case is it? We have all known for months that our squad was so thin that a major injury would be devastating to our prospects. The simple way to cope with injuries is to ensure that you have sufficient squad depth to cover absentees and more importantly to enable the squad rotation that prevents the sort of injuries that we are suffering with.

7 days until the transfer window opens.

Let’s dive straight in shall we. The January transfer window is just 8 days away and the latest player to be linked with a move to Arsenal is Andrei Arshavin – the surprise package of the European Championships who everybody wanted but nobody would stump up more than about 10 million for.. The reason…. He is completely untested in a top league and went missing in Russia’s later games. Despite Arshavin’s ‘lifelong dream’ to play for Barcelona, as his options dried up and he realised he had burned his bridges at Zenit St Petersburg he became very keen to join Tottenham towards the end of the summer transfer window. Questionable character flaw that. Anyway, apparently the Arsenal have been encouraged to make a £20m bid by Zenit in January! Hmmm, despite the fact that Arshavin is undoubtedly a very exciting and talented player can you really see Mr Wenger shelling out £20m for him? There isn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell of that. If we had other key components in our side – e.g. a dominant defensive midfielder and a defender that can head the ball then I would welcome a player like Arshavin into the side, but at the moment it would be a misdirection of our resources. I don’t really know why I have credited this story with so much text, it is so obviously a total bunch of arse. The Sun says Kolo Toure is being targeted by Man City – HA! That is ridiculous. Wenger would never sell Toure! Bendtner has reportedly rejected a move to Spartak Moscow as they are out of Europe – that also reeks of bullshit.

With the horrifying news that Fabregas could be out for up to 3 months some transfer activity is vital. It’s sad that we all said in the summer that if we suffered a serious injury to Fabregas then we would be fucked. Well, now it has happened and not only that we have lost Walcott and also suffered injuries to numerous other players. 2009 is looking extraordinarily ominous. If we don’t get into the Champions League then we are in serious trouble. Really serious trouble. Financially and in terms of our playing staff.

Let’s head upstairs now to the board room. Many people will be encouraged this morning to hear that Alisher Usmanov has no immediate plans to increase his stake in the Arsenal. Usmanov has told the Guardian that he has not held any negotiations with Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith saying: “I haven’t seen her and so far she has not announced that she wants to sell………there is no point in discussing something that doesn’t exist.” However, that doesn’t sound very convincing to me. It does appear that Usmanov is as baffled by the shenanigans at board level as the rest of us. Let’s not forget, whatever one thinks of Usmanov, he is a highly accomplished businessman. He has tasked his London based partner Farhad Moshiri with finding out just what the hell is going on. Usmanov said: “What has happened in the last year poses questions…..When in the space of a year four members of the board of directors are sacked, when the general director whom everybody had praised is changed, we consider that to be a huge matter – just to sack a major shareholder without explanation…Mr Moshiri is now in London and is trying to find out the reasons for these sharp changes and according to what explanation we get, we will decide our strategy.” In short, Usmanov is unwilling to get involved in what he outwardly perceives to be the mess of the Arsenal boardroom.

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.

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).

The Arsenal play the last game of the Champions League group stage tonight at Porto with a severely weakened team and a Porto team out for revenge. An alarming state of affairs isn’t it? The Arsenal have, of course, already qualified, and the manager knows that he doesn’t have the strength in depth to risk players unnecessarily, especially while we are rebuilding our fragile confidence in the Premiership. However, it is very important not to lose games in any of the competitions as this invariably adversely affects performance in other competitions. Wenger will point to an unavoidable and apparently large injury list, however, I am more of the opinion that he is fibbing and is using the injuries as a reason to rest players. That is his choice. We will still go into the Porto game with some first-teamers and we still have a great chance to top the group. It will be interesting. Players not playing against the Portuguese tonight are Fabregas; Sagna (ill – not sure what’s wrong with him); Toure (calf); Clichy (hamstring); RVP (a little stiffness – surely something a little private time can resolve); Adebayor (rested); and Nasri (ankle). There is no guarantee that finishing top of the group will get you an easier team in the next stage, it is more likely, but it is by no means certain. Coming top of the group would definitely be a great confidence booster for the players and the fans. We must wait and see. Hopefully many of these players will be back in contention for the Middlesbrough game at the weekend, although Wenger claims RVP could be out for up to three weeks. I’m not so sure about that and think we might see him at the weekend.   

The other piece of team news for this evening is that Emmanuel Eboue will be in the starting line-up. All eyes will be on him tonight and he will be wanting to prove the doubters wrong. Despite a slight underlying apprehensiveness that something crazy is going to happen I have a good feeling that Eboue will turn out an excellent performance tonight. Although my gut tells me that he is going to get sent off for an over-enthusiastic challenge on a play-acting Porto player. Djourou will be starting as well, which is great as stats aficionados will tell you that we have 9 clean sheets out of the last 10 games he has started and the one goal he has conceded was the own goal he scored against Chelsea.

Juande Ramos, the disastrous (and my personal favourite) Sperz manager has become coach of Real Madrid!! It is a funny old game isn’t it?!

There is a bit more to talk about today than yesterday. Perhaps, with all the recent talk of crisis and so forth, we have all become used to there being a page dedicated to the Arsenal in every national newspaper every single day. Perhaps no news is, as the cliché says, good news.

William Gallas is out of Saturday’s game against Wigan at the Emirates due to a calf injury. This will see the restoration of Kolo Toure into the starting line-up and I for one hope that he grabs the opportunity with both hands. He will probably be alongside Silvestre, but I would like to see Toure and Djourou in combination to see how that works. However, I suppose that there is no denying Silvestre’s experience, even if his career has been blighted by his extended tenure at Old Trafford. I realise that many fans haven’t warmed to Silvestre and I can understand why, however, you only have to see the unbridled joy on his face when he celebrates a goal to see that he is now an Arsenal player. All I am saying is give Silvestre a chance.

Fabregas has denied rumours that he is heading for AC Milan, who by the way, can go f*ck themselves. He caveated his denial with the somewhat flattering (to Milan) statement that were he ever to play in Italy then Milan would be his destination. At least he is modest eh! I suspect the Flamini had a lot to do with this story, trying to get his mate over to Italy to play with him. I have always considered Flamini to be grossly overrated – he was a mediocre version of players we have had previously (Petit, Vieira, Parlour, Gilberto, Edu, Grimandi) , but there is no denying his sale has left us short in terms of tenacity in the midfield. Going back to Fabregas, I would like to say that his statement will put an end to the constant speculation surrounding him, but it won’t of course and as I have said before that is Arsenal’s fault. Show any sign of weakness in the transfer market and the wolves move in for the kill. Unfortunately the wolves have been having a feast on our production line. When I talk about wolves by the way I mean the canine pack hunters not Wolverhampton Wanderers. It saddens me that we have become a feeder club for Barcelona; Real Madrid and AC Milan. At least we don’t sell players to our Premiership rivals (like Tottenham do). I hope that we start winning some trophies soon or Theo’s magpie gene might be activated by the prospect of shiny trophies at Man Utd, Chelsea, or his boyhood club Liverpool.

The good news is that Arsene will be playing a stronger side in this years FA Cup. We won’t open old wounds except to say that Arsenal should be ashamed of last years FA Cup efforts. As a fan of the FA Cup I have always wanted the Arsenal to try hard to win it, but in recent years it has been sacrificed in the hunt for Premiership and Champions League glory. Now, it appears, desperation has set in. Wenger’s decision to play adults in pursuit of the old trophy is a tacit admittance that he knows we have a snowballs chance in hell of winning anything else this year. Ultimately it doesn’t matter though, I’d love to win the FA Cup again. Anyway, I still harbour a flickering flame of hope that we will be European Champions this time around.

David Dein’s son, also an agent, and more importantly Fabregas’s agent, reportedly met with AC Milan to discuss the player. This kind of story gets an involuntary rise out of me. I want to stand up and shout AC MILAN F**K OFF! It is annoying but it is football and it has no doubt been helped along by Arsenals willingness to sell their top players. But, in the case of Fabregas we need not fear him leaving for AC Milan. It’s when Barcelona are heavily linked that I start to worry. That will be his only destination on the inevitable day of his departure.

We are nearly at the Wigan game, there doesn’t seem to be much team news around at the moment. Hopefully we will put out as strong a team as we were able to field against Chelsea and rack up another three points.  The title race is an intriguing one this year. There is no great team. This is both good and bad as it means that if Wenger had strengthened a bit in the summer the title would have been there for the taking. It is good because Wenger may still be able to claw his way back into title contention due to the inconsistency of the other three teams at the top.

That’s what it’s all about. The stuttering ember of hope has been reignited and is now glowing merrily like Rudolph’s red nose as we enter the first day of Advent. What a bizarre season this is turning out to be. The highs of the European campaign and deserved victories against Manchester United and Chelsea versus the lows of Fulham, Stoke City, Man City and Villa. Who knows what will happen next. Arsene Wenger believes that it is a learning process - that the team are beginning to understand that the same high level of commitment is required in every game. I recall him saying something similar after the Man United result, but the team sunk to new lows in the wake of that game. Now maybe it will be different, so we hope. Never has the well worn tenet – ‘to take it one game at a time’ been so true. On Saturday we face Wigan at the Emirates. If we approach the game with the same awesome determination that we saw against Chelsea then poor Wigan won’t stand a chance.

So, to last nights game. Firstly, let’s get the boasting out of the way. A third correct burgervan score prediction of the season. Ok, I admit it, the majority of predictions have been well wrong (the estimate of a 4-0 victory over Villa was particularly bad) but it is nice to get it right for such a big game. The Arsenal were magnificent at Stamford Bridge. The whole team played well and worked their arses off for each other. Defensively we were like a different team, with Gallas loving the high pressure atmosphere and clearly thriving without the weight of the captaincy on his shoulders. Djourou, despite the unfortunate own goal, was a tower of strength beside him, and Clichy and Sagna, both great players, were spot on. Ok, the midfield perhaps came second in the battle in the centre of the pitch, but even so, the team was much more tenacious than in recent games with players like Nasri sacrificing much of his attacking verve to ensure that the team was solid defensively. Almunia really didn’t have very much to do, which was a surprise because after the Arsenal’s second goal Chelsea didn’t offer anything. It seems that this new Chelsea side are easier to break than Mourinho’s team, which was like playing against a brick wall both mentally and physically.

It seems like forever since we had our first choice strike partnership playing together. Adebayor and RVP work well together and I hope that they can both stay free of injuries because there is no doubt that we really need them. I wonder if our recent form would have been different had RVP not been sent off and subsequently banned for that silly foul. Everyone has a player that they like to see score more than any other. For me, in days gone by that was Dennis Bergkamp and before that I used to like to see Merson score. Nowadays I like to see RVP score and he certainly did that yesterday. His first goal was excellent and his second reminded me a little of Dennis Bergkamp’s first competitive goal for us against Southampton.  Yes, his first goal was offside, no, I don’t care. The number of decisions we have had against us this year more than balances out this piece of good fortune. Scolari really needs to shut the hell up. The fact is that Chelsea were fortunate to go ahead through an own goal and offered up very little in terms of goal scoring opportunities. Ergo, he can’t really complain can he? There was almost half an hour after RVP’s second goal, in which Chelsea did nada.  

What was great to see was the sheer joy on the players faces when we equalised and then scored the second goal. It has been a while since I have seen such an ecstatic mobbing of a goal scorer and it showed how much this meant to everybody. Likewise at the end of the game, the celebrations were truly heartfelt - Gallas for example had to be taken off the pitch by a couple of stewards! Ahh good times.

So now we are 7 points off the top spot with all the teams above us having played once game less than us. It is frustrating seeing us beat the top sides and lose to the lesser teams. It makes you think what if?! The title is still out of reach but as the manager said in his post match interview, it isn’t as out of reach as it would have been had we lost. Can we drag ourselves back in contention? Let’s just take it one game at a time and see. We have been so inconsistent in recent games that I don’t think any of us would be in the least bit surprised if we slipped up again in our next away match against lower opposition. But, if they can take this experience, and the experience against Kyiv in midweek and just try to accrue points, we can at least try to ensure Champions League qualification and perhaps undo some of the damage we have done to our self-esteem. If we can somehow draw a line under our crapness then who knows. Maybe we can even try to finish higher than fourth. ONE GAME AT A TIME!