Football is back after a seemingly endless three days since our oiks got knocked out of the Carling Cup. Wigan visit the Emirates today probably wishing that they could have played us two weeks ago. A win today is all I care about. I don't care how we do it, how slick our passing is or how many opportunities we have. All I want is that we have scored more than them at the final whistle and if we can keep a clean sheet i'll have that too. We must build on the Chelsea result and that's the bottom line.

A few people at my work have been saying this week that the Arsenal are due to give somebody a thrashing. It's true that we haven't handed out a stout humiliation to a side in the Premiership for a while, but I don't think that the team are there yet. Like I said before, a win today is all that matters. It's weird isnt it how you change your expectations. Once, not too long ago, I would have gone into this match with an expectation of at least a 3 goal victory, now I would be content with a hard fought 1-0.

Gallas is out today so we will either see the much awaited return of Kolo or Silvestre filling in for Gallas. Eduardo is almost ready but not quite. He is in full training but just needs matches to quote le Boss. It will be great to have him back in contention. I am still unconvinced by Adebayor and Bendtner is sadly not up to the job so I would ultimately like to see our front line composed of RVP and Eduardo.

For some reason we have seen the ''almost signed Ronaldo stories doing the rounds again over the last two days. I wish that Arsene wouldn't comment on these stories. If we had signed him, he would have been amazing for us, but we would have faced the same close season wantaway bullshit that United have suffered with as Madrid come knocking. The only difference being that I don't think that we would have been able to hold on to him like United did. Despite being total buttmunches, United handled the Ronaldo situation excellently over the summer. Sadly their tapping up of Berbatov wasn't quite so well handled was it? At least that f*cked Tottenham in the @ss though so I won't complain too much.

I see Keano has left Sunderland. That surprised me. I didn't think that he was a quitter. Ince is touted to follow soon, and anyone who saw his tv rant yesterday would have to say that he doesnt really look like he can handle the pressure. Was he crying in that interview by the way? It looked like it to me. Pussy. You'd never catch Arsene crying like a little bitch.

Transfer speculation is hotting up with the latest names linked to the Arsenal being Silvain Distin from Portsmouth, Brede Hangeland from Fulham and Felipe Melo of Fiorentina. These rumours are almost certainly complete tosh although we have been linked to Distin a few times. Arsene has come out and said that he wants Gallas to stay at the club. This could be the truth or it could be a ruse to ensure that potential buyers don't undervalue him. Either way, let's keep hold of him until the end of the season, we don't have enough players as it is. Plus he has been pretty good in the last two games he has played.

Anyway. today it's Wigan and I feel a win coming and i'm sure that El Capitan wants to keep up his 100% record.

Burgervan Prediction: Arsenal 2 - 0 Wigan

Flash of Arsenal!!

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.

A win. We didn’t play particularly well, we didn’t play particularly badly but we won. We ground out a result despite injuries, lack of confidence and lack of form. We kept a very welcome clean sheet. The players worked for each other, some of them didn’t play well but that doesn’t matter. Ultimately, it was of vital importance that we stopped leaking goals, stopped losing and had some good news for a change.

The media dwells on our lingering problems this morning. Of course this result doesn’t solve all of our issues or paper over the cracks but it is a step in the right direction. A new captain, a clean sheet, a win, and a steely determination to get a result are all indicators that the feeble submissions we have witnessed of late may be consigned to the past. As I have said before, it wasn’t the losing that bothered me so much in recent weeks, it was the pathetic manner of those defeats. Anyway that is in the past.

Also in the past, albeit the recent past, is the William Gallas affair. Gallas played last night, largely due to a lack of any options, but he got his head down, shut up and worked hard for the team. The crowd were kind to him also, which was a surprise. I have changed my opinion on the way Gallas should be handled. In the spirit of moving on and looking to the future I have resolved to forgive Gallas for his idiocy. If he can stay with the team, work hard, not give any more interviews and not be a disruptive force in the dressing room then I will back him. The players have come out to support him, although notably RVP and Samir Nasri have been quiet. The manager has given him another chance, so I guess so should we. Make no mistake though, William Gallas is on parole. One more f*ck up and he should be shown the door as quickly as possible.

El Capitán had a great first game in the hotseat, not only was he all over the pitch and involved in everything, his quick thinking at the DROP BALL set up a great pass for confidence shorn Bendtner, who finished superbly. That moment threw me back to the glory days when Henry and Pires used to contrive similar rule bending opportunities at free kicks. It’s nice to have a player capable of thinking differently. I couldn’t care less about those people that claim bad sportsmanship, we needed to win that game. Anyway Aliiev was guilty of hideous gamesmanship with his rolling about as if struck by lightning quickly followed by sprinting antics. I was glad he got sent off, not only is he a cheat but he also got caught. I could probably just about stand a diver, but not a diver without the sense to do it properly.

El Capitán has said that he is keen to talk to Vieira and Henry to get advice on his new role. Vieira can certainly give him some pointers, he was a miraculous captain for us. It’s been said before, many times, by me and others, but why on God’s Green Earth did we ever sell Vieira? If we hadn’t, he’d still be captain and we’d have probably won the league a couple more times in the last few years. Sorry about that, I must remember that now we are looking forward, not dwelling on the past and what might have been. So what if we sold the world’s best midfielder, the world’s best winger and the world’s best striker in the space of two years and didn’t replace them. That isn’t important anymore. The future! Look to the future!

Going back to the Champions League, despite our problems this season we have qualified top of a difficult Champions League group. That is an achievement for any team, let alone a team comprising children and ‘utility players’ such as ours. The players and the manager can take great credit for this achievement. Last night it was great to see Vela start, I enjoy watching him play, he is good on the ball, runs at the defence fearlessly and always has a shot on goal. In a season or so he could be flippin’ excellent for us. Likewise Ramsey looks like a player of 23 rather than 17 or 18 or whatever he is. I know that they were there because of injuries etc, but even so, they acquitted themselves admirably. As did record breaker Wilshire and Johann Djourou. Most of these players are only ready for substitute roles at most, but it is good to have these players coming through, even if it doesn’t help us that much which our pressing problems.

Oh dear. I guess my hunch was wrong yesterday. The lesson learned there is don’t trust William Shatner. It would be very easy and quite satisfying to launch into a tirade about yesterday’s defeat to Aston Villa, our second home defeat of and our fourth overall this season. The problem is that everything has been said before. We know why we lost, the players weren’t able to motivate themselves sufficiently to beat Villa. It’s really as simple as that. What the solution is to our staggering rollercoaster ride of inconsistency is as much a mystery to me as it appears to be for Wenger.  

I didn’t watch the highlights last night, I couldn’t bring myself to, but from listening to the commentary team on Sky Sports and BBC it sounded as though Villa deserved to win. We didn’t create any chances or even reach a level were we looked like threatening. That is a real shame. It would be easy to point to our lack of strikers on the day, but that didn’t stop us against Man United. Bendtner has completely failed to grasp the opportunity presented to him by Adebayor’s injury and RVPs stupidty, which is a pity because I like the guy. The fact is though that there are hungrier and more skilful strikers in reserve who have a rightful claim above Bendtner next time we have a striking crisis. Anyway, it’s all beside the point, yesterday’s defeat wasn’t down to Bendy, it was because for the forth time this season the team couldn’t muster themselves to give a sh!t.

By the way, how many goals have Silvestre-Gallas conceded now? It must be time to bring Toure back into the team, at the very least his game has some zest about it.

I have no idea what Arsene plans to do about this. His post match comments claim we were unlucky but if you are beaten 2-0 at home after being dominated by the visiting team for virtually the whole match, then that to me isn’t unlucky, it’s a fair result. Although I applaud Wenger’s defence of his team to the media I hope that he doesn’t convince himself with his own rhetoric. Despite what he says week in week out, our squad isn’t mature, it isn’t experienced, it doesn’t show great character and most importantly it doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in Theophilus P Wildebeest’s pants of winning the league in the foreseeable future.

The real shame is that after coming quite close last year last, this year we are going to be massively behind the other teams. We have gone from a position of strength to a position of weakness, whereas all of our rivals have improved markedly. It’s all very well having England’s future in our reserves but that doesn’t help Arsenal now or in the next couple of years. There won’t be anyone around to instill fighting spirit in them anyway, especially if none of the senior team have even had a sniff of a trophy in their careers.  

I can feel a rant coming on, but like the Arsenal I just can’t be bothered, they aren’t worth the emotional energy.

Happy Happy Day! Burgervan finally makes a correct score prediction! Things are definitely looking up!

Those calling for Arsene Wenger to be sacked should now go and make themselves sick by scoffing large portions of humble pie. Yes Tony Cascarino, you dolt, that’s you! Obviously one result doesn’t paper over the obvious cracks in the squad, but any manager that  can beat the reigning Champions with that team and without a decent striker is worth his weight in gold. Well done to the Emirates crowd yesterday as well, they played their part magnificently (apart from the f*ckwits that again left early) and I was overjoyed to here such rousing verbal backing for le Boss. When the chips were down the true fans let the great man know that they supported him. For me that was as important as the result.

Well done to Samir Nasri, he has a long way to go before we can even begin to compare him to Robert Pires but he is made of the right stuff and can only get better, both his goals yesterday were instinctive (the sign of a great player) and confident, moreover he shone when we really needed him to. 

A great team effort all round, there were of course some irregularities. Not sure what Almunia was thinking when he grabbed that back pass (although he probably didn’t have much choice), Walcott was well looked after by his markers and Bendtner, despite being industrious throughout didn’t really grab his opportunity with both hands, but it was such an important result that none of that really matters does it?!

The result was crucial for our league position, crucial for confidence, crucial for getting the doomsayers of our backs, and crucial for us fans. To see the team giving their all and really fighting gives the fans an important message. In short, that the players give as much of a sh!t as we do! Anybody with lingering doubts about Silvestre should look at his goal celebrations and you will see that playing for the Arsenal means a lot to him.

So what actually happened in that game?! It passed me by in a haze of fear and amazement. They should have scored, we should have scored, they should have scored, we should have scored and so on until the 75^th minute when United just seemed to run out of ideas and energy. Then they scored and I almost passed out with the resurgent fear that we would again throw away a two goal lead at home, but no, we held on, ran down the clock and arguably Bendy should have scored our third in injury time. Great stuff.

Poor old Toure, I wonder whether he would be any good in the defensive midfield role? It would probably be worth a try. If not, at least give Diaby a run as Fabregas’ partner, he’s done enough in the games he‘s started to warrant a chance to play in his favoured position.

As for William Gallas, he has had his critics this season, myself among them, however, yesterday he delivered an immense performance as a defender and an captain. If he can keep that going he might make a decent captain yet (don’t hold your breath though).

The Arsenal have always been a classy outfit. As Gooners we pride ourselves on our club being more dignified, traditional and sophisticated than other clubs. This was apparent yesterday with our excellent poppy embroidered shirts. That showed true class. I was very impressed. Did you know that in France Armistice Day is a national holiday? Well it bloody well should be here as well. In fact, I can’t believe that it isn’t. Then again, this is the country that made Elton John a Knight of the Realm so I’m not really that surprised. We’re buggered if dragons invade and capture our fair maidens with that tantrum prone premadonna as our only hope! What on earth would Arthur, Gallahad and Lancelot have to say if they could see the state of the round table now?! At least there's no chance of him running off with Gwenevere!

One of the most amazing things about a result like this is that one can actually watch Match of the Day again rather than deliberately avoiding all forms of media until the next game.

It’s the Carling Cup again this week and a chance to see Wenger’s babe’s in action. Seeing as the majority of his babes are in our first team I’ll be interested to see who he plays. Hopefully we will see Frimpong in action, a player I have heard glowing reports about.

Enjoy sunday everyone.