Arsenal 4 - 0 Porsmouth

Our true test will come when we play Man Utd next week but nonetheless, there is plenty of positives from this game.

Jose Antonio Reyes continued on his fine form with an assist, a goal, and a penalty he earned. The Spaniard, when on form, can give you anything you want. Tackles, crosses, long passes, short passes, goals, headers, and er.. dives. Well it's good to see him playing with such physical presence. The brave kid's tail is finally up. If he can adapt well, we will witness many beautiful moments coming from Reyes and van Persie in years to come.

Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp found the net. I still don't think Dennis should be starting but when Robin van Persie is injured, he is our best choice. TH's goals are missed but more importantly, we need him to grow up into a good captain. So stop showing that disgusting gesture towards your teammates when we are losing, captain!!

And while Porsmouth's midfield players aren't exactly of the highest quality, Flamini did well last night. He generally contributed significantly in our attacks. Is it the haircut?

The Aston Villa game will not be as easy and considering the Man Utd game, Wenger must ensure that his players can focus fully in the next game. Arsenal are still a good side when they are confident. But they must also learn to bounce back quickly when they hit bad patch.

Charlton 0 - 1 Arsenal

Not to belittle the precious three points but consider these
Point no.1 : Charlton are not exactly on good form themselves and even when they are on good form,
Point no.2 : Charlton do not play physical football the way Bolton and Newcastle do, probably because they don't have the necessary players to apply that kind of tactic.

So the victory against Charlton did nothing to suggest that this Arsenal side have regained their shape to challenge for the top four finish. Yet I have no doubt that WE WILL BE among the top four come the end of this painful season.

Campbell looked sharper in the Charlton game and Toure was very much himself. Hleb needs to adapt and Cesc was energetic as ever. His tackle on the Charlton's defender was awful though. TH looked so obviously hampered by his Achilles injury and thank God Reyes was, as TH put it, magnificent. He tackled like a fullback, made the overlapping run Cole used to do for us, and made some great assists that were wasted.

That fantastic move down the left flank that ended up with Freddie wasting his one-on-one chance with Myhre was one of the few moments worth remembering this season. Chelsea? They can buy anyone they want and win all the game but their fans will never see such things.

Cygan, Gilberto, and Freddie were playing like under 18s who were rushed into first team action. Now we know what Cygan was all about but it's okay because he is a backup. But Gilberto? I lost count on the bad passes he made and he is our first choice centre midfielder. Some may like to point out on Gilberto's goal against Doncaster and the assist Freddie made to TH that resulted in the winning goal by Reyes. But in my opinion both of them contributed virtually nothing apart from those.

I can give Freddie time though. I believe he just needs his confidence back. And when we have quality players around him, he can be back to his original game, making those trademark runs that few other could do. Yet time is not on his side.

As for Gilberto, I say, thank you for that unbeaten season and please Wenger, find his replacement.

Next is Porsmouth and with our current situation, each and every remaining Premiership game is a must-win. Exciting!

Arsenal 0 - 2 Chelsea

Had we played that way against Boro, Bolton or Newcastle, we would have won all the three. But against Chelsea it was simply not good enough. I think the players have given their all; they fought bravely and tried all they could to get back. I was proud of them. Sure the referee wasn't helping us but the two goals Chelsea scored were good ones.

The first goal showed just how poorly disciplined our defense are. We have given them too much space to run into. We pushed the defense high up the pitch as usual but that was a suicide given the fact that we were up against a team with good long balls and that we play with two relatively slow centrebacks. I can't really blame Lauren for his mistake as he really was adapting to the new position. Senderos was superb against Drogba and that to me is one of the positives. Campbell was too easily beaten at times and I think it's time to find his replacement.

Flamini and Cesc did enough to match Chelsea's midfield. Shall we start with Flamini instead of Gilberto for the next match?

All in all, this is a game that shows us how we were outdone tactically once again. Yes we lack quality but that isn't a big issue. We have enough money to solve this. It's Wenger's inability to match Mourinho's tactical game that worries me.

I am resisting the temptation to talk about how Chelsea have gotten two of the most disgraceful players in Drogba and Essien. Let's just focus on how we can qualify for CL next season.

The Biggest Game

Anything less than three points would not be good enough. I hope that's what in our players mind as they play Chelsea this weekend. Expect hard tackling Essien to silence our midfield. Had Cole and Clichy not injured, Wenger could have moved Kolo or Lauren to the midfield. I can't see how Wenger could do that now unless he entrusts Eboue to fill in the rightback position and move Kolo to midfield.

We are underdogs this time. But we often turns out good when we are underdogs.
Let's hope for the best.

The coming January transfer window will be a make-or-break for Wenger's 2005 season. Wenger doesn't like to purchase during the January transfer window. He always get everything perfectly calculated before the season starts. But his perfect judgement failed him last Summer. He was too naive to believe that other clubs would play fair football game against Arsenal. Arsenal nowadays rarely pass and move like they used to do. They can't move much as there isn't much space. Sometimes they can't even make proper pass because there are too many missing links.

That missing links are the now gone Vieira and Edu. And the faltering Bergkamp, Pires, and Ljungberg. None are as good as they were two or three years ago. Henry is too big for the team now and can sometimes be a bit like Gerrard. He doesn't trust his teammates enough and want to try things on his own.

These are the players who deserve their place this season: Lehmann, Lauren, Senderos, Cesc.
Cesc may at times look terrible but the right way to play this kid is to surround him with few physical players who take care of all the dirty works. When he has space this kid can do serious damage to the opponents. But now he even has to cover Gilberto's ass. That's too much to ask for.
Lehmann has been superb despite his occasional stupid act. Lauren is Lauren and Senderos is solid against most of the opponents.

van Persie is only great when his teammates could boss the midfield and send him good passes.

Newcastle 1 - 0 Arsenal

You can go on and on, whining about Shearer's physical approach, but you know all too well that you are getting nowhere with that.
Yes, I dislike Shearer's dirty game. Yes, I dislike the fact that everyone starts doing this against us.
But hey, you are playing in English Premier League, where you used to be feared for your ruthless backfour who wouldn't have even the slightest of hesitation to make strong and hard challenges.
You used to have the most intimidating central midfield pair of Vieira and Petit who would bully lesser opponents into submission by winning around 80% of the midfield battle.
And now you replace them with kids and softies who play continental football.
What do you expect other teams to do?

Fans can take defeat and fans can give Wenger time. But he got to help himself by stop whining and start fixing the broken parts. He knows he lost the plot this time.

Why Arsenal Deserve It

I write this on halftime break of Bolton game. We are 2-0 down thanks to a poor defending inside the box and a stupid mistake by Gilberto.

From what I saw, Bolton's defense are not that fantastic either and we could make a strong comeback and win this game 3-2 or even 4-2 if we can get our defenders' head right. I will single out Lehmann for praise as he superbly kept us in the game.

Now I don't care if we win this game 4-2 or 10-2 later on. The truth is I have just witnessed two things that convince me that should we find ourselves without trophy and finishing behind Chelsea, Man Utd and even Liverpool come the end of this season, we deserve it!

The first thing is our defence. Poor concentration and poor discipline. Mourinho would have benched Gilberto for his mistake and he would have crossed Cygan out of his squad for such displays. Wenger? Well he couldn't because of the second thing which is Wenger's greatest flaw as a great man.

He is stubborn. The more you tell him that the idea of playing Cygan as a leftback is a stupid one, the more he wants to show you how right his judgment is. Cygan constantly failed to pass the ball up the field and there is one time where Henry needed to trace back to cover Cygan's area. I would love to see us losing 4-0 in this game if you ask me. I would love to see another 2 goals conceded because of Cygan's mistake. I would love it and I would hope Wenger will learn from that.

I am not blaming Cygan or Gilberto here. And I am not saying that Wenger isn't a good manager. But he has flaws which he refuses to fix and a person who refuse to learn from his mistakes deserve failure.

Perfect November

Few years ago November wasn't exactly a friendly month for Arsene Wenger as we often had a dip in form during that particular month. But November 2005 has seen Arsenal winning match after match, culmulating in the comprehensive 3-0 defeat of Reading at Highbury. Reading are currently on top of Championship division table and that goes to show how much talent we have in our youngsters.

Reyes scored the first goal from the position he was familiar with. I remember watching the clip on his goal against Real Madrid when he was at Sevilla. And that goal against Liverpool last season. He is just so good at scoring from those positions. Of course in normal situation Henry would have occupied that position. Reyes' best bet is to improve on his play as a left winger and replace Pires as Henry's ammunition supplier.

van Persie and goal has so often been mentioned in the same sentence nowadays that we don't even realize that our midfield has contributed so few goals this season as compared to the previous seasons.

And the highlight of the game, to me, was the introduction of Lupoli whose goal tells everything we need to know about this sensational youngster. He is an out and out striker who is ready to punish you for any lapse of concentration. Whenever he is on the pitch, his whole focus is just to make run into good positions and score. Our very own Michael Owen?

I won't bother to talk about Real's interest in Wenger as I believe it's all press talk. I am interested, however, to see if Capello could be drawn into managing the galacticos. And talking about galacticos, it seems we won't be signing Casillas now that he has just signed his new contract. But then Ashley Cole could probably do the trick.