Opening a door, closing a window

Well, well, well it was a busy old day at the Emirates on transfer day. I bet Arsene's cheque book didn't know what had hit it. Pat and Gilles must have been working overtime in the old get away van. All in all I'm pretty impressed with our dealings. Park Chu-Young or as he shall forever be known thanks to be predictive text - Paul Chu Young seems a sensible and solid signing. Experience? Check- he's south Korea's national captain. Reinforcement in a vulnerable position? Check- We've had finishing issues of late and have shall we say a history of frailty in that position. Next comes a pair of much needed reinforcements. Andre Santos at left-back, who once again has plenty of national team experience, having just played at the Copa America. Also it's a postion that needs reinforcing as Clichy has departed and Kieran Gibbs seems to be made out of glass. And then the big one. The much needed centre half. And what a big one he is. Six foot six of Bremen captaining, national team lynchpinning German engineering. Beautiful. Nice move Prof. I wasn't massively thrilled about Yossi Benayoun but you can't argue with how much top level Premier League experience the guy has. Then we were all thinking this is great but we're still missing something, a certain sunny western European je ne sais quoi, soemthing cultured, sophisticated, something that maybe has a way with free kicks. Then lo and behold with about ten minutes to go, it happened. The missing piece began to click in. Mikel Arteta is coming. Yes. THAT is precisely the kind of something we all want. So maybe that heavy loss might not have been so bad if it's triggered this lovely rebuilding right here. I for one am VERY excited to see how this goes. Plus its so fun to have to keep track of deadline day for once, its normally boring for gooner.

Down at the Riverside

This weekend wasn't all doom and gloom for me though. I did manage to take myself off to the fabulous Riverside Stadium on Saturday to watch Middlesbrough (my local team!) play Coventry. I haven't been to the Riverside in a while but I always enjoy going because I used to work there on the turnstiles. It was a really great job because for a football fan nothing beats the matchday atmosphere and obviously we got to be part of it for every home game. Plus it had the fabulous perk that once we'd let all the fans in and counted our tickets we got to sit and watch the match for free.

Nightmare

Well Sunday's match was just a total disaster. I don't think I've been quite that upset at a football match for quite a while. I could have cried by the end. When Robin missed his penalty and just sank to his knees in the box, it just broke my heart. Seeing poor Jenkins get sent off was brutal. I know a lot of people are saying that we never expected to get anything out of the game anyway but I'm an insanely optimistic and devoted fan and there's always a part of me that thinks they can win every game, no matter what the circumstances so there was absolutely no way I saw anything like that coming. Its unbelievably difficult to find positives from a situation like that but you can look at it and see reasons. I mean let's be fair to the boys here, we had 8 players missing. That's more than half a team. Any team in the world would struggle in a big game with that many injuries and suspensions. Plus many people are saying that with that many players out Arsene should have set his team up differently and shouldn't have tried to outplay them, should have been more defensive. But how? What would this different set up be? What would this magical defensive solution be? The only experienced players he had left were all attacking players so obviously he went for an attacking set up. They slagged him off for using kids but ignore the fact that if he did go for this magic defensive strategy he would have had to use more kids. So before we all go crazy with knee jerk negativity lets all just remember that we've only played THREE games this season. There's plenty of time left of the season.

Quote of the Week

" It will be a long time before I want to get into the Europa Cup. If we ever look like winning the Fair Play League, I'll run on the pitch and tackle someone myself" - Mick McCarthy, and I don't doubt it actually I think he'd rather enjoy it too....

A Champion's performance

Now I don't need to tell you all againthe angst that's been hanging around the Emirates of late. BUT last night the boys exorcised all that. And how. Now I'm sure that you had all heard just how important this game was in the build up. Crunch qualifying time. Then at the end of the first half disaster and Di Natale strike. Suddenly it's just got real. Things are looking a little bit terrifying. Then the second half dawns, Tomas Rosicky comes on as a sub. Everything changes. Fluency and vitality come back into our game. Our little dumpling did us so proud and its not overstating to say he changed the game with his creativity and experience. And damn I have never seen him fly in to so many brilliant tackles before. But the drama was not over with. Oh no. A penalty is conceded. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. And his name is Chesney. Holy Lord is that boy something. What a save. He has come so far this season its unbelievable. I am so very excited to see how he keeps progressing. Gervinho was also excellent last night, his pace is electric and those mesmerising little runs he's capable of are just what we need. I was also impressed with Jenkins, he stepped up very well in his first start in Europe, a very strong and mature performance. I could not be prouder of the whole team, this is exactly what they and we the fans needed. Perfect timing guys.

Breaking the law or why Wenger got caught

How they really found out he was flouting his ban......

It never rains but it pours....

Here we go again. There I was thinking a new season means a new start, perhaps the unfairness of last season will pass. Clearly I was wrong. They're starting early this year. Robbed again. Sometimes it's really hard to take defeat, sometimes you get yelly and want to swear a lot. This happened to me on Saturday. But sometimes you can keep a sense of perspective, sometimes you think there were mitigating facors. This also happened to me after I calmed down on Saturday. At first I was raging, fist-shaking mad you might say. Not only was the lead up to the first goal offside, not only was the second goal offside but robin got shoved over in the box in a move that literally anywhere else would have been a penalty. So it was very easy to get very upset about the result. But my Dad lovely as he is, said to me 'look, you need to keep this in perspective.' And he was right. As usual. We were missing more than half a team on Saturday. Wilshere injured, Song suspended, Gervinho suspended, Tomas Rosicky injured, Kieren Gibbs injured, Djourou injured, Koscielny goes off during the game. That many players were missing and yet we weren't outplayed by a pretty much full stength liverpool side complete with new signings. We only conceded after we'd had a man sent off. Both goals were offside. So when you start to look at all these things, it all adds up and it all makes sense. And lets not overlook some encouraging performances. Vermaelen: easily man of the match, absolutley immense, as I said last week, he's turning into one hell of a player. Frimpong, until a silly red, he was looking handy, making good runs. The boy Chesney, once again nicely confident and assured. As my lovely grandad put it "that goalkeeper's having a good day." And Ignasi 'Bambi' Miquel, looks ridiculously assured for teenager. Calm and unflappable, apart from his hair. So let's not get carried away with knee jerk  reactions of negativity, let's just wait and see what happens.
Oh and here's angry Arsene to accompany the post. I've been doodling some ideas recently so keep an eye out for more of these little guys coming your way.
As always comments and tweets @moleyontheline are very welcome. Seriously, go ahead.