OK, so I owe my innumerable legions of readers an apology. My form of late has been terrible. Since the Aston Villa game I have given you nothing. I know that, for many of you, your days are incomplete without reading my semi-drunken witterings. I should imagine that some of you have stopped functioning as human beings at all, stirring from your beds only to refresh this page, mumble about the lack of updates, and wonder vaguely if some ill has befallen your blogger. I can only apologise and hope that my forgiveness can be bought with some disparaging remarks about Spurs and perhaps a comment or two about John Terry. It's all I know.
Circumstances and geography have been the two major factors holding me back from my blogging destiny over the last few weeks, so I will try to summarise very quickly the matches that have gone uncommented on in that time. Here it goes.
Aston Villa 1-2 Arsenal: YES!
Arsenal 1-1 Wolves: Meh.
Arsenal 1-0 QPR: YES!
Fulham 2-1 Arsenal: Eurgh.
Arsenal 1-0 Leeds: YES!
As you can see, my analytical skills remain undiminished. Seriously though, the league results over the Christmas period were a mixed bag at best. Beating QPR was lovely, particularly given the other results that day. Drawing with Wolves was not, and losing to Fulham was all the worse for the crushing inevitability of the result when we failed to go 2-0 up and were dominating possession. All things considered, taking 7 points from the possible 12 above is not a disaster, but nor is it the form of a resurgent team who showed they can push into the top four and beyond in this half of the season. If I were a teacher, I would give the team a B- in terms of results over this period. Not terrible, but the nerds ahead of us all came out better. If it were a real school I'd give them all wedgies and steal their lunchboxes. Let me know when this analogy runs out of steam...
Anyway, away from the league, which I will visit tomorrow in more detail after the Swansea game, there was the small matter of the return of the greatest player ever to play in the Premier League. Maybe. TH14, rechristened TH12, came back and did what he used to do best. For me, the best thing about his goal was not the fact that it sent us through to the next round, or even that it was a returning hero that scored it. It was his celebration, the pure, angry joy of it, the hug with Wenger, the screaming 'I'm back' at the crowd. This man loves Arsenal, and clearly, scoring winning goals for Arsenal makes him very happy indeed. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. Not that I would know, as I was watching in a pub in Geneva, Switzerland, continuing a fine run of missing iconic moments at the Emirates that started with us beating Barcelona last year. Even so, I made do, going appropriately mental and trying hard not to openly weep.
Away from the chest-thumping and feel-good factor, Henry's return is practically positive as well, meaning that Gervinho and Chamakh can go to the ACN without feeling guilty that their stream of goals will be missed, ahem. Naturally, RvP is still the main man, and fingers crossed he stays fit and scoring. But having as back-up one of the deadliest strikers ever to have played football can be no bad thing, even if he does look slightly more Lampard-esque, physique-wise. That didn't stop his perfect first touch from that Alex Song ball, nor the trademark finish. Hopefully, we won't need to rely on him for goals, but if we were forced to, I wouldn't be altogether distraught. It might also take some of the pressure off of van Persie, which is going to be relentless in the coming weeks. I know Arshavin is expected to play a bit more during the ACN, but don't kid yourselves that a lot of the extra work isn't going to fall to van Persie in the absence of his African colleagues. As our best player, much of what we do is going to go through him, assuming he is fit and playing. Henry might provide some welcome relief.
Tomorrow we face Swansea away. The pressure on that game will be to some extent determined by results this afternoon, with three of the four teams above us in action. Fingers crossed that Bolton, Wolves and Sunderland can buck combined odds of over a trillion to one and win their matches. In particular, I would like to see Spurs lose. My confident prediction that Spurs can't go on like this due to the simple fact that they are Spurs is looking less convincing by the week. They are now nine points ahead of us, having won their pesky game in hand in midweek. Worrying, but there remains time to reel them in and dispatch them like one would dispatch an irritating mosquito. We just need to pick up some consistency again. Harry's date with Her Majesty is looming, and they have some African players shipping out. Theirs is a shallow squad with a huge discrepancy between their starting eleven and most of the rest of their players. Let's hope this works against them in the week to come.
Until tomorrow, fellow Gooners. And for those readers who suffered in my absence, my apologies again to you both.
Joe.
Follow me on Twitter @JoeBlogsArsenal
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