..well sort of. Got free tickets to Highbury on saturday, so sat there as a non-vociferous neutral. Shame it wasn't Villa, but my wife vetoed what would have been a full day away especially with the trains. Anyway, enough of the excuses..the point I really wanted to make out was that based on Arsenal's performance, we're not that far behind them. They suffered the same problems as we have against determined, energetic opposition. Most of their players just weren't up for it (Bergkamp excepted) and they scraped a fortunate 3 points. There was the odd glimpse of what they were capable of, but they were obviously keeping themselves for the bigger game next week ;-). It seems to me that sides created with a significant number of foreign stars have a shorter shelf life. Managers only seem to get about two seasons of real effort from these guys, and to constantly sell on and renew with fresh faces can't be good for the team. Most of us would probably envy Aresenal's team and prospects, but I'm not so sure. Our future may be a lot rosier than many of us were fearing last week...at least we've got some youngsters playing and on the bench. Arsenal didn't have anyone.

-- Anonymous, December 04, 2000

Answers

That should cheer us up a bit. Q. Did Saints sit back or did they try to play?

-- Anonymous, December 04, 2000

From the highlights I saw on Sunday morning (They may have been a little biased towards Arse), Arsenal were peppering the Saints goal and could have won the game by four or five goals.

The disbelief on the Arsenal players faces when shot after shot either hit the goal frame or went just over, was laughable. In the end they scrambled an untidy goal to eventually break their non- scoring duck.

I honestly fear that the floodgates will open for next week if we don't sort our the defence situation. Our hope would appear to be a 0- 0! We need someone in there who will snuff out Viera, if we don't do that we might as well give the game.

-- Anonymous, December 04, 2000

The highlights were very misleading. Arsenal had a few spurts, especially late on, when they had some decent chances, but long periods it was very much 50/50, and the crowd were more than a little frustrated. Wiltord was shit, and Pires worse. Southampton could easily have sneaked it as well, despite not having as many chances. They played fairly deep, but broke well. El Khalej in central defence was very solid, and a name to watch out for.

-- Anonymous, December 04, 2000

Mmmmm. It's a well known fact that Kachloul has a yearning to play for the Toon, could he persuade his Moroccan mate to play for the Toon? Nah doubt Hoddle would release him or Pahars.

Hasn't Hoddle done well at Southampton though.

-- Anonymous, December 04, 2000

Thank you windy for confirming the fact that Arsenal, along with Ipswich, Liverpool, and all the other teams in the top half of the league are not too far a part. Other than the glory boys at the top ANYTEAM from the next 12 could end up in second place , So we've got a 1 in 12 chance of being in the CL as runners up, 1 in 6 of being in the CL as third oplacesd team. and 1 in 2 chance of getting into UEFA. I don't think we give our team as much credit as they deserve.

-- Anonymous, December 04, 2000

He certainly has DB. I don't think he's spent much money on players either. Mind you someone before him (Dave Jones?) had the presence of mind to sign Pahars.

-- Anonymous, December 04, 2000