17.45

Nearly a week has passed since that dark, dark day last Sunday, and Wednesday, and the Wednesday before that. Can you blame me for fearing this run will continue tomorrow afternoon? The same players will be on that pitch, give or take, my faith in the side has been well and truly shook to the very foundations and believe me, as the most ardent Arsene Wenger admirer, I had to ask myself if the end was nigh for him. Some will accuse me of not being a true supporter – others will say its what a true supporter does – Whatever people think I really couldn’t give a toss.

The goalkeeping situation has not changed. Manuel Almunia will remain dropped and Lucasz Fabianski will once again between the sticks to give away more goals try and make an impression on the boss. To many, his welcome at the club has been royally outstayed. Despite Wenger saying that Wojech Szczesny will be our future number one (and he looks it on first impressions), he still has faith in Fabianski which is more than slightly worrying.

I’m fed up of having a crap goalkeeper. Buy a new one or I won’t buy a membership next season. We lose games because of our ‘keepers and it needs sorting.

Its difficult to not turn this blog into a rant and its been five days since that game against Wigan.

We should have a couple of players available today that weren’t last weekend, Alex Song and Eduardo are back in the squad after knee and toe injuries and whilst I doubt both will start, they will at least bring more options to the manager who needs to improve his decision making after questionable substitutions last weekend. It will be great to have Alex Song back so hopefully Abou Diaby will be dropped from the squad after his disgusting effort last weekend, its asking for too much though, mediocrity is being rewarded at the moment and its not right.

In another boost, Robin van Persie is set to start and that means two of our players will have points to prove against Citeh, and in particular, Emmanuel Adebayor – I’ll come onto that later. We all know what Robin brings to the team and his desperate last minute appearance last week by the manager was never, ever going to come off, why he wasn’t brought on earlier I don’t know so at least we will have firepower up front. Where Nicklas Bendtner will play I don’t know – at least its a good selection dilemma to have, something that can’t be said for other areas of the pitch at the moment.

Tomorrow we will need players with motivation and desire, and excuse me if I don’t believe certain players will be able to find that within themselves – after all, if they can’t be motivated by a chance to A) beat our North London rivals and B) to get back into the title race after being beaten by them, what could possibly give them motivation for tomorrow? That’s unless they are just bottlers, which is a possibility. I’m not going to mention the names but ask me at the end of the season – its more than likely I’ll tell you then.

Homecoming of Adebayor:

I find the mangers call for the fans to respect Emmanuel Adebayor deeply patronising. This is a guy who stamped on van Persie’s face, ran the entire length of the middleEastlands pitch to taunt our fans and slapped Alex Song, add to that a nasty tackle on Cesc Fabregas as well.

That’s before we even come onto his final season for the club…

“I believe Arsenal has done extremely well for Adebayor so you don’t expect that. But I take a distance from opinions by people who were not directly involved themselves in order to make an assessment.”

That is out of order, Arsene. Are the fans not directly involved? The fans who sang Ade’s name loud and proud when the home support had started to get on his case? I find that comment disrespectful and so patronising it beggars belief. You might say you are stubborn but that comment is certainly stupid.

We need to win this game, we are being caught quickly and cannot afford to drop more points, a win guarantees Champions League football next season I think so lets sort that, and then finish as high up the table as we possibly can. I’m almost looking forward to the season finishing, its quite sad really.

Til tomorrow