Bolton (1-1) - 11th February 2006

Rarely can a last minute equaliser against a team such as Bolton (trying not to sound arrogant and giving them due respect - but failing miserably) have been greeted with such joy. The much maligned Gilberto Silva scored in the 92 minute - a goal we patently deserved as yet again an opposition goalkeeper won MOTM. However, it only tells part of the story as Bolton could easily have been 3 up in the first 15 minutes of the match and deserved their 1-0 lead at the break. In the second half we dominated but yet again failed to finish. This result indicated to me that we won't get 4th place and we won't be in the Champions League next year - a bit of a shock after 8 years but that's football and too many Arsenal fans have taken for granted our recent success - we need a dose of reality. At least the stadium is looking good!

West Ham (2-3) - 1st February 2006

So the main talking point after the game is the disappearance of Sol thus deflecting from a pretty tame performance against another decent but not great side. West Ham (along with Wigan) have proven all the pre-season critics wrong but that is no excuse for us to give away two awful goals and yet again fail to take chances. There has been a lot of discussion about our "poor defence" but actually we have the third best in the league - its scoring goals that has been our failure and for that we can look at three senior players - Dennis, Bob and Freddie. They have, collectivel, failed to deliver this year and despite the emergence of RvP we are short of firepower and so every goal we concede hurts us more than it should. Oh well - Intertoto cup anyone???