Humble Pie the Order of the Day as Arsenal Lose To the Spuds

Arsenal went into last night's match against the Spuds knowing that only a win would be enough to keep us in the hunt for the league title.

Unfortunately not only did we not get the win, but we actually lost a league game to the Spuds for the first time in almost 11 years, and only the second time in Arsene Wenger's 28 league games against them.

The team selected by the manager was the one I had predicted with the exception of Emmanuel Eboue wide right for Theo Walcott, and I hoped that the top quality players who we were missing might not be missed too much.

The Spuds were missing a few players too, but they don't have players of the quality of Cesc Fabregas, Robin van Persie, Andrey Arshavin, William Gallas or Alex Song, so obviously their missing players were not in the class of ours.

However the players who were playing should have been good enough to beat them, and we had every chance to do so until the second and deciding goal went in. 

There's a saying that goals change games, and when the player who most Arsenal fans want out of the team made a mistake from a Spuds corner after only 10 minutes, we found ourselves down 1-0.

Manuel Almunia punched a corner clear when he really should have caught it as he was unchallenged, and when the ball fell to Danny Rose almost 30 yards out, he hit it first time right back into the middle of the goal.

He took it very well, but Almunia should have saved it as he seemed to dip down rather than reach up to try to save it. After that Arsenal dominated proceedings in the first half in terms of possession, but we created very little, and after Thomas Vermaelen went off injured, we looked very vulnerable on the break.

The second half had only just started when our defence was caught again as Bacary Sagna was five yards behind everybody else when they tried to play offside and it allowed Gareth Bale in on Almunia.

Almunia could have been quicker off his line and he took too long to get down to the shot, but he was always going to be second favourite in that situation, and Bale finished into the corner.

As Gael Clichy stood with his arm up calling for offside, Mikael Silvestre chased back in vain and Sagna looked on in despair. For the next few minutes Arsenal couldn't string together more than two passes, and it looked like we might be in for a mauling.

Gradually we managed to play our way back in, though, as the Spuds dropped further and further back, and the introduction of Walcott for Sagna offered the fans a little more hope after only 52 minutes.

The game still seemed to be quickly drifting away from Arsenal, and drastic measures were called for.

After 67 minutes the boss introduced RVP for Denilson Pereira, and things started to really turn in Arsenal's favour. The first thing he did was turn a Spud player beautifully halfway inside our half, and almost everything he did after that was a class above anybody else on the pitch.

As the clocked ticked down we were given a stat that Arsenal had 81 percent possession in the previous 10 minutes, but we had only 10 minutes to go at that stage.

RVP then took a ball down on his chest in their box, swivelled and hit a great volley, but Heurelho Gomes made a super save. Within a minute or two he then saved an RVP free kick that was bound for the top corner and touched a Sol Campbell header onto the bar.

It seemed that there was no way past him, but we kept trying.

With only five minutes left, RVP played a lovely ball to Walcott in a wide position just on the edge of the box. He managed to put an excellent ball right across the six-yard line and Nicklas Bendtner bundled it home to set up a grandstand finish.

Unfortunately we didn't create a good enough chance to genuinely worry Gomes after that, and after four minutes of injury time, our title bid was over. The players looked very disappointed afterwards ,but they only had themselves to blame.

The performances of some of the players were quite simply not good enough, and it's telling that our best player was RVP, who played for only 23 minutes.

Obviously the calf injury suffered by Vermaelen so early in the game was not good for our defence as Silvestre came on, and he is and was a liability. I thought Campbell played very well and Clichy was good, too, except for the second goal. Samir Nasri gave it everything he had, but all too often he had no options as he was going forward.

I was disappointed by Abou Diaby, who seems to have regressed in recent games and is again getting caught in possession time after time. Tomas Rosicky tried, but very little seemed to work for him, and Eboue didn't seem to be his usual self.

Denilson seemed to let too many passes go astray, particularly in the period just after their second goal when we needed players to stand up and be counted. Again Bendtner was joining in the build-up play far too much for my liking, and when he plays, his presence in the box is required. He took his goal well enough, but he had a good chance with about 20 minutes left and failed to even get it on target.

In truth it has to be said that the Spuds worked harder than us and for most of the game they seemed to want it more than we did. They needed the win to keep their chances of fourth place alive and they got it, and I get the feeling that some of our players didn't genuinely believe that we could win the league, and their performances reflected that.

The Spuds defended a lot better than we did and as the manager said afterwards, they won more 50/50 balls than us. He also said that we will continue to fight and you never know what might happen, but he did say that we have too much to do now. It's more a case of Chelsea having too little to do, I suppose, but the league is well and truly theirs to lose now with second place our only reasonable target if "Manure" drop more points.

The only real good point from last night's game was the reintroduction of RVP, and we can only dream of what might have been if he hadn't gotten injured playing for his country five months ago.

We have paid a heavy price for the boss risking players at home to Barcelona in the Champions league with Cesc, Gallas and Arshavin all getting injured that night and more or less ending their seasons. There's no point in saying that a full-strength Arsenal team would have won last night because it's a squad game and our squad has been found wanting in terms of quality and commitment.

From here it's a trip to Wigan on Sunday, and we will know what our chances of overtaking "Manure" are by then, as they will have played the Spuds on Saturday.

That game on Sunday could see St. Totteringham's day a little later than we had hoped for, but even if it doesn't, we will see it very soon afterwards.

One thing is certain though, and that's that I won't be commenting on that event on Spuds blogs, unlike their classless fans who feel the need to read Arsenal blogs and comment on them whenever they get a result against us, which isn't very often. I wonder if the orders for the DVD of last night's game are going well. How sad is it that they release a special DVD every time they beat us, or even when they get a draw sometimes. 

That's it for today.

Here's the highlights from last night. 

See You Tomorrow.