Arsenal-Fulham: No doom-mongering, just an honest opinion

Very uninspiring, pedestrian stuff it was by an Arsenal side at Craven Cottage yesterday. Fulham managed to get a goal and held on for all three points. And we can have no complaints about the result.

It was a very dull game overall and as about as insipid a performance as I can remember in recent times. It was Denilson and Eboue again in the heart of midfield, and that in itself sums up our inadequacies in that part of the pitch.

Everywhere else we were almost full strength, but our inability here showed. We had to resort to long balls and crosses, which is not how we have played in recent years. Just goes to show you how much we miss Fabregas in the engine room, dishing out stuff to the front men.

That clearly wasn't happening yesterday, and Ade and RVP were fed on scraps. We did have the odd chance though, Ade hit the post in the first half, RVP had a shot whistle wide in the second, and he also had three free kicks in decent positions, but failed to capitalise.

All game long we looked as dangerous as the opposition did, and that's not saying much. I've never seen this many passes going astray in one game. No one in the team took it upon himself to lead the team by example and drive the rest forward.

Eboue looked bright in patches in the second half, and I think Ade had a good game, Nasri as well looked good, but overall as the result states we lacked cutting edge.

I'm too depressed to read any of the papers or reports today, quite sure they will be full of doom and gloom. We've got to realise though that Cescy is such an integral part of our game. We need him there.

That said Denilson who played in his stead yesterday will have to step it up a bit if he's going to cut it, or we just might be in for a bad season if Cescy goes away injured.

Of course we can't attribute the result yesterday completely to Cescy's absence. Maybe it was the midweek internationals or whatever, but we clearly lacked sharpness yesterday. We didn't push for it, till maybe the 80th minute or so.

We will have to rise from this one quickly coz Twente come a visiting soon. Still, as bad as it is to lose, it's much better to have a wake up call such as this early in the season, when it can be heeded to and the situation rectified. And it definitely can.

Heads up, Gooners!