Arsenal Thrashed: When It Rains, It Pours...

I thought I'd leave my thoughts for a day or two, allowing myself to calm down and allowing the dust from the weekend's debacle to settle.

Unfortunately, not a great deal from what I had planned to say in the immediate aftermath of Sunday's home humiliation has changed 30 hours later.

Here, I sit in the cosiness of my own bedroom, with my thoughts and emotions fully intact, before any of you goes on to accuse me of a spur-of-the-moment slating.

For as the relentless showers came down and as the grey, North London skies turned darker, we were all in for a nasty shock; a realisation of our very own dark abyss.

Funny enough, many of the people around me (admittedly, usually pessimistic folk), predicted a dose of reality on Sunday. My dad, amongst one or two others specifically, envisaged a 0-3 scoreline! I was laughing at 3:55. I wasn't two hours later. And, I'm not now and won't be for some time.

Another season full of superficial promise, full of lies of our technical superiority seeing us through the finishing line, has all come to an abrupt and premature end.

And it has all come crashing down by a relentless Chelsea outfit, highlighted by the sheer power and clinical finesse of Didier Drogba. Then, so pitilessly rubbed in by Ashley Cole's waltzing through our feeble defence to the cry of our hapless supporters' chorus of boos—a backdrop that was surely music to his ears on 90 minutes.

Perhaps one of Sunday's most paining issues is the fact that a vast majority of us were in on this lie right from the very start.

Yet, we believed it and genuinely thought that this would be our time. "Our moment" as Wenger nonchalantly and, in hindsight, foolishly declared.

And, as I admittedly hold my hands up in believing and preaching that we were in with a big shout for glory this season, it would also be a total justice to acknowledge the very fact that I had warned that it had been coming, right from day one at Everton.

Just the day prior to the cursed international break, Cesc Fabregas made a perfectly valid point: that the goals will inevitably dry up, and that the players would then have to fight for each other and win ugly.

And he was right.

Well, half right. We do seem to have indeed run out of goals. But the players are not fighting for each other, but made to look like absolute amateurs out of kindergarten coming up against a blue wave of real sportsmen.

Isn't that just embarrassing?

Arsène Wenger can point to the disallowed goal early after the restart (he definitely has a point to make there). And to Chelsea scoring from their first two shots of the game; one a terribly unlucky own goal by Vermaelen after some truly shocking near post defending by his partner Gallas—both were abysmal all afternoon by the way.

He can point to all the 50-50 decisions going the opposition's way and to Chelsea being not totally faultless in their approach to the match themselves—not forgetting that we were, and will be for a very long time—missing our main source of firepower.

But what we cannot excuse is how we were dominated from top to bottom, pressed all over the pitch, with our style so cunningly used to play into Chelsea's very own hands.

We cannot excuse having 57 percent of the possession of the ball, yet fail to create a single clearcut chance that had Chelsea fans biting their nails or Carlo Ancelotti harrying into tactical changes.

We cannot excuse being physically bullied throughout the pitch, with Eduardo and later the likes of Vela and Walcott in Terry and Carvalho's back pockets, with the midfield showing the strength of a melting chocolate teapot, and our link-up play just about as useful as a gangrenous appendix.

Not only can we not excuse such a toothless performance, but we cannot excuse Wenger's analysis as a mere blip or bad day at the office, with such themes recurring from seasons bygone.

You may remember referring to my best friend Tommy Boi as I previewed the match. Well, moments after the match's miserable conclusion—not quite so for him obviously—I received a triumphant text from him simply asking, "How many times do we have to dominate your midfield with strength AND experience before Arsène Wenger realises it for himself?"

Well, for Arsène Wenger read various other expletives, which we won't go into, perfectly understanding that it is acceptable coming from a Chelsea supporter, eh Tommy Boi?

What struck me from the notion in the text is that we all realise that we cannot match Chelsea's strength and that Wenger alone seemingly cannot.

We realise that the manager's single piece of business over the summer did not eradicate such flaws.

Even in the height of our cruising run and free-scoring purple patch, goals were coming in against us from all angles of the pitch, and that is what no one can fathom of Wenger, a supposedly intelligent perfectionist.

Instead, we had to sit through 90 minutes of assorted drivel, a misery that could have been far more compounded had Chelsea not just fought and battled and harried, but actually played the sort of game they have been coming to grips with this season. A combined fusion of styles that will almost surely—in my humble view anyway—give them the title, whilst we lick our wounds and wonder just how we had all been tricked into believing that we were actually good enough.

Same old story, well, at least the latter part of it rings true anyway—with four defeats in 13 not a significant improvement from the five reverses at the same stage in 2008-2009 and with a more porous defence—conceding two more goals this time around.

All of that with Wenger convinced that we are firmly in the title race, claiming to know Chelsea's weaknesses when he should be concentrating on his own.

I repeat, isn't that just embarrassing?