Soggy Pizza, Goals and a Missing Lightning Bolt...

I watched “Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief” last night. It’s a movie about this young fellow who discovers he’s the son of the Greek god Posiedon, and travels to hell, literally speaking, to recover Zeus’ lightning bolt to prevent the gods going to war. A thoroughly enjoyable movie and highly recommended for its entertainment value. Of course, what never got resolved was how Zeus could be so incompetent to let his lightning bolt be stolen. I mean, come on, he’s the head honcho of Mt Olympus, isn’t he? Quite a mystery that.

A greater mystery though was revealed as I later walked into Modesto’s to watch Arsenal host Sunderland. This of course, being Wenger’s selection of Silvestre over Campbell. The only reason I think that happened is because Campbell was kidnapped by the afore-mentioned Greek gods as a prime suspect in the lightning bolt theft scandal, and replaced by an impostor on the bench. Although I suspect the impostor could do no worse than Silvestre, who clumsily allowed Sunderland to have clear chances on goal.

Anyway, we were nearly 30 minutes into the game, and having quickly ordered the food and drinks, settled down only to see the Sunderland captain do a savage two-footed lunge on Eboue. How the man escaped a red was beyond me, although he did get a yellow for his ugly attempt.

The match itself was training ground stuff. The red-shirts trying to prise open the defence, and the men in blue keeping them at bay.  Any moment you could expect Wenger blowing a whistle, walking on the pitch and giving training tips and pointers. Occasionally, the blue boys got a look on goal, but their striker was as profligate as ever, thus keeping Arsenal ahead. Miracle of miracles, Almunia even saved a 1-on-1 chance against Darren Bent.

I saw three significant positives from the game. One, Bendtner got a goal. That will do his confidence (or surplus of it) a great deal of good as hopefully he'll score more. He had a good game, and was a constant nuisance. Second, Eboue was fantastic. He kept driving at the defence, pushing them back and creating space, and got the cross in for Bendtner to score. And finally, we were not shot-shy.

Vermaelen, Ramsey and Song were efficient, which I think is something I’d like to see more, as they form the spine of the team. About Silvestre - well, in every match, the man does one or two critical mistakes, but this time we didn’t get punished for it. Almunia did a better job than Fabianski's horror show in mid-week and kept a clean sheet. Can't say the same about my new Arsenal t-shirt though, having spilled some of the cheese and sauce from the soggy pizza on it.

Another observation from this game and previous games too – Nasri and Cesc sometimes try to keep the ball too much, always looking for “that” pass. This leads them into trouble and the ball is snatched away easily. I feel that while Nasri and Arshavin can do this given their roles (and what Hleb did superbly), it is not something Cesc should be doing.  He needs to keep it simple, keep the ball and the game ticking along.

I had predicted on the Arsenal Singapore Facebook page that the score would be 2-0. But it took a penalty in the 93^rd minute for that to come true. With Manchester United losing to Everton, we are just 2 points behind them. Quick fact - the top 3 are tied at 63 goals scored.

Wenger believes Manchester United and Chelsea will drop points. He’s already been proven true earlier in the season where we made up an 11-point gap to be momentarily top of the league. The next Olympian mystery is whether we will be able to take advantage of other’s miseries over the next 11 games and be top in May.

Only Zeus knows!