Good morning all, how are we all doing today?

After Wednesday night’s result and the dearth of Arsenal-related news that didn’t make people want to put their fists through their screens I took the day off. Of course, there was the AGM which better bloggers than me have covered and, as I said in yesterday’s post, it will likely not change anything.  To be honest, I didn’t follow it that closely, and the snippets that I saw reinforced what a good decision that was with Peter Hill-Wood treating the Arsenal fans and minority shareholders in attendance as plebs in ways that Andrew Mitchell can only dream about.

It was the usual standard fare, too many questions not being allowed to be asked and answers which come straight out of the ‘How to tell the unwashed masses nothing of importance’ handbook.  You can watch it here if you haven’t already seen it.

Arsene’s press conference took place yesterday as well and there is still no return for Kieran Gibbs which means that Arsene is left with the choice of sticking or twisting with Santos at left-back.  We don’t have that many options in that position so it’s Santos or Vermaelen out there.

The arrival of QPR at the Emirates should never cause this much concern but it’s a sign of where we are at at the minute that there is a general feeling of unease around Arsenal fans. QPR will be buoyed by our recent results and will arrive with no fear and that always makes a team dangerous, even if it is one which hasn’t managed a win all season.

While I have great respect for Mertesacker, his comments to the official website that our results this week have been ‘accidents’ don’t hold much water for me. There are no such things as accidents in life or in football and the reason we lost was because we simply did not turn up.  He said

We have had a difficult week, our results were kind of an accident, now we have to find our game again. The international break was kind of a killer for us. We have to find our strength again quickly.

But why was the international break so bad for Arsenal? What happened during the ten days or so that the players were away with their countries? What left the side, as Steve Bould described them after Schalke. ‘jaded’?

I don’t know if Saturday is more about getting a performance or getting a result, to be fair, it’s probably about both, but a scrappy one nil in which we look and play like poo on a stick isn’t going to help with the feeling around the club at the minute so the team need to somehow find a way to get past whatever it is they are afraid of and start expressing themselves on the pitch again like they did at the start of the season.  I don’t believe, certain positions aside, that this is a talent issue with this side, but a mental one, and that can be harder to rectify. If it was talent, you simply replace players. When it’s all in their heads, what do you do then? I’ve often wondered if Arsenal employ a sports psychologist of any form. If they don’t, it would be the signing I would make before all others.

That’s about it really, I’m off to try and find out what other news is out there, so keep an eye out for that on the Gossip site which you can find here and is updated regularly.

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