The days after an Arsenal win are lovely aren’t they? You don’t have to worry about avoiding TV, radio, newspapers or people. You know you can interact without fear of ridicule or having to try and find a way to defend the indefensible.  We should try it more often, it’s definitely the way forward in my eyes.

No much really happened yesterday in Arsenal land. There was some back slapping and happiness but generally all the people, mostly ex-Arsenal players and pundits, all the ones who have been predicting the end of Arsenal as anything resembling a football club which would ever be able to win anything ever again in the future of the universe were nowhere to be found. It was bliss.

The Ox joined in with the rest of us who were all still collectively drooling over Santi Cazorla’s performance, saying

“We know it’s important to get him [the ball] around there. He’s a brilliant player and he showed it tonight with three crucial goals. He deserves everything he gets. He’s doing really well for us this season and hopefully he can keep going.”

I often wonder if Arsene, after a long day at Colney, gets home, kicks back with a glass of fine wine and then starts giggling like a school child at how much we paid for the little magician. It’s what I’d do.

Premier League chairmen met yesterday to discuss bringing in a break even policy which would see clubs restricted to only being able to spend what they make and limit the amount of money that rich owners can pump in to a club to cover debts, you know, like how the rest of the world operates. Unsurprisingly, Arsenal voted in favour [in principle] along with 16 other clubs. The only ones who had a problem? Manchester City, Fulham and Aston Villa.

At a time when Arsenal are about to start making strides when it comes to their income, restrictions on the amount that wages can rise every year would likely see Arsenal left with excess cash. Could this money then be used lower to ticket prices? Perhaps, but it will be interesting to see what the clubs decide to do with this. They’ve sent some Premier League minions off to do some research and report back when they all meet again on February 6^th.

A couple of players, past and present spoke about the Theo Walcott contract situation, with Sol Campbell saying

“For the next five years, I’d pay to keep him because he’s a young lad, a good lad who scores goals, and you need to keep those types of players. January is very critical. It is a critical moment because if you don’t get it right in January you can just forget the rest of the season.

“People love him, people hate him – but Theo is a good player, a great player, and he’s growing every year.

“You can’t lose him because his contract is running out or he wants a little bit more money. You’ve got to keep those type of players. We’ve lost too many over time.

“It used to be losing these players at 30 years old – now they’re losing these players at mid-20s and that’s crazy. You can’t be losing players at mid-20s because of contract situations – it’s crazy now.”

While Thomas Vermaelen added his two pennies worth with

“Of course we want him to stay, but that is something that is going on between the player and the club,” Vermaelen said. “I don’t know what is going on behind the scenes – we don’t talk about it, because that is going on in football all the time.

“It happened last time with Robin in the summer. It’s the job of the board and the club what they are going to do with it so we can’t do anything about it.”

You do have to wonder if the players talk to each other about their contracts or if they all just pretend there’s nothing going on at all and live in a little bubble. That seems unlikely given the ‘banter’ that goes one between teammates. On Monday night Jack was asked if he was trying to talk Theo in to staying and he said he’d spent a year doing that (or something along those lines, my memory is sketchy, mostly because I wasn’t paying attention).

The sounds coming out of Arsenal surrounding Walcott are all positive but to be honest, it’s tiresome now and I don’t think that any of it does the team any good.  Players, even though they are supposed to be professional, must be wondering why players keep leaving and it can’t be good for morale in the long run. I said it before that I thought the decision of Robin van Persie to leave Arsenal for Manchester United, becoming one of, if not the most despised ex-players of all time, weighed on the player’s minds. They saw their captain decide to leave and be hated rather than stay and be a legend. That’s got to make you wonder at the very least.

Of course, I’ve no doubt the club know all this and want to get the Theo situation sorted out as soon as possible but the longer it drags out the more damage it has the possibility of inflicting.

In other news, Frank McLintock came to the defense of Aaron Ramsey, the player many Arsenal fans are just loving to hate at the minute, Bendtner underwent surgery to fix the adductor longus tendon in his left thigh and while it is unclear how long he will be out for it is expected to be around three months. His agent confirmed that he will not be returning to Arsenal and said that even if Juventus wanted to cancel the loan deal they couldn’t.

Daft story of yesterday goes to AS and then the Daily Mail for linking Arsene with a move for that cheating troll Dani Alves to replace Bacary Sagna. Can you tell I don’t like Alves? Anyway, none of it matters as Alves tweeted, or commented, or something, dismissing the story by highlighting the fact that the story came from a Madrid-based paper. Clearly they want to distract Alves, the heartbeat of the Barca side.

That’s about your lot for today,don’t forget you can keep up to date with all the Arsenal gossip going on around the interweb on the Gossip site which is updated regularly throughout the day.