Joy to Despair

Well on Tuesday Arsenal beat Tottenham 4-1 in their own backyard. A fantastic result and performance and one that made the disappointing last gasp Darren Bent equaliser at Sunderland last Saturday a distant, fading memory. A result that you expect to kick us back into gear after that poor display at Sunderland and be a big confidence boost that would do us wonders going into today's game against West Brom. But no. We lost to West Brom, in OUR own backyard and we come away from today with a big question mark on our ability to win the Premier League this season.

There's never a dull moment as an Arsenal fan is there? That's usually a good thing, but on days like today it isn't. So what happened? All us Gooners are asking the same question. Well maybe it was just an off day. Maybe we underestimated West Brom. Maybe Wenger got the team selection wrong. Maybe his half time team talk was the complete opposite of inspiring after a poor first half. I think it's probably a combination of all of those potential explanations. Every team has an off-day, they usually come away from home but today it unusually came at the Emirates Stadium. However we need to make sure we don't have many of these and that a week tomorrow at 6pm that we aren't 7 points of Chelsea and 6 points off Man Utd going in to the international break (I'll fume about that another time). Because that would give us a big handicap, it wouldn't put us out of the title race, it would be naive to think so. After last years season of playing catch up we wouldn't want to be in the same shoes again.

On the one hand, if we win at Chelsea we'll be one behind them, but if we lose we'll be seven. If we draw we'd be six which is quite big at this stage but given it's away from home, with such a long way to go in the title race and considering the fact that we will have had harder fixtures so far than Chelsea, I think I'd settle for a point. Especially if Man Utd slip up tomorrow and/ or next week. So its not all glum, we could be singing and dancing in eight days time with things looking rosy again having inflicted a second defeat on Chelsea in a week and giving ourselves the belief that is needed for us to get as close as possible of leading the pack, and at the same time harming Chelsea's confidence.

So, overall today was disappointing but Chelsea and Tottenham also lost and we still have plenty of time to make up for it. What better game to bounce back in than the Chelsea game next week? Although I'd much rather be bouncing back against Birmingham at home and save the Chelsea game until after the international break. (Though after today's events maybe not). Maybe the return of Fabregas and Vermaelen next week. Maybe back to winning ways. Maybe.