Nasri 26, Gallas 52, Walcott 66, Bendtner 90  – Divers: None

Are they back? This wasn’t stiff English competition, I realize… but the boys put on a clinic nonetheless. Perhaps it will serve as a nice little confidence boost to get them over the loss at Fulham. Or, perhaps… just maybe… they’re already over it. I’ll get to that in a minute.

A few months ago, if you had told me we could find another player who could slot right into the team just as seamlessly as Bacary Sagna has… I wouldn’t have believed you. But it appears we have found that player in Samir Nasri, who has continued his impressive start to his Arsenal career with his second goal. A nice little shot it was, too. He found his way through the Twente pinball machine and rolled one home at ‘26. William Gallas, target of unnecessary abuse, found himself at the right place at the right time when Niklas Bendtner’s shot carromed off the keeper at ‘52. The man who’s surname now adorns my most recent acquisition from The Armory ( a lovely long sleeved home kit), Theo Walcott, put a terrific little curling shot in from about 22 yards right around the Twente keeper at ‘66. More of those, please. Then to cap it all off, Niklas Bendtner took a nifty little back heel from Denilson and popped it in just into injury time. Not bad… not bad at all.

Now… if you were to read the usual suspect blogs lately (all of which I do love, mind you), you may begin to despair. What with all the yelling and blame-gaming going on, who wouldn’t? They’re crying for Wenger’s head, giving out 7 day ultimatums (as if anyone on the Arsenal staff could give a flying shit)…  Well, I’d like to go on record as to say that all this shit can be flushed straight away. Yes, there are concerns this season… particularly in the midfield. We’re off to a somewhat rocky start. But we need to have faith, Gooners. Things will sort themselves out. Whether you agree with Arsene or not, he is the man in charge for the forseeable future. We need to get behind him, his chosen captain, and the whole team and cheer them on, win, lose or draw. His avoidance of the media questions about signings and such shouldn’t bother us. Let the man do his job! As someone mentioned on one of those aforementioned blogs recently, “he gets paid to win trophies, not bring up young talent” or something to that effect. Spot on. But, I’m going to go out on the skinny branches here and take a wild guess that someone like Arsene Wenger already knows this. I know it’s been a few years since we’ve won anything of note. Well, you can be sure this isn’t lost on him either. If you had to endure the sort of meetings that he must, where our lack of silverware has direct implications on the agenda, you wouldn’t need the blog of some fan to remind you of this. He lives it. Everyday. And don’t pay any attention to the conspiracy minded folk who seem to think they know the amounts changing hands and how Arsene’s doing this that or the other thing because we bought a new stadium. You might as well let the same folks explain to you why the atomic clock measures the vibrations of cesium atom within a vaccuum to measure time… but they’d have no fucking clue, so don’t bother. Yeah, I need something to read between games, too. But this negativity is at an all time high and we’re only two games into the season! Chill out, Arsenal faithful. Sit back and enjoy the football. It’s going to get a whole lot better… and we don’t need to Xabi to do it.

Hangeland 21 – Divers: Adebyor

Extremely disappointing. What was it I said recently about underestimating an opponent in this league? Yeah, well… there you go.

First and foremost, hats off to Jimmy Bullard and Company. Fulham played a pretty tough match, and they came up with the goods when it was most important. That can’t be denied. We were outplayed. And when Arsenal finally woke from their stupor (somewhat) for the last few minutes of the match, Fulham withstood the assault and sent us packing with not a point to show for our paltry efforts. So, congratulations Fulham. Well played, and I’m pretty sure if they keep on playing like that, they won’t be fighting for survival at the end of this season like they were last.

I don’t have a lot to say about the Arsenal effort. There were some players who played their typical great game, Bacary Sagna comes to mind, and some others who did alright… but that’s certainly not enough. We are suffering in the midfield. Hemorrhaging, if you will. Why this situation hasn’t been addressed this summer is a complete and utter mystery to me. And if you needed further proof that Adebayor’s 30 goals were served to him on a fucking plate by the likes of last years midfield, you got it yesterday. Without Fabregas, Flamini and Hleb to gingerly place the ball on a tee for him, I don’t think we should expect a lot from The Togonator. Sorry, but I’m bitter. Particularly when he threw himself down on the pitch inside the area in the waning minutes of the match looking for a penalty.

I really do think we will pull it together eventually, and I’m not particularly concerned with this result. But dropped points are a bad thing this early in the year. We’re already digging ourselves a hole from which to climb out of. That can be fun to watch in itself, though. So I remain optimistic.

Nasri 4 – Divers: none

Well, I expected West Brom to come screaming out of the gate a bit more than they did, but it took them a bit to find their pace. Near the end of the match, there were some scary moments where it looked like the pressure they were mounting would be a hair too much for our beleaguered squad. But they held in there and came away with the the three points, and that’s all that matters.

Samir Nasri, the midfielder touted as being cut from the same cloth as Zidane and brought in as the natural replacement for Hleb, took less than four minutes to open his Premiership account. It may not have been a flair shot, but being in the right place at the right time when the midfield comes in to press from a byline cross is a skill all in its own. Samir showed us that he has that skill… and it is honed. Let’s see… in one league appearance, Samir’s scored 14% of the goals Hleb managed in 89 appearances.

Emmanuel Eboue, who frightened me simply by setting foot on the pitch as a central midfielder, set my fears of him aside somewhat… defensively. Offensively? …not so much. Emmanuel: stop shooting the ball. We have people who can do that. Get the ball… to them. You go now.

William Gallas took a twenty-something yard shot that, had it gone in, would have been an absolute stunner. Not an ounce of spin, he powered that ball just wide left. More like that please, Bill. But… a bit to the right, thanks.

So, not sure where this puts us in the table, as I haven’t watched any of the other matches yet nor have I flipped on Sky to find out, but I imagine we’re somewhere in the middle with +1 GD. Not that it matters much. Onwards and upwards, fellow Gooners. Can you smell it?

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty damn excited (injury news aside). The smell of a fresh new EPL season is in the air and our first league match is upon us tomorrow at lunch with a visit from West Bromwich Albion. It looks like we’ll have newcomer Samir Nasri back from the treatment room in time to help shore up the midfield, and defensive stalwart Kolo Toure will also be on hand. It goes without saying that we can use all the players back from injury that we can get, so this is great news ahead of the match. I really do believe we have enough to handle the newly promoted West Brom, but underestimating opposition in this league is never a good idea.

Unfortuntately, it looks as if I’ll be downloading this match and watching it on the laptop, since the local carriers only seem to be getting five other matches for the weekend. I don’t see why they can’t just carry all ten games each week. I’d happily pay for it, were it available. So, someone… be a good pal and stick a copy of the match up on a torrent for a sad Gooner across the pond, will you?

And, just in time… there’s a brand spanking new League Table to the right there, just rife with zeroes. It’s a pretty thing, is it not? It’ll be my duty to update that puppy each week (probably by Tuesday) to track that redcurrant line. Which, I hope remains at or near its alphabetical position where it currently resides. Come on you ARSENAL!!!

Gallas 63, Adebayor 83 – Divers: none

As I lay in the bed yesterday afternoon, tossing and turning in pain from a nasty stomach flu… I happened to flip past ESPN to find they were broadcasting the Arsenal match. Now, delusional from fever or not, I just know that I checked listings the previous day to see if anyone was showing the game and I couldn’t find anyone who was. But, I was happy to see there were still 40 minutes left to play and that I wouldn’t have to watch the game online.

So, between dazing in and out I got to watch what appeared to be a somewhat disjointed Arsenal plod their way through the match. From what I hear, Twente kept the pressure on pretty nicely for the first half, and were continuing to do so when I flipped the match on. But soon after, they began to appear somewhat toothless. There was one blown chance by Twente that hit the side netting, but apart from that Arsenal handled them… warily, but handled just the same.

At 63′ Robin van Persie put in a free kick in which it appeared William Gallas knocked it in with his wedding tackle. Arseblogger must be having a field day trying to come up with the Penis of William Gallas references for this week. Can’t wait for Friday. A bumbly looking thing really (the goal, not the penis) but a goal it is… and an Away goal at that, so we’ll take it. Then at 82′ Theo Walcott crossed a nice little ball in front of Emannuel Adebayor for our second. Nicely done boys. This means that FC twente now have to come to The Grove and win with 3 goals. Not impossible, but highly improbable, I’d say. Although, the way our injury list seems to keep getting longer and longer, anything’s possible. Can you imagine crashing out of the Leauge on the second leg of the qualifier… with a 2 Away goal lead… at home… to Steve McLaren? Me neither.