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.