Sunderland FA Cup

Pic. We've not had a pic of Chewbacca for a long time. (Source Daily Mail)

SAT a.m. I’m extremely pissed off with the various blogs this morning. Almost to a man, they keep referring to this afternoon’s game against Sunderland as our last chance of a bit of silverware this season.

Bloody nerve…it is after all only half time in the CL and whilst pulling back a 4 goal deficit may be difficult, it’s certainly not impossible. Is it? Catching either of the Mancs not to mention the spuds, will admittedly be difficult and maybe, only maybe, that is beyond us… but rattling in 5 against Milan…on our pitch with our crowd it’s far from impossible.

Now hopefully in 8 hours time, these thoughts will be recording yet another win at Maison McNeill’s, and that may well have taken some of the bad taste away from Wednesday.

SUN a.m. I think all those blogs I mentioned yesterday must have been talking about the Champions League. For some strange reason, the thought of Nile Perch with a bottle of wine was far more attractive than venting my spleen at a Gooner side that did even better than Wednesday’ s game as far as possession is concerned. 71%. Let’s repeat that so the message gets through…SEVENTY ONE PERCENT POSSESSION.

And we scored two goals. Sure at the wrong end but these days do we expect more given all that possession?

Strange. I’d been hoping that Theo would be benched and got my wish. Ditto TR. In fact, the side that appeared was almost the one I picked bar Le Coq at left back. As Wednesday was Gibbs’s first game back, that made sense. And then, Le Coq does a hammy with no more than 10 minutes gone. Not having seen the subs list it was a bit of a shock to see Squelch appearing and no Gibbs. WTF? He wasn’t even on the bench. Surely not another injury? Djourou and Squelch together. There’s a sight to give a gooner real confidence. That we’ll concede.

And it was so. Djourou commits the foul and the free kick eventually finds Richardson who belts a corner flag finder only for the ball to hit Squelch and divert perfectly into the corner.

Did we deserve to be a goal down? Not really. Vinho had a good effort saved. Maybe anybody but Webb might have awarded Robin a penalty, but Webb had given us one this season and that must have been our ration. Not so yellow cards for the opposition. We had four players writhing on the ground in different incidents before Sunderland got the first of three yellows. By that time, we had 3 booked. Can’t really complain about our bookings but the absence of any for Sunderland suggested that Webb is bent when it comes to Arsenal.

I’ve been desperately trying to think of something really positive from the second half. The only highlights were Squelch (the substitute) getting substituted; Theo coming on and proving that he can’t play down the middle either and the Ox, trying desperately to make up for losing the ball, chasing back 70 yards and arriving just in time to collide with the rebound off the post.

It has not been a happy week. On Thursday I was told that I had to go for tests at the local quackery…the doc believes I may have strained my heart following a really bad dose of bronchitis when we went to China 4 years ago. I tried to convince him that this was actually due to watching the Gooners but he wasn’t buying it. And then I discovered that our spuds game is a 1.30 Sunday kick-off, which coincides nicely with Annie’s birthday lunch when we host many guests. So that means a recording. And I hate watching recordings and keeping away from anything that might show/tell the score.

Maybe there is a justifiable time to say Shit. There I’ve said it.