The Exorcist

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Date	Time	C	Opponent	F	A	R	S
29 Aug	5:15 PM	P	Manchester United (A)	1	2	Lost

When I was much, much younger, I developed a habit of writing match reports that rewrote history in the event of things going against my team. Writing as exorcism twenty years ago. If I was still in the habit then... well, Robin van Persie would be coming home with the match ball after a brilliant hat-trick. Manuel Almunia would have stayed on his line once and come and claimed the second time - more on that later, we would have had a proper referee and Arsenal would have won a match we thoroughly deserved to.

Alas, in the real world, the karmic boomerang I have mentioned once or twice before came swinging back and slapped us all on the back of the head. It was inevitable there would be some kind of fall out from Wednesday night, but did it have to all come in this game?

In so many ways, this game was history repeating itself through the years. As last year, we were much the better side for the majority of the game, but we couldn't turn our superiority into goals. This was also the case the year before, in a match that had we won it, we may well have won the league. Two years ago, we bossed the game, going a goal up before William Gallas conceded a needless penalty and then the referee gave a soft free kick against Gilberto which Owen Hargreaves duly dispatched to turn a 1-0 deficit into a 2-1 victory.

History repeating... Manuel Almunia once again suffering his usual brain freeze against the Manchester United. I don't care what anyone says, he cost us in the semi-final last year, he cost us in the home league match two seasons back with another ill judged sortie from his line, and they're just the recent ones. Only he knows why he felt he had to come rushing from his goal to meet a player who, has history against us when William Gallas was there too. Simply put, Almunia stay on his line and there is no danger. After that, the truly game turning penalty was a formality. He compounded this five minutes later with his usual failure to come and collect a routine keeper's ball on the edge of the six yard box, thereby allowing the otherwise excellent Diaby to inexplicably put through his own net. Coming just a minute after van Persie's free kick cannoned off the bar, it was a dagger through the heart.

History repeating, it was a vintage Arsenal suicide. United went 2-1 up having had just two shots on target, what will still be hurting this morning is that United really did nothing to deserve the stunning turnaround, it was gifted to them.

History repeating, in a game generally played without nastiness, without rancour, Manchester United committed 22 fouls to Arsenal's 16 and guess what? Yeah, we got 6 yellow cards to United's 3. I'm sure you can do the maths on that one. No arguments about Eboue's dive, but how Mike Dean looked at Darren Fletcher's "cleaning out" of Andrey Arshavin in the penalty area and waved play on and then booked Robin van Persie for an identical challenge minutes later, only he knows. Okay, so Arshavin angrily smashed in a beauty just seconds after the penalty not given, but that shouldn't detract from the inconsistency of the refereeing. History repeating, for those two incidents we have Rooney's assault on Walcott at the grove last November unpunished with a card, only for Gallas to earn a booking for an identical tackle on Ronaldo within minutes.

On that Fletcher challenge, by the way, Sir Alex must have borrowed le boss' specs because he said that Fletcher played the ball. Which is true admittedly, but he played it with his hand. After taking Arshavin out. It was a stone cold penalty.

History repeating, once again we go to Old Trafford and get to hear our manager serenaded with usual style by men who really should know better. It is beyond belief that this has carried on for years unchecked by the people wielding the real power in the game, the media. Or by Manchester United themselves, it demeans one of the biggest clubs in the world. As did the, apparently irony free, booing of Eduardo, Ronaldo is out of sight, out of mind it seems. On Eduardo, he must be thrilled that his next game is for Croatia at Wembley- I hope he scores a hat trick.

One of the positives from yesterday's game is that Arsène will be getting an apology from Keith Hackett following Lee Probert (a man I believe we have history with, I've also seen him make a complete dog's dinner of a QPR match) and Mike Dean's ridiculously heavy handed handling of the manager's reaction to RvP's last gasp equaliser being cancelled out - why did Mike Dean just not end the game, rather than subject the boss to such ridicule? We seem to be up on a disciplinary charge after every Old Trafford fixture, and I think I'm right in saying we'll be getting the "failure to control players" fine for our six bookings, but it's progress of a kind that le boss is the one being apologised to.

Sometimes it just isn't your day. I remember thinking, as Andy Gray talked about Ben Foster's great reaction save from van Persie which kept the score at 1-0, that it was starting to look like it wouldn't be our day. But for it to unravel as it did, it's very hard to take. That said, I think we showed yesterday, and it was admitted as much in the Sky studio and from what I saw of the Sunday Supplement this morning, that we are a much, much stronger team than we were given credit for. To go to United and play like that, without Cesc, Nasri, Rosicky and Walcott must give the guys tremendous belief for the rest of the campaign. It looks to me, that if we can cut out the mistakes, it is going to take a special team to beat Arsenal this season. My only worry is that with players that seem to suffer brain freezes with some frequency, step forward Almunia, Clichy, Diaby and Eboue, those mistakes may just keep coming.

No links today, I purposely haven't read anything else (other than the apology story) so you got pure me today. The Sopranos' Dr Jennifer Melfi said that "depression is rage turned inward", I feel I've directed it appropriately.

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