Will you stay?

Another Arsenal match. Another ESPN transmission. Another trip to Clapham's Windsor Castle.

By the time Jo and I arrived there, having unsuccessfully tried to find another pub that might be showing a London derby, rather than the Wales - Ireland rugby match, the pub was pretty crowded with Arsenal fans and so the nutter quotient was slightly lower than last week.

Another Arsenal match. Another early Arsenal goal. Another ninety minutes of stress.

It's amazing to think that Arsenal have won so many games quite comfortably this season without scoring an early goal - of course, by early I mean in the first fifteen minutes - and yet in the last two weeks we've scored an early goal before proceeding to make a meal of what should be the perfect feast for this Arsenal side. In this instance, Denilson's wonderful early strike, which answered my "what is the point of Denilson?" question earlier yesterday afternoon rather emphatically, should have set up a reasonably comfortable evening at the Grove. And when Nick Bendtner came close to doubling the lead just moments later, cutting in and lashing one just wide with his right foot, it seemed like we might steamroller West Ham. But it wasn't to be.

Another Arsenal match. Another long ball over our defence. Another penalty conceded.

The defining minute of the match was, fairly clearly, the one before half-time as Thomas Vermaelen belatedly showed us that he isn't a machine and misjudged the flight of the ball. Turning to chase with Guillermo Franco, he went to hook the ball away, missing it completely and Franco fell to the ground under minimal contact. Despite referee Martin Atkinson's distance from the collision, the linesman flagged for a penalty and a red card was waved in Vermaelen's direction, somewhat harshly I would say. To his credit, he didn't complain and left the pitch quickly and quietly.

It's tough to take another soft penalty being conceded when we've seen several, well... call it as it is, "stonewall" penalties not given our way this season. In this instance, we got away with it. Manuel Almunia has had a lot of stick this season, especially from me, but his penalty save yesterday afternoon had a defining moment feel about it. A huge moment for the Spaniard, and us, unlike his compatriot this afternoon, he managed to get the ball away from danger too.

By some weird coincidence, we have conceded penalties home and away to both Hull and West Ham this season and they all fall, for me at least, into the "soft" category. Well, all except the penalty Steve Bennett gave Hull in December, which was just wasn't a penalty under any interpretation of the law, no matter what rules FIFA bring in. Whilst the penalties conceded away from home have been scored, Almunia has managed to repel both the home ones and who knows how critical those saves could prove to be?

The spectre of Thomas being handed down a three game ban and therefore missing the Spurs game in a few weeks briefly lingered, as did the possibility of Sol getting himself another early bath against the Hammers after a very late two footed tackle, but it turns out he will only miss the Birmingham game. That feels like punishment enough for me - there again he will, at least get a rest before the Barcelona game. So that's good. And if anyone is fearing that perhaps Vermaelen's suspension means that we will see Sol and Silvestre line up at Birmingham next week, hopefully yesterday's redeployment of Alex Song into the backline points the way forward. I think the options we have in central midfield should allow the manager to stick Song at the back for one game with minimal disruption and makes more sense than calling up "el geriatrico".

A fairly lengthy digression there, sorry about that, weren't we brilliant once down to ten men though? If there was a saving grace for us, as I contemplated playing a half of football with ten men, it was that Hull had shown us how effectively it can be done when you've got something to protect the week before. As I said to Luke at the time, we're a possession team anyway, so it was just a case of keeping the ball and we were playing West Ham, who - no disrespect - were about as good as their league position suggested they would be.

So that was three saving graces then.

Of course another saving grace might have been the presence of Cesc in midfield. Cesc it was, as the game ran into its delicately poised dying stages, who earned the penalty when the already booked Matthew Upson stuck his hand out to block a pass. I sent a prayer up to God. I transmitted brainwaves across London and said: "Please Cesc, if you never do anything in an Arsenal shirt ever again, please put this one away!"

He must have been listening, because that's exactly what he did, going left with a penalty for the first time this season, which sent us all into rapture. The only sour note was the rate at which ground seemed to be emptying. Yeah, you all had Saturday nights to get to, I know. I also know it's easy to criticise when I'm stood in the warmth of a pub, beer in hand. But your team, our team, was playing to go top of the league, however briefly. More to the point they were doing it, and did it, with ten men. For them to finish the job with the canon that decorates the eastern side of the lower tie almost completely visible is, in my opinion, a disgrace and speaks to why, we as a support get so much bloody grief from supporters across the land. If you can't stay to support your team now, when they could be on the verge of something truly special, then when will you stay?

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