Christiansands

In November 1996, just as Arsène Wenger was getting his feet under the big oak desk in the manager's office at Arsenal Football Club, my favourite musician of all time was about to release the follow up to his widely acclaimed debut album, Maxinquaye. The musician in question is Tricky and the album is Pre Millennium Tension. On that album there is a song called Christiansands, which also happens to be my favourite Tricky song. It contains the lyric, "I'll master your language and in the meantime I'll create my own".

To get to the point, I sense your impatience already, listening to Christiansands today it occurs to me that this lyric would have been a great mission statement from the then new Arsenal manager. He quickly surmised that our defence back then didn't need to be touched and, having mastered that fact, he set about creating an entirely new "language" of attacking football for Arsenal fans. In the process, he has created a monster which has seen Arsenal's fanbase grow beyond, I'm sure, anyone at the club's expectation. This is reflected here at this very website where a once small Arsenal community has become one of the monoliths of the Arsenal corner of the interweb and I get tweets related to the club's fortunes from countries like the USA and Nigeria (hello!). I'm not trying to big this place up, you all have your own opinions of it, what I'm saying is that the manager has all but single-handedly transformed the fortunes of a big London club into one of Europe's most aspirational clubs. Truly a new language at the club has been created, but it seems like more and more people are having trouble understanding it.

As with Pre Millennium Tension, I suggest sticking with it and perhaps your patience will be rewarded. Two paragraphs for that conclusion? Yes, I'm afraid so. Reading the Online Gooner this lunchtime I find myself wondering what I'm missing. Do I support one of the top 8 clubs in Europe or a team that's going to be fighting for a place in the Europa league this season? It is confusing, even for me.

Anyway, I was saying something about patience, wasn't I? Someone who needed a lot of patience over the last calendar year is our great Dane, Nicklas Bendtner. It seems to me that he's never fully recovered from the groin injury he sustained against the tiny totts last October and his father was reported to have said that Bendtner wouldn't be playing football again until November. I hardly need to tell you which paper reported this, do I? Anyway, his father has denied that report, with the man himself saying,

"My basic form is now fully in place, and I started to sprint. Next week we try to train with the ball and it will be a huge step forward".

So that's some good news for us. Although, I should say that much as I admire Nick's determination and belief, I do feel like Marouane Chamakh, in his brief time at the club, has shown us the kind of player Bendtner should be. Which isn't to say Bendtner can't get there. Like Theo Walcott, he's been around so long, people forget how young he is and Chamakh has much more experience. I've always believed in him and I'm not giving up now. Although I think he's going to find it hard to get back in the team.

Other good injury news, yes two pieces of good injury news in one day, is that Samir Nasri is back in training with the hope of being fit for our home game against Bolton. So, for once, a prediction of a month's absence looks more or less spot on. I say "looks", you've heard that line about counting chickens, right? Maybe Andrei Arshavin will have found his mojo by then, too. He's been talking about his football being "more effective, but less sparkling", I think the opening salvo of games this season is clear evidence of this. He hasn't been particularly amazing, but still has two goals and an assist as well as least one "Hleb" assist, you know, the famous pass before the assist. He can't remember the last beautiful goal he scored and seems a man in constant torment, I wonder if he's unhappy because he's not playing as he knows he can or if it's the other way round. Whatever it is, I hope he finds the answer soon because he's s little bit special when in full flow.

When you hear about defensive midfielders talking about adding goals to their game, you know that you can only be listening to an Arsenal player talk, yes, you Alex Dmitri Song Bilong! It's therefore refreshing to hear Thomas Vermaelen talking about the importance of stopping goals at the other end of the pitch. He told Arse.com,

"It sounds silly but as a defender you are happier after a 6-0 win with the clean sheet than if you have scored one goal but you concede two.

"Maybe for some people they are not happy to hear that but for me the most important thing is to defend and to defend as a team as well, and then we will get further as a team.

"If we defend first then we can win games. After that we will see."

Now, the likes of George Graham, José Mourinho and, I think, Rafa Benitez are clearly adherents to the school of thinking that says if you don't concede, you can't lose. But I don't think our manager thinks like that, well, we know he doesn't. But it's good to see that the leader of our defence does and, I reckon, if he can get our entire defensive unit focused on prevention rather than creation (Alex), we'll be looking much better off this season. I will miss those 25 yarders, but come next May, if we've shipped 15 goals less (dare I dream about shaving another 5 off the tally?) than last season, I think I'll cope.

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