Of Mason men

I'm gonna start this afternoon's blog with an admission: I am a Spurs fan. No, no, that would be terrible, wouldn't it? My admission is not quite so nasty in the grand scheme of things, but I do have tell you that I didn't see the game last night. I didn't hear the game last night and, because I was watching the rather unpleasant film, The Killer Inside Me, I didn't even follow it via the world's best news service. I refer there, of course, to Twitter. So what am I doing here today? Well, I guess the thing is that I don't have to have seen the game to talk about a decision last night, one that flew in the face of all common sense. That said, any of you that feel I don't have the right to talk about it, I won't be offended if you close this page without going any further.

When I talk about "a decision" I refer, natch, to the one taken by two qualified match officials to allow Louis Saha's opening goal for Everton last night. A Coleman through ball to an offside (when the ball is played) Louis Saha is deflected, via an attempted Koscielny clearance- a clearance Koscielny is only making because he knows Saha has run off him- into the strikers path. Saha is still offside when he collects and smashes the ball past Szczesny. Saha has been offside during this entire passage of play, phase one, two, whatever, offside, right? Wrong. The goal stands. How? Why? Apparently Koscielny's attempted clearance counts as a pass (I assume). What? Are you having a laugh? That's a pass? Maybe in your school team, Lee Mason. My mate Luke made much of Howard Webb's largesse in not booking an Arsenal player whenever an Evertonian went down a few months back. I can only imagine how he would have reacted to such a decision going against his team. In fact, I know I would have got a text along the lines of "f******* cheating *****..." I'm supposed to be seeing him this weekend too. Luke, if you're reading, are we still on?

Anyway, injustice served- thank you very much, Lee Mason- I really hope the FA will have found someone else to referee our match with Stoke City in a couple of weeks, the thought of him coming back is too much to bear- it was down to the players to find a response. And by all accounts they managed to do that, well, obviously they did as they won the match in the end. It made for amusing reading on Twitter, the dread, the anger, the fear and then someone said something "Well played lads, massive three points". Huh? How did that happen?

In basic terms it went down like this, Andrei Arshavin (on for Rosicky) scored his first goal since Villa Park with a lovely cushioned volley after a Fabregas chipped through ball and I'm sure that everyone who was calling him a Jeremy Hunt over the last few weeks, booing him off is now loving him again, hang your heads in shame you lot. As I said yesterday, he can contribute just as much to our end product as Nasri- just look at his numbers for the season. The winning goal came when Koscielny wandered into what is often described as a "pocket of space", created by Bendtner attracting Everton's entire defence, and nodded home a van Persie inswinging corner. His second goal in a week and I'm sure he loved being at the bottom of the playground style bundle that followed the winner.

I suppose the celebration was merited though. On a night when Manchester United won again and Chelsea marked the beginning of the Torres era with a 4-2 win at Sunderland, it was important not to give any ground to Chelsea, nor lose any to Manchester United. The bare match stats point to another implausible Arsenal night. 55% possession against 45% (including five minutes of 100% possession), 10 shots on target, 9 off against just 4 shots on target. And yet it seems we came perilously close to not picking up all three points. Why do we do it to ourselves?

Coming to the "any other business" section of the blog, Samir Nasri's agent seems to be a sensible chap. Jean- Pierre Bernes, for that is his name, is saying that Nasri would be "wise" to stay at the club. Having the season he's having, I think we can all agree with that. It's encouraging to know that one of our star players seems very happy at the club. Not that I doubted it, but nice to have it confirmed. He will be missing, though for a further three weeks, and there are now fresh injury concerns over Alex Song and Theo Walcott. Arsène says that Song can't walk, following a collision with Laurent Koscielny and Theo has picked up a new ankle knock. Last week and a virtually fully fit squad seems a long time ago and with Nasri already out, losing Theo for any length of time would be a big blow. As for Song, well as the song says, we do have only one of him, so we better hope he's not just walking, but running and jumping come Saturday afternoon.

One person who won't be doing any jumping in the near future is Lukasz Fabianski. Having finally displaced the Waiter in goal (are there really some of you out there who believe Almunia is world class?), the injury he sustained against Manchester City, courtesy of a Wojciech Szczesny shot no less, appears set to cost Fabianski his place in goal for the rest of the season. He will be having surgery to repair his shoulder, therefore giving Szczesny the chance to "... take advantage of (his) team-mate's misfortunes." I don't have any real worries about Szczesny for the rest of the season. Some players have looked fazed by the prospect of playing for the Arsenal, despite his tender years, Wojciech is not one of them and has shown confidence, skill and no little bravery in his time between the sticks. My worry is what happens if he gets injured.

That's about it, I'm not going to talk about David Moyes "not talking" about Cesc's alleged comments towards Lee Mason at half-time yesterday. One because Lee Mason had nothing to say about it in his referee's report and secondly because, as I finish off this blog I began five hours ago- it hasn't taken me that long, I just got interrupted- Cesc has made a statement on the Arsenal website that says what needed to be said. All I will say is that a manager who has been hauled up before the FA at least three times recently because of altercations with match officials should know just a little bit better.

And it ends there.

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