2 defeats in 4 games leaves Arsenal in a strange position.

The start of to the campaign couldn’t have been better. A fantastic 6-1 win at Goodison Park really did surprise a lot of people. We thrashed Portsmouth 4-1 a week later and in between the two Premier League games we managed to beat Celtic away, something which teams like AC Milan, Manchester United and Barcelona had failed to do in recent seasons.

And I was particularly excited about the currently squad.

Vermaelen was clearly a brilliant signing. Hungry, quick and great in the air – the Celtic game really showed us what he was all about. This guy was obviously a winner and his determination and ability were hugely impressive. Another great signing by Arsene Wenger.

But with that, it seemed that two of his young protégés were now ready to step up to the mark.

Denilson and Song looked a lot more mature and composed in midfield. Alex Song in particular has looked a far better player this season and his tackling ability has really impressed me, and along with Vermaelen has been one of our best players so far for me.

But the confidence and winning start to the season came crumbling down at Old Trafford, and again at The Eastlands.

I didn’t write after the Manchester United game because I was livid. Nothing I would have wrote would have made any sense, although in fairness I suppose you could argue that I’ve never made sense anyway.

But I was livid for so many reasons.

We were the better team by far but we had let United off the hook, big time. We should have inflicted them with their second defeat in the Premier League and emphasised our intent for the season but a combination of bad luck, quite frankly shocking refereeing and stupidity from our own team threw all the hard work away.

Remember, we were dominating the Champions at their own ground and United were so worried about our attacking threat they actually played 5 in midfield. At home!

After taking the lead into half-time with a wonder goal from Arshavin, we dominated the first 10 minutes of the second half – which culminated in THAT Robin Van Persie chance which for all intents and purposes would have finished the game as a contest. United were not a threat at all but with only a solitary goals advantage a single mistake would change the game completely.

And unfortunately, we had two.

Rooney was charging down (away from the goal) in the penalty area and for some strange reason Almunia decided to take out the fat scouser. It was a ridiculous decision from an experienced goalkeeper who should know better. United had nothing and to gift them a penalty was unforgivable and I still get angry about that. Yes, Rooney started to fall before contact was made but why give him an excuse to fall to ground? This is Wayne Rooney we’re talking about here. Pure idiocy plain and simple.

As you would expect, Rooney dispatched the penalty and the game completely changed. You don’t give a team like Manchester United any sort of encouragement and as expected the goal rejuvenated them and then another moment of stupidity gifted them the winning goal.

I know my criticism of players in the past has probably been over-critical but I honestly don’t know why Abou Diaby plays for Arsenal. I was cursing his performance well before he stupidly headed in that own goal because he is such a lazy player. And I was even more infuriated when he stayed on the pitch as Denilson, Eboue and Arshavin were substituted. This guy has no big game intelligence and might be good against whipping boys like Portsmouth but doesn’t have the desire and drive to be top class.

He’s been around longer than players like Denilson and Song but for me, Diaby never looks like improving. I’ve said this for years now and my opinion hasn’t changed one bit. He is a liability and the problem is these mistakes keep happening time and time again. I honestly wonder how Wenger has so much patience with the guy. If you thought Adebayor was a lazy player, Diaby takes the biscuit. There’s no doubt he has some ability, but unfortunately we only see it when he’s bothered – which quite honestly isn’t enough.

And we have to mention the refereeing, because it was disgraceful. We should have been awarded two penalties (on Van Persie and Arshavin) in the space of 2 minutes but nothing was given. And I couldn’t believe how many fouls Valencia got away with in the first half without even getting booked. Evra did get book eventually but it took around 1,274 fouls before his name was in the book. And of course, Arsenal picked up 6 bookings to United’s 2 even though the home side produced a lot more fouls over the 90 minutes.

We all know about the disgusting songs aimed at Arsene at Old Trafford too, and the ridiculous sending off so I won’t go over old ground again.

Then we come to the Manchester City game.

I always look to see who the referee is before an Arsenal game, and funnily enough I was confident when I saw Mark Clattenburg’s name come up. I’ve always thought he was a decent referee, but not yesterday.

I only caught some German highlights yesterday and obviously it only showed the major incidents, so excuse me if I am incorrect in my interpretation of the game.

What I saw wasn’t a white-wash from Citeh.

Their opener came from a lucky Almunia own-goal. Can you blame the Spaniard for the goal? Who knows. People have said that he didn’t shuffle his legs over enough and others just put it down to back luck. And it looked like Micah Richards was offside (not unlike Gallas was for our disallowed equaliser at Old Trafford). When it rains, it definitely pours.

Manuel Almunia hasn’t had the best start to the season, and has only kept one clean sheet in 6 games so far which was against Celtic at Parkhead. And to be fair, Gallas and Vermaelen were immense that day and he didn’t have many saves to make. The problem is should a top-class keeper be conceding so many goals for a side like Arsenal?

The second half saw Tomas Rosicky’s introduction and it seemed like his presence gave Arsenal the charge they needed, and Robin Van Persie scored an excellent goal after turning Lescott (not for the first time this season) and drilling the ball into the bottom corner with his weaker foot.

From what I saw from the coverage, the reason Arsenal lost was partly because they were unlucky and partly because they were hell bent on going for the win. And our attitude to never give up and always score is one of the reasons why were are were we are.

That’s not a criticism, but an observation.

It looked like Arsenal had a hell of a lot more chances than City did. Van Persie came close several times, including a shot which hit the post. Gallas had a header cleared off the line and Shay Given (as you would expect) showed his quality and was called to make several top drawer saves.

On the balance of play, a 4-2 defeat is pretty harsh.

But now to the encouraging news.

Yes, we’ve lost 2 games in 4 and in seasons gone by, I would be the first to criticise the team for a lack of effort, heart and desire. But that doesn’t seem the case this season.

The biggest problem I’ve had with Arsenal teams that have lost games (remember Fulham and Hull last season) was the lack of desire. I couldn’t care less how much ability you have, if you didn’t give 110% when you wore an Arsenal shirt then I found that extremely annoying. Regular readers will know that I loved players like Ray Parlour because he would die in an Arsenal shirt. Obviously, I don’t really want to see our players actually dying but determination is paramount for me.

And that hasn’t been our problem this season.

If we apply the same attitude over this campaign then I won’t be worried about what the season holds for Arsenal. For me, the reasons for our defeats have been down to a combination of bad luck, and the desire to win.

Leading 1-0 at Old Trafford, if we closed the game out we probably could have left with all 3 points. Even at 1-1, when we gifted them a goal we probably could have left with a point. But that’s not in our nature, and unfortunately we were punished for it.

It was the same story in the blue half of Manchester. We pegged it back to 1-1 but got caught on the counter-attack trying to score the winner. In both games, at the vital times we were on top but then got hit with a sucker punch. Don’t get me wrong, along with the back luck we have to eliminate the stupid individual mistakes from players like Diaby and Almunia, but we’re not a million miles away from everyone else.

What the hell is going on here?

If Platini had a vendetta against Arsene Wenger then this is surely it.

As well as being a complete disgrace, it is extremely sad. It’s as if this is the first dive ever made in football.

And I hate to bring this up, but if this was an English player – I don’t know, someone like Steven Gerrard maybe, or Wayne Rooney then I don’t think this would even become an issue. Michael Owen is another player who is a saint when it comes to these things. But it’s okay if he’s ‘winning’ a penalty against Argentina…

It’s just a huge amount of hypocrisy from everyone which is just pathetic.

When I think about the punishment Eduardo might face, along with the already high-profile incident then I’m just so riled. And here’s why…

It’s Unfair

The fact is diving has been in football for years now and nothing has been done to stop it. Disgraceful acts of diving from players like Gerrard, Rooney and Owen have happened in England internationals yet these instances were swept under the carpet. I remember one from Gerrard (against Estonia was it?) which was one of the worse dives I had ever seen. But hey, they’re English so it wasn’t a dive, it was being clever.

It’s a shame Theo Walcott wasn’t on the pitch and dived on Wednesday night.

We’d have a peaceful life then.

The Bigger Picture

I’m not condoning diving but let’s look at the bigger picture here. This was a 5-1 aggregate win over Celtic. The penalty didn’t make that much of a difference overall and certainly didn’t effect the result, however hard you want to argue to the contrary.

But how about going back to that faithful night at Old Trafford when Shrek dived over Sol Campbell’s leg to ‘earn’ a penalty and effectively end our unbeaten run in the Premier League. That incident still makes me sick to my stomach, and was a much bigger game then the Champions League qualifier. That one dive essentially ended our title challenge that season.

We could even talk about the valid tackle Gael Clichy made in that Birmingham game where we conceded a last minute penalty and Eduardo broke his leg. That decision f*cked us over as well. In fact, there’s been a lot of big and important games penalty decisions have gone against us, but nothing was done about it.

It’s Eduardo

I have to say that the incident against Celtic was the first time I’ve seen Eduardo do anything like dive before. So why is he being singled out now for it? If diving isn’t acceptable in the game, then the authorities should have done something a hell of a lot sooner. If diving was punished then Eduardo would have thought twice about doing it.

If this whole thing was happening to a serial diver like Cristiano Ronaldo or Steven Gerrard then fair enough, but Eduardo? Come on! What has he done to deserve this treatment? The guy’s come back from a horrific injury and been out of the game for almost a year.

And the guy who did it to him got off scot free.

Nice.

Arsene Wenger’s Stance On Cheating

Arsene has always been an advocate of helping referees.

He says that technology should be used to help officials who can make mistakes. That’s not a criticism, but a fact of human nature. Referees will make mistakes. Surely a guy behind a TV screen who has a benefit of a replay can instantly tell the referee on the pitch if it’s a right or wrong call.

And if this was implemented and players knew that every decision was based on replay evidence then they would stop cheating and diving, because they would know they wouldn’t get away with it.

UEFA and FIFA govern football, the richest and most popular sport in the world. They have a responsibility to ensure the game is played fairly and in the right spirit and they have had the means to enforce this. Other sports like Rugby and Tennis are light years ahead of us in this respect so the governing bodies have absolutely no excuse.

What’s the point of retrospective punishments when ‘the damage has been done’ so to speak?

Surely it’s more important to eradicate the problem rather than punish it?

There is absolutely no point in what UEFA are doing. Because if it’s the Champions League Final and a player goes into a 50:50 with the goalkeeper then he doesn’t give a sh*t if his dive wins the match is he? If it’s the choice between winning Europe’s biggest competition and a 2 game ban then I know what every player would choose.

People only remember the winners.

If you want an example of how UEFA shouldn’t be run and how stupid they actually are, then this is it. Common sense just goes out the window.