My Vision

So many questions and obviously no clear answers from anybody. I have read some very interesting articles about the whole Ferguson/referees conspiracies and unfortunately I cannot find the one I read a few years ago. This article showed what happened to referees who crossed Fergie's path by not giving decisions his way or giving decisions the to the other team. I think every referee who did something Ferguson did not like was demoted to a lower league for the next game. From what I remember they were not given another Manchester United game for a while. I kinda need the link for this but I have no idea where I read it and Google isn't being my friend today

So back to the QPR match tomorrow, it is the game before the big FA Cup clash at Old Trafford, arguably the most important fixture of our season so far, at least as things stand. When playing at the Emirates you can often get away with not being at your very best, kind of how we showed on the weekend. But playing in a game of this importance at Manchester United will be very difficult no matter what you think of them compared to years gone by. We will need to be at our sharpest and to get to our sharpest we need to beat QPR, not only beat them mind, we need to beat them by playing well because that is where we get our confidence from.

Crystal Palace and their poor excuse of a football pitch. Something should be done to prevent clubs in the highest league in England having pitches of that 'quality'. You are not allowed to wear earrings on the pitch because it's deemed as dangerous yet you are able to play on a surface that can cause injury. With even more money being pumped into this big business, I think it's only right that a certain standard of pitch should be allowed to play that football thing on. This is the point of the game right? Unless I'm missing something. Perhaps television companies would rather more upsets for their viewers to feast on so a nice leveler

Only recently we were all praising Arsenal's counter attacking approach against Manchester City and Aston Villa, but defeat to Tottenham in that defensive manner would not have pleased Arsène Wenger one bit. Not only that but the return of Danny Welbeck and Alexis Sanchez will have allowed Arsène Wenger to revert back to the front foot. I also wonder if it was no coincedence to partner Gabriel with Koscielny and not Mertesacker for our last cup game

As much as we all want him to dribble past three Spurs defenders and smash the ball past Loris Arsène will be thinking about what is most important. Is it worth having Alexis play 60 minutes and then snapping his hamstring again thus putting him out for 4-6 weeks? If his hamstring is not healed properly then that is quite likely to happen. Remember a few years back on the last day of the season we faced Newcastle at St James' Park. The race for 4th went right down to the final day, victory would give us 4th. Mikel Arteta had a thigh injury I think and was clearly not ready to return, whatever his injury was on the day, it flared up and he had to go off. It was the last day of the season so it didn't matter so much but the risk of losing a player for longer is high if you make decisions based

Since then, we have looked like a far better team collectively which is allowing the individuals such as Santi Cazorla to grab the headlines. It is far easier to express yourself on a solid platform. The obvious other important change to a few months back is that we have real life human beings in the squad. Not so long ago we had no midfielders available. The Southampton game is a perfect example of that. Here was a match against a current rival side for the top four places yet we field a midfield of Francis Coquelin, Calum Chambers and Santi Cazorla.

Andrew (@Arseblog) joins Paul (@PoznanInMyPants) and James (@GoonerFanatic49) in a slightly later than usual post match podcast. The victory against Brighton is on the agenda along with new boys Gabriel and Bielik.

ith the signing of Gabriel and the resurgence of Coquelin the squad has a more complete feel about it now. So much so that keeping players happy and committed to the club could prove to be an issue. That seems to be the case with Chuba Akpom. The youngster is coming to the end of his deal and it seems as if he has many options which is why he

Why do people subconsciously accept this, over aggressive tackles, shirt pulling and so on but get offended when a player who has been on the receiving end of three successive fouls decides to tell the referee to do his job and referee the game by the rule book? What is the betting that if Frank Lampard for example approached the referee and said something along the lines of 'For Fakk sake ref, you gonna book him or what? that's the third fakking time in a row I've been kicked like', what is the betting that 90% of anti imaginary card wavers would be totally fine with it. It is essentially the same thing, one using fakk, the other using physical actions. Maybe the latter is not confident enough to explain to the referee his grievances, so this simple and to the point gesture tells the

Anyway on to the other news of the day, firstly we have confirmed the signing of 17 year old Krystian Bielik from Legia Warsaw for £2.4m. Arsène said he will be part of the first team squad but that doesn't necessarily mean he will play in the first team this season. Players like Maitland-Niles have been part of the first team but apart from a few minutes we have seen nothing of the lad. I suspect being part of the first team means he will be training, eating and learning with the 1st team set up as I am sure a few other youngsters are at present