My Vision

Because I've been ill all week I have missed out on several talking points that I wanted to skim over. Firstly I thought Arsène's response to Mourinho was perfect. Don't engage with him further but throw it back his way whilst making him look small. The exact type of response you would expect from someone intelligent towards someone well, a little bit thick. Arsène is correct when he says that it reflects badly on Chelsea and their manager. The press should really give it the contempt it deserves trouble is they are too busy rubbing Mourinho's belly to do that. I am wasting far too much time on this so I'll move on

Manchester United with a red and white hurricane tomorrow. I don't know how Manchester United will approach the game tomorrow, although I have an idea but I would love to see us pressure their every step. I don't know where you squeeze in Rosicky but I want to see him sprinting after a Manchester United centre back only for said centre back to boot the ball rushed straight to Arteta on the half way line, Arsenal players camped in the Manchester United half, ready to have another go at them. I love when we play on the front foot like that. I want to see Koscielny going through van Persie to win the ball, jogging back into position and not picking up the traitor. I want to see Giroud

A fully fit Arsenal squad can beat any team in Europe, that I am confident of. Which is no mean feat when you consider the quality and of course wealth out there today. I'd say our squad without our top goal scorers outside of Giroud (Walcott & Ramsey) can do the business against our Premier League

We did manage to get some business done, experienced midfielder Kim Källström will come in on loan as back up as we have some short term problems what with Ramsey's injury continuing for 6 weeks at least, Flamini picking up a 3 match ban and Jack Wilshere suffering from trouble some little bit crock leg. So going into the dreaded February and March without our midfield who be scary. I have no idea of his quality and I will reserve judgement until I see him myself. I've been reading about how utterly poor he is from many who said Ramsey is not good enough to wear the shirt and that Flamini is under whelming only to be the saviour a few weeks later so like I said, I will wait before writing him off completely. Hopefully he doesn't get much of a look in anyway because it will mean

Tonight hasn't gone according to plan at all. Firstly Southampton outplay us in the first half for us to race into an early second half lead, only then to concede a silly goal to make it 2-2. Then we find out that Aaron Ramsey has had an injury set back on his thigh which has ruled him out for a further 6 weeks. Oh and Flamini also thought he would add to the fun by getting himself sent off with a two footed 'tackle' so that is three games out for him. But Arsene has sprinkled some magic Arsene dust over the gloom and has given Gooners hope that some transfer action may be done by the end of play on Friday.

Well I wonder if we are already trying to deal with those fixtures today. For weeks now we have raced into leads and then took our feet off the accelerator instead turning to our defensive organisation to see out games. Think back to the Coventry City game where we went into half time 2-0 up. With the quality we have we could have gone for their throats, pushed and pushed for more goals but we

Going back to some of my examples above and the perception of those players. Per Mertesacker was too slow, too lumbering and not Gary Cahill enough for Arsenal football club. A few seasons later and he is right up there for the Arsenal player of the season. I need not tell you about the ridiculous stick that young Aaron Ramsey had to endure, this season he was the star man in a team that included Mesut Özil, Santi Cazorla as well as others. What was the biggest contributory factor to these players improving so much? Playing football

We have lost some very important qualities, qualities that we do not have in abundance and that is what is most difficult to take. Players like Santi Cazorla, Mesut Özil, Aaron Ramsey and Jack Wilshere for example are all technically more natural footballers than Theo but we have players in the squad that can compensate for them if injury strikes. The general response as to who should replace Theo seems to be either Serge Gnabry or Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain

What happens from now until the close of this window is all very straight forward I reckon. We will have a list of targets of players that fit what Arsene wants, whether that be style of play or mentality, in fact more than likely both and we will try to buy those players. If we cannot get them then we go

I wanted to just say a quick Merry Christmas to readers out there and thank regular readers for continuing to come back even though I have been far from consistent in recent months. There are many reasons for that but hopefully after the near year I will be getting back on track writing regularly.