A Poor Arsenal Bring Out the Best in Man U

The traitor shows his true colors.



There's no hiding from the fact that Arsenal's performance on Sunday fell fathoms short of what we expected.  Watching this team find their confidence and enjoy their football over the past several weeks made the pain of watching their meager execution all the more piercing.  And Arsene did not candy coat the performance.

"I hope that everybody's full of rage basically against ourselves because it's unbelievable to lose a game like that."

Can't get more to the point than that.

Having lost Per and Tommy the day of the game could have cost us, but I don't think it was the prevailing problem.  Vermie started his first match since last April and was solid.  I'm not sure Tommy would have played much having put forth an exhausting full-match effort against Dortmund on Wednesday.  He might have been able to come off the bench as I could see Wenger being wary of putting the 33 year old injury-prone player on the pitch unless he was wrapped in cotton wool.  No.  I think that we were psychologically out of it.  We have been losing at Old Trafford in the Premier League for awhile now (I think the 1-0 victory in September 2006 was the last one).  And if I had one word do describe how we played, I would have said scared.  United pressed us high up, but instead of playing our patient, fast-paced passing, we booted it up field more times than I can remember.  We allowed ourselves to become panicked which affected our accuracy.

All in all what I saw was a hard-working Manchester United club out hustle and beat an under performing and weakened Arsenal side.  That's the positive to take from this defeat.  I have confidence this team will bounce back after international break to compete successfully against other top teams.  We have yet to face Chelsea and Manchester City in the league.  Those teams hold no psychological sway over us.  I trust that we will be in the position and mindset in February to beat Rooney et al at home.

Signing a striker in January should be first on Wenger's to-do list.  Giroud's performance didn't seem fearful last night but was poor - I'm thinking he's getting pretty tired.  Who knows when reinforcements in the form of Theo and Poldi will appear.

One last note.  I was happy to see RVP celebrate the way he did after he scored against us.  The fake humility of last season's goal made me nauseous.  The gaudiness shown to all is the real Dutch Skunk.  The mask is gone.

That's all for now.  Keep your heads up.  I know we will come back strong after internationals.  Until then, have a good one Gooners.