Now, don’t get me wrong; I love the way Arsenal play football. It is my humble opinion that they play the very best football in the world when they are on form. However, there is a time and place for that kind of football and when your playing badly against a determined side, working incredibly hard  for each other and in desperate need of 3 points, you should put the fancy football to the side for the time being and dig out the result by any means possible.

Manchester United, Chelsea and on occasion Liverpool are able to grind out results no matter how badly they are playing and it’s this quality that has been the base for United’s and Chelsea’s title challenges over the past few seasons. Winning ugly, despite it’s title, is one of the most beaufiful and satisfying things in football. Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat in the dying moments of a game is something every football fan can appreciate and unforunately, the ability to ‘win ugly’ is something that Arsenal do not posses.

As an Arsenal fan, you would expect me to be feeling very confident ahead of a home game against a newly promoted side, who were one of the favourites to finish bottom of the table. I wasn’t, however. Perhaps it was just a once off thing or maybe it was something more. Over the past couple of seasons I’ve seen Arsenal slip up time and time again against sides that were deemed to be inferior and that certainly has shaken the confidence I have in my team and the manager.

Teams who have beaten Arsenal in the past have used the very tactic that Arsene Wenger and his young charges hate: physicality. Sam Allardyce used this tactic continuously at Bolton because he knew it would work. He knew Arsenal would continue to play the same way no matter what and as long as his side didn’t concede, they would not only be able to bully Arsenal out of the game but also thwart Wengers tactics. Good managers are able to copy Allardyces’ tactic succesfully because Arsenal still continue to play the same way no matter what may happen.

This predictability and alarming lack of leadership is what is holding Arsenal back from winning any silverware. When the chips are down in the game and the going gets tough, Chelsea have Terry, Cech, Drogba, Ballack among others to call upon, United have Ferdinand, Scholes, Giggs and Rooney, Liverpool have Gerrard, Carragher and Torres and whom do Arsenal have? William Gallas? A man whos ego is the size France and whos personality is that of a 5 year olds.

There is only one thing I hate more than anti-Arsenal punditry and that’s frustratingly bad and terribly researched articles written by so called journalists. Being an Arsenal fan myself I have to, more often that not, put up with a blend of negative punditry and infuriating articles.

Equally annoying are gullible and fickle football fans who believe everything they read and base all their opinions of other teams on 2 minutes of highlights from Match of the Day and Alan Hansens ‘analysis’. I’m tired of people coming up to me and telling me Manuel Almunia is rubbish after they saw his mistake on Saturday but what they fail to take into consideration when making their comment, however, are all the good things he has done not only over the past couple of weeks but over the past season and a bit. And this is merely one example.

What people must also realize is that the club does pay good wages and that we can hold on to our ‘star’ players. Contrary to popular belief, Arsenal pay considerably better wages than Liverpool, pay the same as Manchester United and pay considerably less than Chelsea. After reading that, you tell me now that Arsenal don’t pay substantial wages.

Another buzz phrase that has been thrown around by pundits for the past couple of seasons is how young Arsenals team is. There isn’t a more lazy thing you could say about Arsenal. A quick look over the starting XI tells you everything you need to know: Almunia: 31, Clichy: 23, Sagna: 25, Toure: 27, Gallas: 31, Nasri: 21, Walcott: 19, Fabregas: 21, Denilson: 19, van Persie: 25, Adebayor: 24, Average Age: 24. Perhaps it isn’t as old as it could be but the backbone of the team is still one of the most experienced in the Premier League, with Adebayor being the only one who hasn’t played in a Champions League final.

And lately, it has occured to me that journalists and pundits will slate Arsenal for absolutely any reason what so ever; they will even ignore the obvious facts just so they can do their best to have a go at the team. From our apparent lack of ability to play on rough surfaces to how the cold weather can effect our performances, people will say absolutely anything to put the players down.

We play the most beautiful football in the world and instead of applauding us, we find ourselves on the end of harsh criticsm from pundits and football ‘experts’. The world needs more clubs like Arsenal.

The majority of Arsenal and football fans alike could never appreciate how good Senderos really was because they could never see past his mistakes (which were a lot less frequent then people may them out to be). A quick look at the statistics tells you everything you need to know: during the run in to the Champions League final Senderos forged a brilliant partnership with Toure and as a result Arsenal kept 10 clean sheets against the likes of Real Madrid, Juventus and Villareal.

And even when Toure was taking part in the African Cup of Nations last season Senderos was still able to come in and partner Gallas succesfully for quite a long period of time. Senderos, in my opinion, had an uncanny ability of being able to bring out the best in the man he was playing alongside.

When Arsene sold Hoyte and bought Silvestre I thought ‘okay, this is a decent move’ but if I had known that Senderos would be leaving (as I do now) as a result my disgust at Wenger would be damn near impossible to put into words. We’re now left with Toure, an imcometent fool of a captain, a crocked defender who may or may not add something to the team and Djourou.

The very game(s) which now appear to have sealed Senderos’s move to Milan was when we knocked them out of the Champions League. He, along with Flamini, had the likes of Kaka, Pato and Inzaghi all in his pocket. I can only wish Senderos the very best of luck at Milan and I’ve no doubt that with the defensive coaches they have there he will finally get to achieve his full potential.

For further reading, I suggest you check out Gunnerblog’s fantastic article which make some very interesting and hard hitting points.

The signing of Silvestre not only brings his individual capabilities to the Arsenal defence but it will also leave Wenger with more options. It will allow him to push the likes Alexandre Song, who has been very impressive for Cameroon, into midfield and he may even opt to try Johan Djourou in the centre of the park aswell. I’ve seen talk of Toure being pushed into midfield and although his energy and strength are second to none, he, as third-gen said, does not have the brain for it.

Now, what I’m about to say next will probably leave me subject to some harsh criticsm and people using very colourful adjectives to describe me but I must make the point. No doubt you all know that Silvestre played for our title rivals, Manchester United, for a total of 9 years! The fact that Wenger would make such a signing will probably annoy quite a number of fans but personally I think it’s a stroke of genius from Wenger.

As I’ve previously mentioned, not only is Silvestre a good defender on his day but a man of his kind will surely motivate the Arsenal players. Silvestre probably spent most of his 9 years at United joking and laughing at Arsenal but now that he’s actually playing for us the players will be eager to to make a good first impression and he will be pushing hard to get off on the right foot with players and fans alike.

If the players are motivated by his arrival and Silvestre is willing to make a good first impression than I can only see it being a win win situation. Of course there is the chance that he will pick up a series of injuries and struggle tp string two games together for us but at £750,000, I think he’s definitely worth a punt.

Many fans and neutrals have failed to see any logic in the move and some are complaining about the fact that we seem to be just picking up the scraps from United but for Wenger to sign a 31 year old injury prone player he obviously sees something in him that most us don’t.

I hope this isn’t Wenger’s last signing but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. The coming weeks and months will be very intriguing.

Quality, not quantity is the angle I’m tilting towards. Hopefully you will find some decent articles here in the future. In the meantime, grab the RSS feed.

Robin van Persie has been speaking about how it’s important for a club like Arsenal to play in the Champions League and he’s labelled Twente the Dutch equivelant of Sp*rs.

19 year old midfielder, Vincent van den Berg has joined side Dutch side FC Zwolle on loan.

In transfer news, we’ve been linked with Ghana midfielder, Anthony Annan.

More tomorrow.

Abou Diaby is likely to be out for about a month after picking up a thigh injury. This means that Denilson, who had an impressive preseason will more than likely partner Fabregas in the centre of the park for the beginning of the season and I wouldn’t be that surprised if he remained Cesc’s partner for the rest of the season. Samir Nasri also picked up a light knock but it’s not thought to be serious.

Looking ahead to the Champions League qualifier against FC Twente on Wednesday night and Cesc Fabregas may play but seeing as he’s only participated in 84 minutes of preseason football it’s unlikely that he will be at his very best.

And that’s pretty much all that’s been happening today. Things should get a little more exciting tomorrow.

Transfer news first and there was rumours going around that Arsenal had agreed a fee of around £3million with Middlesbrough for Justin Hoyte. However, Wenger said yesterday that there were no official bids for Hoyte but there is a little bit of interest from one or two clubs.

Arsene Wenger has also said that he is too busy to look for a new midfielder at the moment. That is understandable seeing as we play FC Twente on Wednesday and then newly promoted West Brom on Saturday. However, I seriously hope Wenger brings in another central midfielder and another centre half wouldn’t be too bad either. And speaking of signing a new central midfielder, we’ve been linked with Swiss international Gokhan Inler. I don’t know much about him seeing as I didn’t watch much of the Switzerland games during Euro 2008.

Moving on, and now I’d like to talk about one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever heard come from Wenger’s mouth.

“We missed Nasri tonight who has a little knock. We missed Diaby and we missed Song who’s at the Olympics. I don’t know if our midfield tonight was ideal but it’s certainly not far from the midfield we’ll play on Wednesday night.

“I’m not concerned about that. But I would have been very concerned tonight if we had one or two injuries in midfield. We can’t afford that at the moment with Nasri and Diaby out. It’s very positive for us that we have no injuries tonight.”

So, first of all, he didn’t know whether or not his midfield was ideal last night and, secondly, regardless of how the players played together he’s going to stick with that same midfield throughout the season? That’s absolute bollocks.

Thirdly, why can’t we afford any injuries in the midfield? Because we don’t have enough bloody players that’s why, Arsene. If he was really concerned about some of his midfield players picking up injuries (and they will throughout the season) then he would bring a few more ‘bodies’ in! Is Wenger just going to turn his head the other way and hope to go a whole season without injuries? That’s what it looks like to me anyway. Wenger knows - well to be honest it seems like he doesn’t have a clue what to do at the moment.

More tomorrow.

Moving on to more Arsenal related news and Arsene Wenger has explained why William Gallas will be captain next season. He made a lot of mistakes last season but he has held his hand up and admitted to them and he’s promised to improve himself as a captain and player. He’s the most experienced player in the squad and personally I think he is probably the most logical option for the captaincy.

Wenger believes that the pain of being so close to winning the league and just falling short at the last hurdle will spur his team on this season.

Not much else going on really. Amsterdam tournament kicks off tonight and that will be the final part of our preseason preparatons. Shouldn’t be interesting to see how the team does.

Arsenal played a preseason friendly against Huddersfield last night to commemorate the great Herbert Chapman. We travelled up with a very young squad and despite a poor first half performance and going 1-0 down we eventually ran out 2-1 winners. You can read an extensive match report over at the Young Guns blog.

It looks as though Justin Hoyte doesn’t want to leave Arsenal but rather raise his game to the same level as Bacary Sagna. Frankly, Sagna is miles ahead of him at the moment but you have to admire Hoyte’s determination to improve. Fair play to him, I say.

In transfer news, we’ve been linked with Marseille midfielder and captain, Lorik Cana. From what I’ve heard he’s a bit of a Flamini type and at £6million he may be worth a punt. Judging from the quotes in that article he is frustrated with the lack of trophies at Marseille so a move to Arsenal might not be his cup of tea.

In other news, Theo Walcott reveals that the number 14 was actually his second choice and Robin van Persie says that he wants to extend his contract with Arsenal. If he gets a decent number of games under his belt over the next few weeks then a contract exension will mean that he will be able to focus on staying fit and playing well for Arsenal in the future.

That’s all for today.