Such is the trepidation that third place is being regarded with by ourselves, Spurs, Newcastle and Chelsea, one wonders if hasn’t been contaminated with some kind of lurgy. Perhaps it has been seen accompanying Joey Barton and his entourage at a fast food outlet at 3am? Or maybe it’s been subject to a takeover bid from the Venkys? Who knows, but the chasing pack appear to hold it in the same regard as a teenage relative’s sperm encrusted sports sock.

Grotesque imagery aside, it makes Sunday’s trip to the Hawthorns a nerve jangler alright. The Norwich game showed that, though the personnel of the playing squad has slowly tilted towards experience and maturity, the self destructive tendencies still remain. When Mikel Arteta hobbled off against Wigan, it was like the bath plug had been pulled out of the team, revealing an unsightly straggle of stray pubes in the plughole.

It’s fine for the likes of Song and Vermaelen or the full backs to bomb forward, so long as someone in the team takes the responsibility to fill the void. Since Arteta and his Ken doll hairdo limped down the tunnel, nobody has been able to replicate that intelligence and team ethic. Of course, it also helps if those that have plundered forward like randy teenagers groping in the dark make an effort to get back when the attack breaks down. This may involve some running.

A fortnight ago I wrote about my disgust that Yossi Benayoun managed to outpace all of his teammates in an attempt to track back and prevent Wigan’s first goal. Norwich’s second goal on Saturday gave me even greater cause to flabber my gast. From my seat I was ideally positioned to see Kieran Gibbs directly beneath me yelling himself hoarse at Alex Song to plug the gap left by Vermaelen’s wander up field. Right in front of my face, I looked on with disbelief as Song turned, acknowledged his junior team mate’s instruction, then just ignored him.

Needless to say, when Norwich broke successfully, Song, Ramsey and Vermaelen were all barely above jogging pace as Grant Holt exposed Gibbs – by now covering three positions all by himself – to score. Song may have felt he found redemption by providing another through ball for van Persie for the equaliser. But I made that his 5th attempted through ball of the afternoon, the previous four having often been wayward with better, simpler options available. It’s fair to say he didn’t cover himself in glory for Norwich’s third goal either.

I don’t want to make this seem like a personal vendetta against Song. I think he’s a tremendously talented player and potentially one of the better rounded midfielders in the league. But he looks like a young man that’s forgetting himself at the moment. His through balls have been a valuable weapon this season and, as I’ve said many times before, there needn’t be an identity crisis about his position in the team because he doesn’t fit a stereotypical mould.

Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I have long begun to feel a touch of “The Big I am’s” from Song. Perhaps I’m prejudiced by his ongoing friendship with Adebayor, but with his contract up for renegotiation, I am left feeling wary. If his on pitch persona of late is a portent for when he steps into the CEO’s office, I fear we could be in for a difficult time. An entirely unfounded suspicion, I grant, but the feeling that we have groomed another diva is a hunch that prevails.

I think a quiet word in his shell like could be in order. But it’s difficult for the manager. Wenger’s players trust him implicitly because his success is reliant on granting them an environment in which they are free to express themselves. Like all managerial styles, it has its pitfalls. Some, such as Adebayor, Anelka, Cole and Hleb, have abused that trust and allowed it to inflate their opinions of their own worth. But it’s been responsible for liberating others who have become great players as a result of that freedom – Henry, van Persie, Fabregas and Pires for instance.

It ultimately comes down to a player’s intelligence and self motivation. But for Arsene to start issuing the hairdryer on a regular basis shatters that cocoon of trust and creates a climate of fear, which would be detrimental. In the words of Renton from Trainspotting, “eht’s a tightroap Spud, eht’s a fookin’ tightroap.” Last week I revisited the Arsenal museum and was struck by a quote from Wenger which had been embossed onto the walls. “The intelligent player realises that the team is the real star.”

It’s not necessarily that the likes of Song and Vermaelen require a back to basics approach; they just need to be more intelligent about when they try the Hollywood pass or the 80 yard dash forward. Even if he is the youngest member of the team, if Kieran Gibbs is telling you that there is a gap in the defence that needs filling, then you turn yourself into human polyfilla for the cause. If the scores are level and you’re still in the first half against a team finding great joy on the counter attack, ask yourself, “Am I of better use to the team in the opponent’s area, or at the edge of my own?” Failure to consider these choices at the Hawthorns on Sunday may very well see us into the Europa League next season.

On a more minor note, the club released images of next season’s home kit (which the club say they will be keeping for two years this time). I’m not much of an aesthete myself, so I won’t comment on design too much. I suppose it’s a symptom of the increased scrutiny in the internet age that kit releases generate so much debate. The manufacturers are aware of this, which is why so many “accidentally” leaked photos of these kits appear months before they’re released. It both generates discussion and allows people to fully circuit the “I hate it / actually I don’t mind it / hot diggity dog I’ve just bought it” circle of virtuousness.

But the disgust over the prominence of blue in the kit as some kind of violation of our traditions and heritage is a tad overblown and historically inaccurate. This link shows you that blue has featured heavily in home kits since knickerbockers were a feature of the strip in our Woolwich days. Similarly there’s always a lot of indignation if our away kits aren’t yellow and blue, but this graphic likewise shows you that we were using blue and white away kits long before our first yellow change strip rocked up in the late 60s.

In pure design terms, it’s all a matter of personal taste. But to sight history or tradition as a precursor to that distaste is short sighted in my view. The paradox of the traditionalist is that all traditions begin somewhere. Presumably, at their inception, they are argued against fervently by contemporary traditionalists! One wonders of the ire Chapman would have faced for changing the sleeves to white were the internet around in the 1930s.

In any case, we probably all have to accept that kit releases are an arm of merchandising and leisure wear. The increase of commercial activities has become a much articulated concern of the modern fan. We don’t have to buy the shirts if we don’t like them. I’d rather the club earned the extra corn through regular shirt releases as opposed to, ooh, I don’t know, raising silver membership prices by 73% over 2 years …

Personally, I stopped buying new shirts yonks ago. Not because of the sort of high minded reasons I should have stopped buying them. For instance, philosophical objection to being a walking billboard for an airline that doesn’t recompense me for my advertising services. But because I began collecting retro and vintage Arsenal shirts instead. Hmmm, on second thoughts, maybe that makes me less impervious to the charms of tradition and aesthetics than I’d previously tried to suggest? Ah well, till next week. LD.

Follow me on Twitter @LittleDutchVA

Psychology can be a very peculiar science. Last week I wrote about my increasing impression that Arsenal were crawling over the finishing line in the manner of a man searching limply for water in the desert. The game at Stoke did little to stymie that suspicion. Then the boss admitted, rather candidly, that we were almost totally relying on van Persie to nudge us over the line (Because he clearly hasn’t contributed enough already this season).

Nobody with a set of functioning eyes [insert generic Premiership referee gag] would deny that this is very much the case. But it still seemed like an uncharacteristic admission for the manager to make. When we so desperately need others to step up to the plate and accept some of the goalscoring burden, here Arsene was publicly pleading for his talisman to be a one man show just until the final curtain. “Why not openly encourage the supporting vast to get all vaudevillian on us too?!” I thought to myself with furrowed brow.

Then less than 24 hours after that news item appears as the banner headline on Arsenal.com, the signing of Lukas Podolski is announced. Maybe I’m overanalysing, but I can’t ignore the chronology. Now Arsene’s plea looks slightly different. It’s a tacit admission that our other forwards aren’t being as assertive as they could be, followed up immediately by tangible action. Now it reads almost like a warning. Robin’s support cast are now fully aware that the new boy is waiting in the wings and that the manager is not satisfied with their work. Two important games now become a mini audition of sorts.

As for Podolski himself, it looks like a very positive signing. Though many will try, nobody can judge how good a signing is until he has represented the club a fair number of times. There are so many factors that govern whether a signing is any good that are not realised immediately. Sometimes good players still turn out to be bad signings because of circumstances unallied to their quality. I remember when Liverpool signed Fernando Morientes. It looked like an outstanding signing on paper. But for whatever reason, it didn’t really work out. There are countless other examples.

As with any other decisions taken by the club, with transfer dealings it’s important that supporters at least appreciate the thought process behind it and why decisions are taken at the time they are. Hindsight can cast us all into the role of the know it all at times. For instance, certain contract decisions – both player and commercial – taken by the club in the recent past can look ridiculous in hindsight. But the levels of complaint at the time those calls are made are usually notably lower in both volume and ferocity.

All that accepted, the signing of Podolski looks to be a positive one. It’s an assertive attempt to correct a big deficiency in our squad. He’s a player at a good age with excellent credentials. He has the capability to fit into our system, either as a wide striker or as a centre forward, having played both roles before. He can both back up and partner the overburdened van Persie. He only need put the cones out at training to be an upgrade on Chamakh and Park.

Speaking of which, it looks increasingly likely Pat Rice’s retirement will be confirmed before the end of the season. That means Arsene will have an appointment to make and an important one too. I’ve speculated on possible successors elsewhere, but for the time being I hope that Pat’s legacy is treated with the respect it deserves. The “cones on the training ground” crack above accepted, I think it’s unfortunate that Rice has been portrayed as a “yes man” over the last few years. I think it was a germ of a theory raised on an internet message board that somehow went viral and passed into received wisdom.

Firstly, since training sessions at London Colney are guarded more closely than the crown jewels I’m not sure how people would have the first idea as to how challenging Rice is to Arsene. My guess is that Pat became a kind of innocent bystander –an unwitting voodoo doll if you will – for people that had a gripe with Wenger but felt too scared to implicate him directly. Secondly, it’s quite a disrespectful target given the man’s 42 years of service to the football club. My hope is that that is held in the reverence it deserves when he hangs up his shorts.

On a decidedly sourer note, membership renewals for red and silver members have been released and I think the club have some explaining to do. For the privilege of merely holding a silver membership, the club are now charging £55. That represents a 73% increase in total in two years. We already know, though there has been little fanfare about it, that Club Level prices rose a further 2% this season. I’m sure the club’s justification for Club Level prices is that, when the asking price is so large, a little increase every year is preferable to a massive hike once every four seasons.

Red members are also now being charged £33 to hold membership. Considering it wasn’t long ago that being a silver or red member was free of charge, this is a quite astronomical rise and I’m not sure I’ve seen any justification for it. I understood the club’s stance of introducing the fee for being a member on the basis that it discouraged people from simply holding anaemic memberships that they rarely used. But a 73% rise in two years requires explanation.

If I were being cynical, I’d suggest the club looked at the furore created by raising season ticket prices last summer and plumped for a different strategy. They kept the headline cost of season tickets down, but hit other forms of membership with stealth charges that evade the same levels of scrutiny. I’m sure as fans we’d be receptive and open minded to any reasoning the club offered as to why the prices had to go up. But in lieu of an explanation, it’s difficult to arrive at an alternative conclusion.

Finally, I wanted to address some of the mini furore from the Stoke game. The booing of Ramsey was, of course, totally illogical (and they accuse Arsene of being a bit precious!) But it was nothing to get too bent out of shape about. The fact that it attracted a small amount of attention almost certainly confirms that Stoke fans will do it again because it got to some people. That was its sole intention really.

Incidentally, I thought Arsene – far from being angry or raging as the media depicted him – was very level headed and brilliantly dismissive in his post match comments. Particularly the “they have a relationship with me, but I don’t have one with them” riposte when quizzed on the very simple amusement derived by the Stoke fans at his expense.

Tony Pulis did not hear the booing of Ramsey, but was “more concerned” by the booing of Shawcross by those of us in the away end. Of course he was. Because he is a cunt. We all knew that. That’s why my man @superswe decided to wear the charming cap you can see above en route to Staffordshire. I also saw Lineker’s aping of Wenger’s exasperated pose on Match of the Day. It was cringe worthy, but again, nothing to be overly annoyed about.

That’s what the BBC are. They’re like the weedy kid that helps the bullies taunt one of his nerdy brethren in a desperate attempt to curry favour. It’s clear to me that few other managers in this country would be the target of such mockery. However, letters of complaint and demands for apology simply serve to fuel the fire. It’s total playground politics. Demonstrating large levels of annoyance simply ensures you’ll be a target again. So, you know, fuck ‘em. LD.

Follow me on Twitter @LittleDutchVA

Last week I wrote about my perception that results become more variable at this stage of the season, as pressure and fatigue begin to lay siege on players. Lactic acid grips limbs and coils itself tightly. This is why plucky little minnows Chelsea, with their £50m substitute striker, can slay the behemoth of Barcelona and their Barcisssistic ballet of passing and write the kind of David and Goliath script that causes British journalists to writhe in Nevillegasm.

In all seriousness, there can be no moralising about the manner in which Chelsea won the tie. The only “right way to play” is within the rules of the game. Thereafter, everything else comes down to personal taste and to privilege one style over another borders on snobbery. The reason I mention that pack of oil funded, mob handed fuck weasels is two fold. Firstly, it’s instructive for our visit to Stoke. It’s not their long throws, long balls or their distaste for possession football that makes them worthy of loathing.

Frankly, percentage football has its place. It can be exciting, positive even. Though I wouldn’t encourage Arsenal to start playing percentages (we don’t have the players for it anyway), a long throw into the box can get the heart racing and create incident. It can also be very effective. We needn’t get too precious about that. What makes Stoke worthy of our contempt is their contravention of the rules with the shirt pulling and the leg snapping. Plus, their manager wears that annoying fucking cap. Without wishing to get all Trinny and Susannah on your arses, any man over 50 that wears a baseball cap and a tracksuit needs to be slapped. Repeatedly.

Secondly, it refocuses the objective of finishing 3rd. It now becomes more than just avoiding an inconvenient qualifier, Chelsea’s participation in the Final makes 3rd the new golden ticket. Spurs and Newcastle in the chasing pack, now know that 4th might not be enough, which could make them compete that bit harder. I have the uncomfortable feeling from players and supporters that 3rd place is being taken for granted.

I’m still of the mind that there is plenty of evidence for anxiety. Maybe I need to bosh a Diazepam and get in touch with my inner Eno, but a season of relying on a core of 15 or so players pretty constantly looks to be taking its toll. Two of our most regular players are now injured for the rest of the season in the shape of Arteta and Walcott (the latter has as many games as van Persie under his belt this season). Alex Song has 43 Arsenal appearances this season and it’s beginning to show in some of his decision making. But most chiefly the signs are that, after a season which has deservedly reaped individual reward, van Persie is out of steam.

This piece, written prior to the Chelsea game, provides an excellent forensic study of his form of late. Defences have become much more perceptive about his favoured positions, but the chances he missed against Chelsea showed a rare lack of poise in his decision making too. The worry here is that our second most likely scorer on current form is a centre half.

Ramsey, though overly criticised, currently enjoys the shooting precision of the ghost of Kaba Diawara. Gervinho has joined the likes of Yaya Toure and Demba Ba in a post African Nations funk. That tournament seems to provide enough latter season funk to fill a couple of Parliament LPs. Walcott is now banjaxed, probably for the remainder of the season. As frustrating as he can be and as infuriatingly negligent as he has been in protecting Sagna over the last few weeks, he is both our second top scorer and the main supply line to van Persie.

It’s no coincidence that van Persie thanked Walcott explicitly in his PFA Player of the Year award acceptance speech. There is a lot of talk of buying new players in order to convince van Persie to stay, but with Walcott in the self same contractual position, it could hinge just as much on keeping what we have too. In any case, we are now missing players that are vital cogs in our side and others look fatigued. It looks to me as though we will crawl over the finishing line.

Moving on and having attended the latest Arsenal Supporters’ Trust meeting this week, it would appear a slight change in general admissions ticketing policy will be announced by the club very soon. It seems as though supply and demand will be at the heart of it. Category A admission prices could rise. Realistically, the club knows they can pack out games against Manchester United, Spurs etc twice over even if the donation of vital organs was part of the cover price.

On the flipside, the pricing categories for less attractive games will stretch and more matches will be effectively downgraded in recognition. So Bolton at home on a Wednesday night would, logically, be cheaper next season. The ultimate upshot would mean there will be more cheap tickets around next season and a better value for season ticket holders, who will be unaffected by the Category A price rise. I’m not a huge fan of category based pricing, @timbo_slice1991 puts together a good argument against that here. Incidentally, in attending all 19 Premiership away matches this season, I have paid £168 more in total than a supporter of Wolves or Wigan making the exact same commitment.

It also looks as though the club will resist the call to move away supporters to the pricier environs of the upper tier. I have to say I applaud the club’s stance here. As an away supporter myself, I don’t think it’s right that travelling fans are made to pay higher prices when no choice exists as to where to sit. I understand the objective of making more of the cheaper seats available to home fans, but to do so at the expense of the away support, which is a captive market, is inherently unfair. I think for matters such as this, which serve a general interest, our parochial selfishness should be put aside and we should all recognise the commonality of the football fan. (Hey, I think that Diazepam is kicking in).

On a final note, if you are attending / have attended (depending on when you read this), the Arsenal Ladies game with Chelsea at the Emirates on Thursday night, they play the same opposition in the Women’s F.A. Cup semi final at Brentford’s Griffin Park on Sunday. Admission is a recession busting £3 for adults, £1.50 for phogeys and nippers. Why not go along and support? Arsenal Reserves also play their last match of the season at Underhill on Wednesday evening too and admission is totally free. Until next week, hasta mañana Arse bandits.

Follow me on Twitter @LittleDutchVA

Predicting results at this stage of the season becomes something of a fool’s errand. Easter time has always thrown up shock results. The only surprise is that we continue to be surprised by it. There are just so many factors at this stage of the season that make facing Wigan in December, for instance, a much, much different prospect to facing them in April.

Of course the sight of the finishing tape makes the search for points frantic, but psychological factors begin to govern results more than they would in mid season. I’m not just talking about the sort of mental strength which Gary Neville wrote about a few weeks ago. Teams with nothing to play for become unpredictable too. Despite having precious little to compete for beyond affection, Norwich can roll up at White Hart Lane and beat Spurs. Our last three games of the season are against teams whose objectives for the season are virtually achieved already.

Some sides relish this sense of liberation and begin to play “with the handbrake off” to indulge the manager’s obsession with automobile metaphors. Some simply slide off into a puddle of end of season meh-ness. Come April, it’s not just your results that matter either and that can have consequences. As supporters, we don’t just support Arsenal; but every team that face Chelsea, Newcastle and Tottenham are adopted for the day and cradled to our Gooner bosoms.

With the haphazardness of TV scheduling in the modern game, this can affect the players too. A positive or negative result for your rivals 24 hours before you play can either liberate you or inhibit you. Over the weekend, results went Wigan’s way at the bottom and it seemed to inspire them. It’s why I don’t necessarily buy the popular consensus that Chelsea’s very hard fought game against Barcelona on Wednesday will play hugely into our hands this weekend. At this stage of the season, everyone is tired.

This makes momentum king and those psychological factors become trump cards. Would you rather three days rest after a confidence boosting win? Or five days rest after a morale sapping defeat? Chelsea may have their eye on Tuesday’s second leg in Catalonia on their minds, but they have the wind of two huge victories beneath their despicable, cunty, Sibneft funded wings. I, for one, am taking nothing for granted.

There again, maybe the need for a response engendered by a poor result against Wigan will spur us onto victory, just as defeat to QPR caused us to force the issue against Manchester City. Had we beaten Wigan, I think we probably could have afforded to draw with Chelsea to keep them at arm’s length. That may not have necessarily suited us. And what of Spurs? They will be looking at the result with interest as they play QPR at Loftus Road later that day. How will they react to any potential result, all of which have positive and negative connotations for them?

Arsenal still have a lot of work to do to secure 3rd and fallibilities are evident enough to keep us anxious. There were signs in the second half at Wolves that focus had dropped and the intensity with which we played the game had veered into the red zone. We have 35 points from 17 games against teams in the bottom half. The worst record in the top 6. It’s an identifiable pattern. I wrote last week that Arsenal’s continued success relies on their ability to treat every fixture the same. Is there an issue with complacency there? Do we really press and harry those sides as well as we have done against Chelsea, Spurs, City, and Milan at home? Or is it perhaps that we suffer when confronted with a more disciplined style?

I’d say there’s a mixture of both. But if you look at the first goal we conceded against Wigan on Monday night, it was Yossi Benayoun that was scrapping with di Santo for the rebound in our penalty area. The furthest man back following our own corner. Really? Is Yossi Benayoun really the fastest player in our team? Did he really beat the likes of Santos, Vermaelen, Walcott and Djourou in a foot race over 70 yards? Had Arsenal been pouring forwards towards the opposition goal on a breakout, do you honestly think Benayoun would beat the same players in a rush to reach the opposition goal? Had the potential reward been offensive rather than defensive, I somehow doubt those same players would have been trailing in Yossi’s wake.

We also had a situation whereby Arteta couldn’t walk, yet Rosicky and Song trundled forward for the corner and left Arteta as the covering midfielder. The attitude of the team is that, when a player is incapacitated, we are down one potential attacker. The intelligent thing to do would have been for Song to drop back, realise we’re only eight minutes into the game with no need to leave ourselves wide open. It’s the attitude of the school playground, where the fatter and more useless a player you are, the further back you play. Arsenal still don’t respect the defensive side of the game enough.

Speaking of Arteta, his injury is an enormous blow. I’d like to think he’ll get a place on the silver or bronze podia when the Player of the Season awards are voted for. With Wilshere having missed the whole season, we’re fortunate in a sense that Arteta has been fit and ready for as long as he has. Looking at some of the stick Ramsey is getting, I don’t think Wilshere missing this season will do him any harm in the long run, provided there are no lasting physical defects. The intensity and pressure of second season syndrome would have seen the sort of hysteria that would make a Liverpool fan wince.

About now he’d probably just about have reached the end of the honeymoon stage with Arsenal fans, with the first quiet whispers of “big time Charlie” and “overrated” just being tested on internet forums were he to dare to hit a fallow period of form. Meanwhile, the wider press would be handing him his crown and sceptre ready to be the nation’s saviour this summer, only to unceremoniously tear them from his grip again come July. The natural need for a scapegoat is being filled by Ramsey, the current chump du jour. Nobody would argue that Ramsey is having an easy time of it, but much of the criticism is bent well out of shape.

Szczesny is the same age as Ramsey and he went through a dip in form in the January and February period. All players of that age do. The team is adapting to Ramsey just as much as he is adapting to the rigours of weekly football at the top level. Our mode of play has changed this season into a quicker transitional style. We don’t have a triquetra type like Fabregas was, or that Nasri thought he was (but wasn’t). Ramsey is much more in the all action Gerrard mould, he’s in the business of late, lung bursting runs. Arsenal haven’t had a midfielder like this in some time.

Ramsey’s execution needs work, but that’s ok because it’s the easiest thing to fix. It just takes practise and a little confidence. Yet it also takes time for the team to appreciate his different qualities and react to them. It was the same when Cesc became a prominent feature of the team. (In the 2005-06 season he registered 3 goals and 5 assists. Ramsey is dealing in similar numbers this year). It’s coming too. I recall van Persie picking out a late Ramsey run in the box at Goodison, guiding a header down towards him in the box. It was a fabulous run that no Everton defender picked up right to the lip of the Everton area.

The issue was that he volleyed it over the bar. But like I said, that’s easily fixed on the training ground. Just ask Thierry Henry. Coaching that movement in the first place is the difficulty. Just ask Marouane Chamakh. Swingers on the line now and you bookmark this page if you like. This time next year, provided he enjoys reasonable fitness, Ramsey will be in the running for our Player of the Season award. There’s a hell of a lot of talent in this boy. Don’t try and destroy it, embrace it. It’ll make you proud one day. Till next time. LD.

Follow me on Twitter @LittleDutchVA