A Disastrous Result

Arsenal 0 Blackburn 0

Our title chances are officially out of our hands.We're now relying on United dropping points and us winning all our matches.

There's actually more chance of us drawing all our matches. There was no drive in this team today, they didn't have it in them to grind out the win.

I said I was feeling complacent looking ahead to this match. Maybe the players were too. But the fact is Blackburn wanted that draw far more than we wanted the win. You only need to look at Olssen's performance, not one player in our team can say he matched his drive and enthusiasm today.

This Arsenal team was faced with four major tests of their nerve this season and they've failed every one of them. United in the F.A. Cup was a shambles, Sunderland at home was bottled, we practically threw the match away to West Brom and today when we needed to win, our attack was toothless.

The blame can only go with the players. You say the manager buys them but he can only bring them to the pitch, he can't make them put the ball in the net.

Whether it's a culmination of bad luck or bad attitudes on everyone's part is impossible to judge. But this team is now on life-support battling for every breath in this title challenge.

One more result like this will pull the plug.

(Insert April Fool's Pun Here)

Blackburn have been uninteresting this year. They're where they should be. And a cumulation of two points in their last six games in the league shows that they are struggling at the bottom. They'll be there or thereabouts in the race for the drop and they only have one weapon that could damage us in Samba. Although Hoilett looks decent too.

The international break has been very kind to us. I can't actually remember a break that's ended where we've had more players fit than we did before it. Fabregas, Walcott and Song all return which is a massive boost. Van Persie's scare mid-week seems nothing more than that so he should be fit too.

So I think the team will be Almunia, Sagna, Koscielny, Squillaci, Clichy, Song, Wilshere, Fabregas, Walcott, Nasri, Van Persie.

That's our strongest possible front-eight. That much of the team is world-class. Those players would get into any matchday squad in the world. The other three is where the worries lie. Koscielny and Squillaci appear to be very decent centre-backs, individually. Collectively, they just can't seem to click, hopefully they'll get it together soon.

I've been thinking a lot about Almunia. No not in that way. But regarding his ability. As a shot-stopper he's as good as anyone. But his concentration is poor. So I think he'd be the kind of player that works well in a lower side that concedes a lot of shots on goal. But, in a team like Arsenal, a team who keeps the ball for long periods, he doesn't see much action. So he finds it extremely difficult to maintain his concentration. Meaning he does stupid things like he did at West Brom.

I'm not worrying about this match. As a fan, I must say that I feel quite complacent. I think if we show up and play our game, we'll win. I can imagine Walcott given these guys nightmares. It's going to be sweet seeing him scorching the wings again. I'll say 2-0 because I expect Blackburn to defend in numbers and to do everything possible to frustrate us. All going well with fitness tests, we should have our best attack on the pitch, so surely they'll have enough to break Blackburn down at least twice.

Also, the Emirates pitch has been shrunk to the Highbury dimensions. How making the pitch smaller helps us take defenders out of position is a bit of a mystery to me. So I'm really looking forward to seeing what difference it makes.

Let's win this one for Rocky!