The glass has always been half empty for me as far as Arsenal are concerned. I can’t help it. I’m a natural worrier. And for 60 mins at the JJB, the whole traveling 5,000 had plenty to worry about. We were frankly shocking for the first hour on Saturday. But we won, which is the most important thing at this stage of the season. The ref bottled it, as far as the Gibbs incident was concerned. Against Chelski, Liverpool or the Mancs, the young defender would have been seeing red before he was back on his feet.

We need to ensure we don’t get ourselves into these situations in these monster games now upon us. Starting tonight. We get 90 minutes to do the job right. No second chances, and I’m sure we have used up a good portion of the good luck owed to us during Saturday’s match. Especially when you remember that Wigan hit the post from the resulting free kick, and the ball then fell kindly for our defenders to clear. As usual it was a goal that kick-started the team, and by the end of the 90 minutes it was hilarious watching the Wigan defenders sliding and falling over each other in a vain attempt to get anywhere near the ball.

Hopefully an early goal will come for us this evening and on Saturday, so the team can relax a little and play the football we all know they can. Basically the less the amount of defending we have to do the better, because we clearly still have too many defensive frailties and with Johan now injured and Gallas out for the remainder of the season, quality cover is looking in short supply.

A quick note to all those Wigan supporters who took the p*ss out of a larger framed Gooner near the front on Saturday: He filled more f***ing seats than your support put together! And the ones that did turn up only came to see the Arsenal!