I can’t remember which podcast it was recently, might have been the BBC one or it might have been the Guardian, but the pundit was describing how the Spuds are lining up at the moment. As he described their formation, it occurred to me that it sounded a lot like ours.

He said that they had a big man/little man combination in midfield, with Modric & Huddlestone lining up together (Song & Wilshere?); with two wide men in Lennon & Bale (in our team this would be Theo & Arshavin/Nasri) and van der Vaart playing in a free role behind Crouch/Pav/Keane (this is Cesc/Nasri behind Chamakh/Bendtner). It all looks rather familiar... no?

The idea was rattling around my head last week and when I sat and watched the Spuds match at Bolton this weekend, the irony of that match sunk in. If any further proof was needed that Harry is turning them into Arsenal-lite, they struggled at the Reebok and lost 4-2. That also looked familiar...

Many pundits have recently proclaimed that they only know one way to play, “Attack, Attack, Attack...” and they are a bit suspect at the back. You could just as easily be describing our current dilemma.

This sent my train of thought careening off down a rather surreal path – is Harry obsessed with Arsenal?

This isn’t such an unusual thought; we’ve heard him say that his old man used to take him to Highbury when he was a kid, and how he used to love going there.

“I was a big Arsenal fan as a kid...”, he said in an interview in 2008.

"My dad was Arsenal mad," recalls Harry. "And as a mad Arsenal fan he took me along to watch Arsenal, so Arsenal were the team I supported as a kid.”, he told Harry Harris in 2009.

And it’s not an out of place suggestion for our neighbours; many of their fans are obsessed by Arsenal and wish failure and injury upon us at every opportunity.

I’d also wager that if you know a die-hard Spuds fan, he probably knows more about Arsenal’s history than you do about the Spuds, so obsessed are they about our re-location from Woolwich to North London, and Sir Henry Norris’ negotiations which saw us promoted to the top division at their expense. It’s as if it’s part of the mantra that they learn as kids.

Anyway, back to Dirty Harry. At his last 3 clubs, West Ham, Portsmouth and now them up the lane (I’m not counting his brief fling at Southampton, mainly because I can’t be @rsed looking into it) he has signed a number of players from Arsenal. You could say that he was trying his own “Arsenalisation” process by recruiting ex-Arsenal players. I’d not given his tactics at West Ham or Portsmouth much thought till I sat down to write this, but you could argue that he tried to create footballing teams, ones which liked to play on the floor, with a sprinkling of skilful individuals. Some people would also suggest that he achieved a degree of success in that aim (in terms of trophies the FA Cup with Pompey is the only silverware obtained while at those 2 clubs).

So let’s look at the ex-Arsenal players he’s signed over the years:

At West Ham -
Ian Wright
Omer Riza (!)
Davor Suker
Nigel Winterburn
John Hartson

At Portsmouth -
Paul Merson
Jason Crowe (!)
Sol Campbell
Lauren
Kanu
Lassana Diarra

At Spuds -
David Bentley
William Gallas
(Wilson Palacios – never signed for us, but was on trial, & Wenger recommended him to Wigan)

He also signed Vince Bartram while at Bournemouth, but I’m not sure that adds any weight to my argument...

When you think that they pinched one of our foremost scouts in Damian Comoli several years ago, and their design for a new stadium looks a lot like ours, maybe it’s not just Harry that’s obsessed with Arsenal...

One final thought to counter my madness – is it obsession or does he just recognise that we have good quality players and even our cast-offs are worth a punt? (And he does love a bargain)

That might just be common sense, but the similarity with the formation leads me to thinks it’s a bit more than that...!