Ed’s note – more from my regular emailing cohort Ian Tanner. This latest collection of musings received after the United match

Just read the most recent Cannon Lore blog. There is no way that Bendtner will feature in the Carling Cup versus Wigan. With RVP suspended and Adebayor and Eduardo injured, there’s no way Arsene can risk being without the shy Nicklas for Villa’s Saturday visit. He should not even be in the 18, but may make the bench. And I disagree that Bendtner had a poor game. Arsene said how well he’d played and I agree. True, he could have had a goal or even three, but to expose the previously wonderful central pairing of Vidic and Ferdinand was excellent at his age. When he comes on as a sub he almost always makes an impact. I, too, wish his ego were not so big but there you go.

Interesting to hear from Defoe that Big Tony has improved confidence at Pompey, implying that Harry could not do that. Meanwhile, all we’ve been hearing since ‘Arry moved to N17 is that he’s improved the confidence of the Spuds players. This is all too cunning for me...

Is Berbatov the first player to lose four games at the new HOF ? I cannot be bothered to investigate, but you might. Certainly his previous tiny Totts were the first team to lose thrice, and were, of course, within seconds of being the first to lose four games. But if the £30.75m man played in all three previous defeats then he’ll feature in an unwanted way (from his perspective) when the history of our new ground is written.

I had a horrible dream Thursday night. We were losing 2-0 at home to ManU and I was at work, for some reason; not even at the game! Bizarre dream, but all last week I was nervous of getting a beating, like many Gooners. In the end five doubtfuls all made it and we were really only missing our two most experienced strikers, no matter how young they still may be. But did we really miss them? I said we’d have a good idea after just ten minutes’ play and so it proved; the team were easily as good as ManU. Nasri needs just six more goals to equal Hleb’s three year tally, meanwhile.

Two wrongs don’t make a right, as we all know. Or in the case of Michael Carrick, numerous wrongs cannot be corrected by another poor decision. Carrick made a genuine and legitimate attempt to challenge Almunia for the ball. So why was he booked? Easy! It was 3-1 to Arsenal (in bookings, that is) which was a nonsense given the game and general play. So the awful Howard Webb simply had to “even it up a bit” by brandishing an unnecessary yellow. Crazy. Webb did not book Rooney early on for the Theo foul because he (Webb) did not want to be compelled to give Wayne a second booking in the 80 or so remaining minutes. So he bottled it. Yet Arsenal had to play much of the game with three of our back four on yellow cards for committing fouls that were no worse than Rooney’s.

I’ve still not seen a replay of the game but it seems Nasri was fouled by Vidic in the area. But would Webb abet us in leading the great Manchester United 3-0? I think not. And the excellent Diaby should have been booked if he dived in that crucial race to the ManU penalty area with Carrick. He wasn’t and the referee had to wave play on or make a crucial decision about whether to merely book or to send off the United player.

Ronaldo’s handball did not receive a booking, whereas the previous weekend Blackburn lost a player to a second yellow for something similar. Berbatov handled in our area but was allowed to play on in a very dangerous position. The final “official” foul count was 16 for dirty Arsenal and 8 for clean ManU. Yet we are top of the Fair Play League. Funny that. But despite ManU getting the rub of the ref’s decisions, and despite many of their players costing individually about as much as Arsene spent in assembling his entire starting XI, we prevailed.

The six minutes’ injury time. Fair’s fair. Just because I thought Webb had a terrible game, I won’t take any and every opportunity to criticise him unfairly. I think he got the injury time correct. Me and a man in the row in front were predicting six minutes. Five substitutions at 30 seconds and a lengthy Almunia injury, plus the usual bits and pieces means six minutes of ‘Ferguson time’ was not actually blatantly OTT. So I disagree with Arsene et al on this point. But the obvious question is: would Webb have awarded six minutes if ManU had been leading, especially if they’d been at home?

I think we all know the answer to that one.

One negative. The over-celebrating continues and I don’t think it will ever be stopped. Nasri’s second was, of course, an amazing team goal but it did not win the game as there were 43 minutes to play. We were lucky that Ronaldo did not reply immediately. We’d switched off AGAIN and this really p*sses me off as it’s unprofessional and so basic. That said, we should all be proud of our team today. Bring on Wigan.

Finally, luckily I picked up a discarded Guardian Sports Section this morning. You must read Kevin McCarra’s match report. He eulogises about us. One quote: “It says everything about the spellbindingly unorthodox nature of Wenger’s philosophy that his team may have found it a relief to be facing the reigning Premier League champions.” That dovetails with a comment I made recently to you; that Arsenal have a better chance of winning the Champions League than the Premier League. Remember where you heard it first.

Keep the faith.