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I feel a bit cheated this week as I can’t open with a Man City defeat. Well I could, as they lost yet again, but I’ve already done it in the match report and our game isn’t usually included in here, so I feel like I’m missing out a little. I’ll get to the midweek fixtures in due course, so I’ll start with Arsenal. I mentioned last week how their run of upcoming fixtures are soft and that they might make a dent in our lead over the next half a dozen games. That’s happened already as it turns out, but I had held out a tiny glimmer of hope that they might have come unstuck at the weekend. Not much hope, but a glimmer, simply because West Ham away is a game where maybe once in every half dozen they’ll turn you over (Arsenal lost there a couple of years ago if memory serves me rightly). West Ham have it in them to pull off a big result or two, but they’ve been fucking terrible this season and it’s obvious that manager has to go. We all know it. The players aren’t playing for him and he’s defo getting the sack at some point. West Ham should probably just bite the bullet and do it now, as he isn’t turning it around. Moyes must be walking around in a permanent state of that Di Caprio meme after seeing how his successor has bombed. That’s if Di Caprio had been put through an ageing filter and had his face in bathwater for six hours. West Ham are really annoying me at the moment because they’ve got good players and shouldn’t be this shite. What they served up against Arsenal was fucking embarrassing. 4-0 down after about half an hour? Losers. As usual, Arsenal did most of the damage with corner kicks. Arsenal are basically what Stoke would have been if Pulis had been able to sign Arjen Robben and David Silva. Take Saka and Odegaard out of that side and they could easily be wearing red and white stripes and singing Delilah. Their opener came from a corner - of course it did - as Gabriel headed in. A lot of their corner kicks are somewhat dubious, with blocking and holding and all sorts going on. This one was well worked but quite a simple concept. Everyone lined up at the back post and then ran to attack the ball as it was flighted in. West Ham lost Gabriel in the shuffle and he met it at the near post and headed in. Trossard made it 2-0 after Odegaard and Saka combined to tee him up. The third goal came from the spot via Odegaard. I didn’t think that was a pen at all. There’s virtually no contact on Saka at all from Paqueta. You need a microscope to see if he touches him, but of course Saka went down and stayed down, holding his ankle and then limping around until Odegaard scored. Havertz made it four with a clinical finish but it’s so fucking bad from West Ham, especially Paqueta and Killman. The Hammers then mounted a mini comeback as Wan Bissaka found the net with a nice finish and Emerson then smashed in a brilliant free-kick that went in off the underside of the bar. Could the unthinkable happen? Imagine if Arsenal had blown a four goal lead. Their online fanbase would have spontaneously combusted. Unfortunately Anthony Taylor came to Arsenal’s rescue again by awarding another soft penalty. Look, I’m not saying that should not have been a penalty as the keeper misses the ball and punches Gabriel right in his stupid fucking head. But that happens probably half a dozen times in the course of every Premier League weekend and it never gets given. What makes this all the more strange is that these northern refs apparently hate Arsenal. That’s what I keep reading anyway. Even when Coote said what he did about us and Klopp, Arsenal fans used that as proof of the refs hating them. So I’m a little confused here. Why is this bald Mancunian ref giving them two iffy penalties? Saka took this one and made it 5-2 (just about, awful penalty), and as so often happens in these wild games when there are loads of goals in the first half, that’s how it stayed. I’m writing this before they play United but I’ll call that now and if I’m wrong I’ll leave this in for you all to see. Arsenal will win that game by at least three goals. United have not got a chance in hell of avoiding defeat and it’s baffling to me to hear so many Reds talking up their chances of doing us a favour. They’re shite, they can’t even help themselves let alone us. That’s as nailed on a three points as there is.

I don’t think we’ll know if this is a good point or not until after the weekend. If we win at Goodison then I’m happy to look back at this and say “yeah that’s a decent result in the circumstances”. If we drop more points at Goodison though, this performance and the way we threw it away at the end is going to be viewed a lot more harshly I think. For now though I’m relaxed about it. I’m not mad at anyone, it’s just football. We aren’t going to win every game, there are going to be some blips and Newcastle away definitely has the potential to be one of them. I feared this was going to be one of those let down games and I’ve been saying it for weeks now, so I’m not surprised and not especially disappointed either. You have the massive emotionally draining fixtures against City and Madrid at home, and then you have to go to Newcastle under the lights on a freezing, wet Wednesday night. It had trap game written all over it, and so it proved. They just had more energy than us and we were understandably flat and struggled to raise our game to the required standard. I’m actually quietly relieved we didn’t lose. The first half was genuinely dreadful and I don’t think anybody came out of it with credit, other than maybe Robbo, who was fine. Kelleher too, he made some decent saves before the wheels came off him in the second half. The first half was just largely awful all round. The defence was shaky, the midfield were lethargic and the forwards were completely ineffective. Slot often makes “duels” a big point of emphasis and we lost virtually all of them in the first half. Physically we didn’t (couldn’t?) compete, and when you factor in how sloppy we were with the ball too, it made for a wretched 45 minutes. Newcastle haven’t been in great form but that meant nothing to me going in. I didn’t see that having any bearing on the game because teams like this lift themselves when the top sides come to town. It was obvious their crowd would be up for it and that they’d be pressing us and putting us under lots of pressure. We needed to weather the storm and then get on top of them, but we never really got to grips with their intensity. There was a brief spell in the second half when we started to, but then we conceded the second goal. We looked tired, both mentally and physically. Understandable after the week we’d had. You can’t continue to get yourself up to be at your absolute best every game, because in those big games you rely on adrenaline. It isn’t that the lads get complacent and drop their effort levels, they are trying their best but they don’t have those endorphins flowing for games like this. You know who does though? The opposition. That’s why it’s often so hard, it’s not because the players are slacking off.