Published: 7 November, 2013

ARSENAL
I WAS just trying to tot up who had scored more goals this season: Wales’s best player Aaron Ramsey, or Spurs, and I just thought, why? There’s no need, you’ve been thinking too much about them, and not enough about us.

This column could spend all day questioning the judgment of a club that let’s a dazed and confused goalkeeper go on playing and decides later whether he was concussed or not on the basis of how many saves he has made, in the process setting the awful example to Sunday league kids that it’s a good thing to be hard as nails and play on, however hard you’ve been duffed in the head.

Boo.

Yep, we can snark at Chelsea’s sudden adoration for the League Cup, or at the rush among Man United fans to say “Moyes Out”, or at Joe Hart, a most hilarious – albeit dandruff free – walking catastrophe of a goalkeeper.

But this page does not spend enough time saying something simple: Arsenal, folks… let’s say it because it’s true… Arsenal have been really good.

Without spending £100million on new players, they have been really good. We were all wrong about Ramsey, yeah we were. And Giroud. And most of us were probably wrong about Wenger.

Even his staunchest supporters were scratching heads when Villa won on the opening day. But regardless of what they say on Match Of The Day, Arsenal have been entertaining and thoughtful.

It could all go plums up from here – November is always Arsenal’s bogey month and Man United always raise their game when they know Arsenal are coming, but pause for a moment and drink it up: the past 10 weeks have been wonderful.
RICHARD OSLEY

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR
HALLOWEEN was a bit of a wake-up call for us Spurs fans.

For some reason Kyle Walker agreed to have what they call in football terms “a bit of banter”, which means the defender did what all grown footballers like to do during the witching hour – he donned a scary mask and jumped out on his team mates in a dark room.

You, dear reader, may not have seen the video on Spurs TV yet but, let me tell you, it makes horrific viewing because it graphically shows that… Heurelho Gomes is still on our books… duh, duh, duh.

Only joking.

I was delighted to see the Octopus back in action for Tottenham. Even if he was just lying on the floor of a broom cupboard like a gibbering wreck.

Talking of forgotten men who are still on the payroll, here’s a plea to see Emmanuel Adebayor in a Spurs shirt again.

Call me fickle, call me a fool, but if inarticulate men with bad haircuts, or no hair at all, can sit around television studios in shiny shirts saying that Dave Giroud’s fitness is the key to Arsenal’s title tilt then why can’t Ade be the key to ours?

Maybe, maybe not. Sure the shiny shirt brigade spent as much time wittering on about Spurs’ lack of goals as Arsenal’s title chances at the weekend.

But bringing Adebayor in before you’ve given Soldado a chance might smack of desperation.

Best leave that kind of thing to the club that recalled Nic ‘Big ‘Ed’ Bendtner.

All we need to do is stick Christian Eriksen and Gylfi Sigurdsson in from the start and, hey presto, the fans will be on song again and so will the team.

Nightmare over.

For now…
CATHERINE ETOE