Ducky's Note: The following is a Guest post contributed by Ray on behalf of Wonga – the payday loans alternative. Take a look at their Facebook page for a competition to win season tickets as well as their fantasy football league.

Both Arsenal and Chelsea have seen a dip in form lately and both are a full 17 points behind league leaders Manchester City.

This past two weeks have been pretty meh if you are a United fan. Knocked out of the FA Cup and Champions League, we had nothing to look forward to over the last weekend, and nothing to really bother about over the past two mid-weeks. We lost at home to Ajax, which in itself is a pretty fair summation of how we have been in Europe at home this season piss poor.

Brilliant, splendid, absolutely spiffing. I've spent very few days of late glad to be a football-follower, but these ninety minutes just pounded home the fact that being a mindless acolyte at the temple of The Beautiful Game pays dividends; sweet, sugary dividends that act as momentary Novocain to all the tooth-drilling that's gone on prior.

Build-up to North London derbies is usually fraught with a gamut of emotions; excitement, nervousness, disbelieving head-shaking as Spurs go on ego-massaging trips and superior sniggers as they trip on the field. Well, that's what they did until a few years ago at least. This new and improved Spurs are disappointingly far removed from a travelling circus and resemble a football team like few of their predecessors ever did.

Ducky's Note: A BFZ introduction is due to Chambo, our latest writer who we presume thinks he is a combination of Chamakh and Ramsey. From that you must have figured that he's now the 1325th Arsenal writer we have got, leading us very close to becoming Big-Arsenal-and-a-few-others-Za.

Bebratron's note: BFZ regular Sample comes out with an open letter to Arsene Wenger and Co a practically annual affair for Gunners if you think about it...

Dear Arsene,

I'm sure you got this, but just thought as a watching fan, I would like to make a few observations.

As far as continuation of difficult weeks go, this was very difficult. Milan were good, we were bad; but Milan weren't as good as we were bad. Arsenal would have lost to most teams playing like they did last night- lethargic, over-cautious and poor in their passing, diligently unwilling in their shooting, casual in pressing the opposition and suicidal in defense.

BFZ has the tendency to write about all things football on the pitch, off the pitch and also from the heart. So in this post a hardcore Mancunian is going to travel into the heart of the fans of the big four and find out what they think. This post is like football's version of Oprah Winfrey, so read on and tell me if you share the same feelings.

In a sudden but not wholly unexpected move, the Feline Association (FA) today detailed its intentions to oppose handshakes of any form in the animal world.

"We have all been watching the kind of hatred and vitriol this simple gesture is causing in the human world", purred one of the fat cats of the FA at their London HQ "and we are concerned that such behaviour will soon spread to the animal world.

Ducky's Note: 'Neutral' Arsenal fan Swaroop is back after a long hiatus (and with some spare time from his proper-journalism course at Newcastle) to look at whether a handshake is such a big deal and while we condemn the racism, we shouldn't stoke the fire by blowing up every little act remotely related to it.

As far as starts to difficult weeks go, that turned out to be half-decent, yeah? After eons of bumbling around in the wilderness every time our rivals slipped up, Arsenal finally took advantage of dropped points around them yesterday by squeezing past Sunderland with very little toothpaste in the tube to spare.

Nicks' note: This is a guest post. Like Ramires powering through the middle, straight-talking Sahil Dumir holds no prisoners and says it like it is. Small bio? He's a smug-smiling, hard-working, all-round good egg. He's also a Chelsea fan, which offsets all of the above.

A genial head-nod to all Arselings out there. Things are usually pretty quiet on the disquiet front after a win, and it has expectedly been all shush-and-silence in the wake of us playing Blackburn like a set of drums last week. But just like the draw at Bolton didn't mean that the team was on a one-way trip to Hades, a rout over ten-man relegation fodder doesn't a summer make.

Now that the dust has settled, here's a look at some of the transfers that took place during the January transfer window, and see if we can separate the wheat from the chaff.

Whereas last season money was being splashed out on the likes of Fernando Torres and Andy Carroll like a mad gambler who got his greasy mits on a load of free bets, the window this time around was a lot more sensible, indicating a lot less value in the market.

54 years ago in Munich, 8 of Manchester United's brightest stars were killed when the aircraft that was bringing them back home crashed. Along with them, 3 of the backroom staff, 8 journalists and 2 other passengers also perished bringing the total casualty count to 21. Nothing could have prepared the city of Manchester and indeed the whole footballing world for a tragedy of that scale.

John Terry is at the thick of it all again. Here's my thoughts: Yes, the FA had considerable case to strip him, but in doing so they have effectively gone against their own coach (don't these people ever communicate with each other? It's almost as though they pass messages to each other though the press.

Historically, battles for bridges have often defined the context and eventual outcomes of war. Severing the connectivity between two groups of the opposing army, or preventing further advances over an otherwise insurmountable barrier usually seemed like a good way to gain an advantage for the longer term.

I felt that recently we had quite good performances but did not get the results. Today we got the performance and the result, which is ideally what you want.

- Arsene Wenger, post-match wibbling session

Arsenal's January has been like the ice-skating learning curve from hell.

Football is a funny game. When you predict like a master pundit (read-Carlton Palmer) every thing goes topsy turvy and it actually ends up even more interesting. The past week was no exception and it had everything, I mean everything. For a guy like me the premier league is the only source of joy in what can be called an uneventful life (Yes, what can you do when you are an engineer with a long and winding road ahead).