At half-time in this game, I have to admit that I was struggling to think about what I would write in my post-match report. However, and thankfully, the game came alive in the second-half, and will probably live long in the memory of Arsenal fans for years to come. My thoughts as follows:
* As I said, it didn't look like it was shaping up to be a classic in the first-half.

It's only mid-February but we're already perilously close to what The Flight of the Concords would call 'Business Time'. By that, I don't mean Arsenal football club are going to wine and dine our opponents, and then take them back to the Emirates for some 'business' - I apologise if this is getting a little weird - I mean that we're coming up to the real make-or-break period of the season.

After my piece in defence of Aaron Ramsey on Sunday, it seemed only fitting that whoscored.com would publish this piece today, which looks at the Premier League's most creative players since 2007.
It divides the number of minutes played by the chances that a player created from open play, producing a mixture of expected and surprising results.

It seems odd to me, but over the last few weeks I've seen Aaron Ramsey come in for a lot of criticism, especially on the angst-spewing machine that is Twitter. The main bone of contention seems to be that he has become an automatic first XI pick for Arsene this year, despite the fact that he has not contributed enough to the team.

I 7-1 to be a Blackburn fan? No, it doesn't quite work, does it. One day we'll get to the promised land of an 8 goal victory, and all the wonderful pun-based jokes this allows. For today, I think 7 will do. My thoughts as follows:
* We started brightly, and scored after only 2 minutes.

Given that Sam Allardyce supposedly had the hex over us while he was in charge at Bolton, it was interesting to find out that we've actually won 9 out of our last ten games against Bolton in the league. Until today, our last failure to beat Bolton was the rather galling 2-1 defeat last year, when Nasri choked, and we failed to defend our set-pieces.

Thank you to Arseblogger and his minions for posting this on Arseblog news today: a transcript of an interview that Ivan Gazidis gave with Fox Soccer Channel yesterday.
I watched the interview, and attempted to live-tweet it, because I found what Ivan said revealing. If I was going to sum-up his comments, I would use a term that Michael Lewis (of 'Moneyball' fame) recently employed in his book about the small group of people who correctly predicted the collapse of the Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) market in 2008: 'The Big Short'.

At half-time today, I admit that I feared the worst. We were losing 2-0 and staring in the face of exit from a competition which, realistically, offered our best opportunity of silverware this season. Fast forward 45 minutes, and Arsenal had completed one of the more memorable comebacks of recent times.

I don't know if you've noticed, but January has been pretty awful so far. We've lost all three of our league games, and we've gone back to our old habit of throwing away leads. United swept us aside with an ease that was almost saddening, given how massive the games between the two clubs used to be.

Some historical context first.
Back in March, 2004, we were leading United by a single goal at Highbury. As the game entered the final 10 minutes, Arsene put Pascal Cygan (remember him) on for Freddie Ljunberg, in an attempt to sure up our defence and see the game out. Instead, Cygan went AWOL up the field, United pushed forward, and Saha scored a later equalizer to deny us the victory.

Instead of a preview, I thought I'd look at some classic Arsenal matches against this week's opponents. And when those opponents are Man Utd, there's a lot of games to choose from. So, rather than one game, I thought I'd look at a whole season: 2004-2005. That year, we played United in three games that can genuinely be described as epic (we also opened the season by beating them in the Charity Shield).

Returning home after Christmas, I opened my mailbox to find a wonderful surprise awaiting me – a copy of 'So Paddy Got Up', the Arsenal anthology edited by Andrew Mangan of Arseblog.com. How my brother had managed to be one of the few people to snag a hard-copy, I don't know, but it was, to quote Arseblog's famous slogan, ‘fuckin excellent' to discover that he had.

Hi everyone.
I had the pleasure of writing an article for The Arsenal Collective. This is a wonderful website where any Gooner can write about their memoires and experiences of being an Arsenal fan.
Click on this link to read my entry - 'The only Arsenal Fan in the Room'.
It's about my experiences of being an Arsenal fan as a kid/young adult.

* It's worth remembering that we started well. Arshavin, for all the criticism he's received today, threaded a lovely ball through to RvP who finished with aplomb. Funnily enough, the goal worried me slightly - scoring early can be a bit of a double-edged sword with a team that is struggling defensively as much as we are at present, as it encourages the opposing side to attack from an early stage.

I wish I could furnish you today with news of multiple transfers, but alas I live in the real world. There is very little out there to report.
Looking through this list on Football 365, you realise that we're not alone. There is very little movement happening anywhere in the prem, even at Man City.