An extremely interesting article has been published in the FT, written by a journalist, Henk Spaan, who reportedly knows RVP well, it highlights several of the key issues surrounding the future of our Dutch talisman. The big question is how much to read into this piece? I would say the general theme is worth our attention but some of the smaller details may well be just the author's

The close season is a strange beast, one would think that people would chatter less as so little happens, but in fact the reverse seems to be true, there is more chatter because so little is actually happening. The great problem with this of course, is that people get very over excited by the most flimsy of rumours and I have to say a lot of it is extremely tedious.

Statistics is not a simple subject and understanding the validity of rating players based on simple footballing statistics is also a highly complex matter. In fact I would go as far as saying that most footballing statistics are not really that useful in rating players, some are helpful but many are highly misleading and far more likely to result in fans confusing themselves.

I have no insider information and this summer I shall simply be waiting for official news from Arsenal.com on any transfers. Life is too short to waste one's time reading manufactured rubbish in the papers, or incessant rumour on sports news channels, we should be wise enough to ignore these lame journalists whose job involves filling column inches and tv screens with their made up

I may have been a little hasty to dare criticise Chelsea's Champions League triumph and the quite delectable way in which this fine football club has been managed under the fine and principled leadership of the most benevolent of dictators, Roman Abrahmovich. I have to say that my original article was just a sarcastic piece, intended to whip up anger in all those idiots who would dare to

Money can certainly buy trophies, but can it buy you class, respect and dignity? Not judging from Chelsea's performance tonight. Another extremely lucky result from a side that played some of the most dire and defensive football possible, and it must be remembered that Roman Abrahmovich has had to steal billions to finance this pathetic little racket.

I have been away and unable to blog for the last week, and I must say that I enjoyed my holiday considerably more after we had managed to secure 3rd spot by squeezing past West Brom by the narrowest of margins. It wasn't brilliant any means, but the bottom line is it was enough and qualifying automatically for the Champions League means that we can now hopefully set about properly strengthening

I do not care for transfer gossip, I prefer to concentrate on the here and now, and that is why 3 points this weekend is absolutely massive in many ways for the club. The game needs no hype, holding on to third spot is essential for the club to build a challenge for next season. We need to show our true colours, we need a committed, a solid defensive and a disciplined performance this

I do not want to get carried away with the doom and negativity. Our recent dropped points must be seen in context of some excellent results earlier in the year, while the deep problems in our squad are not something that can be quickly remedied overnight, failing players on big long term contracts cannot be moved on easily overnight.

I have lost count of the number of times that we have come unstuck against the weaker sides this season, it is staggeringly frustrating. We have beaten all the top sides other than ManU but we keep making the same mistake, that mistake being that we assumed that all we need to do against the smaller sides is turn up and we will win, how many f*cking times do we have to make this mistake?

Today's game summed up our season. There was some incisive attacking football, we could have scored way more than the 3 goals we ended up with. There was also some terrible defending as a unit. Typically there was some absolutely awful refereeing. We so nearly escaped with all three points but couldn't hold out, I just wish I didn't care, but sadly I do and it is hard to find words

Firstly I would just like to keep this all in an appropriate context, Gary Lineker's pathetic attempts at mocking Arsene Wenger are not a massive deal, but they are certainly something that should not be ignored and for this reason I just want to ramble on briefly about the aftermath of Lineker's foolish outburst.

What a fantastic start to a summer that I hope shall see several transfers of top quality talent into the Arsenal. The board and manager know that the shambles of last summer cannot be repeated, and the early signing of Lukas Podolski is a very encouraging sign that they have learnt their lessons. Podolski is a top striker, his record speaks for itself, even though he did not set Munich on

The behaviour of Stoke fans was bad enough yesterday in itself. Aaron Ramsey was abused by a majority of brainless Stoke fans for daring to have his leg broken by the aggressive Ryan Shawcross' reckless tackling, while Arsene Wenger was abused by the Stoke fans in that classless manner that is sometimes tinged with a rather significant dose of xenophobia.

Firstly the game, a point gained given Newcastle's spanking at Wigan and Stoke's decent home record against top sides. Still, we comprehensively outplayed Stoke for the vast majority of the game, and a mixture of bad refereeing, poor finishing and bad luck saw it end as a draw. This is life, sometimes you don't get the rub of the green, but overall a draw is no disaster for our 3rd place quest.