I went into this one thinking we should win this quite comfortably. They’ve been doing terrible recently, and well, we’re the league leaders. A draw isn’t too bad though, Gilberto even thinks it was a point gained, not two points dropped. It was a similar game to the one we played at Villa as we spent much of the game on the back foot being pushed back and losing the physical battles.

We started in a 4-4-2 with Eduardo up front and a midfield of Eboue, Gilberto, Diarra and Rosicky. This worked well but for some reason Wenger changed to 4-5-1 putting Eduardo out wide. Why change what’s not broke? This was what led to our downfall. If we wanted to go with a five-man midfield then I would’ve much preferred the team I selected; Eduardo was completely out of the game once he got move out wide.

We scored early with a great goal. Diarra crossed the ball in from the right and Ade took the ball with such skill on the chest and volleyed home right between the keeper and the crossbar. It was a fabulous goal and Ade showed great control to keep the ball close to him.

1-0 up so early on and you thought we could win this quite comfortably. However it wasn’t to be. It was end-to-end football now, with mainly Newcastle threatening. We were holding on quite well but we couldn’t seem to apply the same pressure the other end.

Almunia was doing great in goal for us. In fact he had an excellent game, possibly his best in an Arsenal shirt. Made some great saves and stops and was clearing crosses and dangerous balls away from the area. His distribution wasn’t 100% but as long as he does his job between the posts I’ll let him off that one.

At half time it was still one nil to us and I still thought we could hang on to victory and probably add another in the second half. It got worse in the second 45 though, Newcastle were putting more pressure on us and their fans were really getting behind them in possibly their most important game of the season so far.

We were giving the ball away far too easily and a bad example of this lead to Newcastle’s equaliser on the hour. We were trying to play the ball out of trouble in defence, as we do, but with the home side in the mood they were in they were closing down every ball and they weren’t going to let us get away with it. They won the ball on the right wing, Geremi crossed it in to the deepest player in the box, Taylor. Neither Sagna or Toure picked him up and Taylor slotted the ball off the post and in.

The goal was coming and you cant say thy didn’t deserve it. They had to decide whether to take a draw against the best team in the league of go for the win and punish us. However, we seemed to wake up a little after their goal, Eduardo was brought off for Bendtner 8 minutes later and we were attacking again.

Our major downfall though was Emmanuel Adebayor. For some reason he seemed to think he was the best player in the world last night, trying every single stupid flick and hogging the ball. It was like a lanky Thierry Henry. So many times we broke away and it was Ade plus another one or two players and instead of squaring the ball to the supporting player in space, he decided to go it alone. This cost us goals and I think if Ade had been a little more unselfish we would’ve won.

There one time when he was the supporting player and it was Rosicky in possession going forward. Ade was screaming for the ball about 5 yards away from Tomas, in an offside possession. Obviously Tom spotted this and couldn’t pass to him but Ade was furious, he was desperate for the ball. It was a great display of hypocrisy from Emmanuel and I didn’t like it, it’s not like he was in a good position anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I love Ade, and he scored a brilliant goal, but he wasn’t the greatest team player for the whole 90 minutes.

In the end it finished 1-1. A fair result it has to be said. That was our game in hand so we lost an opportunity to make an even bigger gap from Man United, we’re still 4 points clear of them though, which is good.

Next up it’s ‘Boro on Sunday. Looks like we’re going to be without Hleb, Cesc, Flamini and Robin again which sucks. Hopefully by the weekend we’ll have learnt our lesson from these two away games. Thanks for reading.