Things are calming down a bit now leading up to Christmas. We have a massive game on the 27th against Aston Villa but right now I think the players and staff are more concentrated on getting those last minute Christmas presents in, building snowmen and rushing around trying to find an Asdas that hasn’t completely sold out of turkeys. I do hope that we have one eye on Sunday’s game though but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of news building up to it yet.

Hence the lack of stories I’ve done a bit of redesigning of the site. In my last post I asked you to choose what look you liked the most and the red and white stripy one came out on top. In fact all the red ones were favorites and I thought it was about time I made the site actually look like our home club colours…

I’m a bit concerned it looks a bit American. Not that that’s a bad thing but just not what I was going for. Oh well, I hope you like it. Next job is to re-do the squad pages that have been offline for a few months.

Anyways on to what news there is and the FA have charged Arsenal and Hull over the brawl last Saturday. We both have a month to respond to the charges but I think we will just pay the fine and get on with it. We’ve escaped a game-ban for Nasri so I think we will count ourselves lucky in that respect. It was a nothing ‘stamp’ but it’s the sort of thing you could still get done for.

Moving onto the stuff from Wenger’s webchat and Le Boss thinks that the last four years have been his best four years, despite not winning a trophy. I can see a lot of people disagreeing with him there, including probably myself but he has tried to emphasize how well we’ve done staying in the top four since we spent all our money on a shiny new stadium:

“I think moving into a new stadium and keeping the team at the top in the last four years is, for me, my best period at my club. Unfortunately it is as well the period when we have not won trophies. But people forget that we have been reasonably consistent. It has been the most difficult period but as well for me the period where I worked the best.

To move into a new stadium and yet still make some money in every single year without the team dropping the level, then maintaining a successful period in the Champions League, and doing reasonably well in the League has been quite difficult.”

It’s true, but I think this is really a bit of propaganda to calm some impatient fans. We do really need an actual trophy soon but the last four years haven’t been without achievements – and the successful transition to Ashburton Grove is quite a big one.

Wenger confirmed that we won’t see much more of Robin van Persie this season. I said earlier in the week about how we can pretty much forget about RVP for this year and Wenger’s confirmed that. It’s a real shame but we’ve just got to get on with it.

We might sign a striker to replace him and Arsene’s said it’s not vital that he be available for Europe. It would be great if we could find a good striker that isn’t cup-tied in the Champions League but Wenger says, “We are going for the domestic title and the FA Cup aswell.” He points out that Arshavin couldn’t play in Europe but still made an impact so I don’t think he is afraid to buy a striker simply to help us in the Premier League and FA Cup. We’ll have to wait and see though, Wenger’s been persistent that we will not buy unless it’s the right player – we won’t just be throwing money around for the sake of it, so I hope our scouts can find us someone good.

I did say that a defender was more important the other day but it seems Wenger’s more focused on getting a forward. That is his way. I do hope that he will be looking out for a centre back/defensive midfielder too though.

And finally, Theo Walcott has broken Thierry Henry’s 40m sprint record. . Theo has recorded a 4.72 seconds beating Titi’s 4.83 seconds making him not just our fastest player but the fastest Arsenal player ever recorded. Well done Theo, except there’s just one thing…

That’s all for today. Thanks for reading.