Gunners must bring bulldog spirit on travels

WHO could wish for more from Santa the Gooner, than a nodding Arsenal bulldog to adorn the dashboard of my motor and three points from our encounter with the Blues, which guarantees that the Gunners will ring in the New Year if not as leaders then at least as the capital’s top dogs?

Despite the unremitting positivity of a new car mascot (that doesn’t do negative!), the optimism hardly abounded as we headed for the ground on Monday night, banking on the law of averages as our best bet for finally breaking our infuriating hoodoo against the Premier League’s big fish. I suppose if you eat the competition’s dust enough times, there must eventually come a time when your desire to avoid the bitter taste of defeat will ensure that you are just that little bit more ‘up for it’ than an increasingly complacent opposition.

Admittedly it would’ve felt slightly more fulfilling if a less flaccid display from Carlo Ancelotti’s side had forced the Arsenal to produce their scintillating best to beat the Blues, but it feels as if it’s been so long in coming, that absolutely nothing was going to spoil the euphoria of finally getting one over the Blues.

Although I’m not sure everyone welcomed the return of Flappy Handski, Arsene got his team selection spot-on, with a centre-back pairing that went into this game without any of the baggage of Didier Drogba’s recent bedevilment and with the inspired choice of Theo Walcott in his starting XI.

Aside from the fact that Theo is a far more willing grafter than Andrey Arshavin, it seemed as if the disreputable Cashley Hole was so focused on his forlorn attempts to bully his replacement as the brightest star in the Gunners firmament, that the Chelsea left-back completely forgot the raids down our flank, which have proved such a crucial facet of the Blues’ recent success against his former employers.

Additionally, Ancelotti’s defensive selection served to our advantage, as Branislav Ivanovic is a far greater threat as a raiding full-back than he is a bulwark at centre-back and in beating Paulo Ferreira, after giving him a three-yard start, Samir Nasri made the Portuguese stand-in look positively sluggish.

Still, for 44 minutes on Monday night it seemed as if the rope-a-dope tactics that Chelsea have perfected in recent contests might prevail once again. Mercifully the Gunners appear to have learned the lessons of various fruitless, one-dimensional attempts to pick an intricate path through the massed Blue ranks, by at long last adding a bit of variation to our forward play.

By being equally willing to use some width to try to go around the Blue backline, instead of incessantly attempting to tippy-tappy their way through the middle of the park, or by mixing it up with the occasional long ball, Chelsea were unable to rest on their laurels.

Compared to a far bigger, beefier opposition, Jack Wilshere still looks more like the club mascot when he comes trotting onto the pitch. But if ever there was a player to make a mockery of the ‘men v boys’ analogy Jack is the man. In fact, considering our skipper had a bit of a stinker, by his world-class standards, in a match littered with Cesc’s misplaced passes, I was somewhat flabbergasted on returning home to find Fabregas had been awarded man of the match, when there were at least half a dozen more deserving candidates.

When you consider how Chelsea have communed with their travelling faithful in the recent past and how I’ve been envious of this allusion to a winning spirit within the Blues’ dressing room, you only had to look at the faces of the four lonely losers who came over to their corner of the ground at the final whistle to appreciate that everything is far from hunky-dory in the Roman Abramovich house.

The question is whether the Gunners can build on the momentum gained on Monday, by acquiring the sort of swagger that might have the likes of Wigan and Birmingham quaking in their boots.

All our good work on Monday will amount to naught unless we consolidate our success with the sort of honest endeavours on the road in the next few days and without which my nodding dog might end up lobbed out the car window in frustration, disappearing in my rear-view mirror along with any remaining aspirations of an Arsenal title challenge.