I wouldn't mind quite so much if we had failed at the wire having given all and come up short. As it is, there is still a risk of finishing behind the Spuds which is as far away from being acceptable as the likelihood of Fat Sam being awarded slimmer of the year by Weightwatchers.

Four matches ago we were still in with a slimmish shout for the title. Now we're looking over our shoulders and trying not to break sweat at the possibility of being beaten to third place by our perennial loser neighbours. How did we get to this?

I've been a stalwart supporter of Arsène, but now I have to admit that the experiment has reached it's conclusion and the end of term report has to be written up. Is it possible to win the English Premiere League with a bunch of highly talented players who also happen to be small in stature. I had hoped the answer was yes, but I think the neanderthals have won. Being skillful ain't enough, you have to have attitude as well. An attitude that says you mess with me or my team, there are consequences, and not just a manager who will complain about referees to the press at the end.

They don't necessarily have to be man mountains, but they do have to have attitude, something it looks like Jack Wilshere has, but many of the current team don't. What do they show from time to time is petulance and that's not the same thing. Petulance means you do something stupid and get red carded. Attitude means you offer a measured response which may be a yellow since you're an Arsenal player, and judging by the last match will be judged on a different criteria to the opposition. But to use one of the neanderthal's phrases, lets your opponent know he's in a game.

I wish it were different, but in the English game you can get away with being 'robust', 'committed' and all the other euphemisms. Fat Sam and his ilk don't have to worry whether their brand of football would work in Europe, because they are never going to find out. But they do know it will work against Arsenal, so we have to quit crying and come up with something different, even if it means that some of the beautiful game has to be lost. As Arseblogger has suggested, it's beginning to look like we aren't one or two away from a good side, it's three or four times that.

Yes I know we have had terrible injuries this season, but you have to assume that your better players will be battered and may not get a whole season from them with even the supposedly better teams playing aggressively against us. Point is that outrageously skillful players like Cesc who also have a bite to their game are few and far between. We can't get bench warmers of that quality, so we have to have one or the other. Outrageously skillful or those with less skill but with bite. Since we play in the English Premiership, I would prefer the latter.

We also can't afford to beta test players in the heat of English Premiership games, particularly goalkeepers. It may well be that Fabianski is a great goalie on the practice pitch, but that counts for nothing if it doesn't translate to the match day pitch. And it doesn't. We can't afford for him to learn his trade when it loses us games. However I have to be fair, he didn't have a terrible game and he was quite clearly targeted at set pieces. You have to ask yourself the question as to whether Mad Jens would have been given the same treatment. Obviously not because anyone who tried to crown him like that would have ended up 'knowing they were in a match'. In fact because of his reputation and their desire to keep all their body parts, they probably wouldn't have even tried it.

So we are left hoping that Al Citeh win tomorrow and that Fulham are rather more focused on their European final come next Sunday. This is what we have come to and it's not good enough.