The kids in question, Fabregas and Flamini had to shoulder an awful lot of responsibility for their age. And I think they did great especially with a combined age of 39. I was thinking after the match whether I could remember much that Cesc did. Mathieu was doing his famous headless chicken impersonation to great effect, but what about Cesc? I really couldn't remember much that he had done that I had noticed, so I wondered what sort of game he had had, although I have to be honest that I was a tad too nervous to concentrate on who was doing exactly what. I can't swear by my memory, so the evidence will have to be circumstantial. Either Ajax fell over halfway into our half, or someone stopped them. If Gilberto had been playing, we would have nodded sagely and mentioned the 'Invisible Wall' in front of the back four. But he wasn't so I can only guess Cesc did a good job. Either way with maximum points so far I'm willing to be pretty generous, at least in the CL.

I've heard a lot of talk to the effect that Arsenal should be breezing through this group, and anyway Ajax are not a great team any more. Give me a break! Even with a full-strength first team we have previously lost when we should have won in Europe. Up to last season we would have pulled a draw from the jaws of victory in the same situation. Let's just be glad we have a young team which actually won away from home and quit explaining what's wrong and who knows, we may even win again. As far as Ajax are concerned, they were missing key players and were playing a number of youngsters, sound familiar? But let's be clear on this, the opposition having injuries is part of football. Championships can swing on who gets injured, so let's not denegrate what was a competant victory.

What did please me was the sight of Kolo going completely nuts at Ralph for a defensive error. Toure looked like a man with something to prove, and I think he succeeded. With Sol back, we looked like we had a defence which could cope with better than Ajax, as long as Sol doesn't go careering up the pitch and lose the ball.

Although most of the team did at least a decent job, special mention to (we love you) Freddy, Hleb and JAR who all looked pretty knackered by the last 15 mins.

Thing I noticed about Quincy when he came on, was that because he doesn't play like Thierry or Jose, he found it pretty tricky getting on the end of anything telling. On the other hand, having played at Ajax, I think they knew how quick he could be and that tended to curtail their forward movement, so not a bad tactic really.

Two games in, maximum points, I'll take that.