The dust settles

Given the rather fickle reaction to the Anfield loss from some Gooners, I am rather amazed that we are so near the top of the league with so many useless players in the side, something doesn't quite add up, does it? It's almost more painful the day after, as the significance of any big defeat like this takes a bit of time to sink in. Kole has been speaking of that 'penalty':

"It was a really tight game and we were playing well," he said. "We came back into it and then Liverpool got a penalty which was really hard to accept.

"The referee gave the foul against me, but I just moved away from him and I think Cesc caught his hand maybe, which was outside the area anyway. But that is the game and the referee has given the penalty. What can you do?

"We are all really disappointed. We just need to think about the Premier League now and see how far we can go in that."

Kole sums it up nicely, we have to get on with things, Manu certainly won't show us any sympathy on Sunday. The Sun has completed misrepresented Gael Clichy's postmatch comments, Clichy says it was 'ridiculous' that we conceded the third so quickly, the Sun think this means that Clichy has called his team mates 'ridiculous', the Sun is full of shit. Arsene Wenger has also been fairly pragmatic and said this when talking of poor refereeing decisions:

"I believe that we have to live with that and sometimes you have to swallow it. It is like that but it is very difficult to understand it because it was not a penalty tonight. I watched it clearly again. Last week [the challenge on Hleb] was a real penalty but we have to accept it. As well we have to accept in a game like that where we had so much control, but we were too naive. We lacked a little bit of maturity defensively."

We have to swallow this bitter pill. I have to say I'm impressed with Arsene's reaction as he does acknowledge the poor defending and naivety that contributed to our demise, he most definitely does not have his head in the sand. Of note Pieter Vink, the referee from the first leg, has been man enough to apologise to Arsene Wenger for not awarding a deserved penalty for a foul on Alex Hleb.

We need to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get up for a battle at Old Trafford. There should be no better motivator than a game against our biggest rivals, and it's a chance for a few of our players to prove that they are worth their first team place for next season. Come on you gunners.