Discipline and a lack of it at City, plus musings on a jealous Manu fan

There isn't really much of interest to say on a playing front. Kieran Gibbs is getting closer to a return, before his next injury that is, and Thomas Vermaelen is continuing his slow recovery from the niggling Achilles injury that he picked up on International duty a good while back. Arsene is going to see how TV does over the next couple of weeks, if he suffers a setback in training then it looks possible that he will dip into the market for a centre back. I expect the same eleven that started against Chelsea and Birmingham to start against City with a weakened team being rolled out at the weekend for the FA Cup tie against Leeds.

There have been a couple of things to laugh at, firstly I thought this bitter and incoherent piece from a Manu fan was definitely worth a read, but not for the reasons that the author intended! The argument just doesn't make sense, he seems to be completely unable to appreciate that neutrals like watching Arsenal's style of football, the media credit Arsenal with playing good football for this very reason, it's not complex. He then goes on to label our style 'foreign' and claim that it is not 'British' like United's. Interesting to note that Arsenal have the better English talent coming through the ranks at the moment.

If the author bothered to do his research before producing such academic 'studies' he may realise that Arsenal's style is a fusion of styles between a technical continental game and the faster British style, this style is based on Arsene's rather unique way of trying to play the game. It may not always be effective, we do acknowledge this openly, but to try and pretend that Man United's current style is the best is nonsensical. Manu are effective but there is not much attractive about the way they play, they struggle to keep the ball and grind out results in an ugly manner. Yes it's effective, but I sense someone is a tad jealous of the aesthetic beauty of the way we play the game and for this very reason he dust protest too much.

The fight between Kolo Toure and Adebayor at Man City's training ground today makes for hilarious viewing, it goes to show that certain leopards can never change their spots. This is the second bust-up that has been caught by the media at their training ground this season, the first being between Boatend and Balotelli. I hope we can exploit the rifts in their camp to full effect on Wednesday. Meanwhile Arsene has quite rightly pointed out that Alex McCleish didn't have much of a point to his argument that the FA's system was baised towards the big sides. McCleish should know that the FA's system is just rubbish, it reacts to things which the media highlight and ignores all else, there is no consistency in it at all. I do see why McCleish is frustrated when he has recently seen Alan Hutton get away with a head butt on a Birmingham players, but the system isn't biased, it's just completely crap.