Reading into the reaction

I'm not quite as angry as I was on Saturday, the rage has now become more a feeling of let down and disappointment, interestingly the Fulham goal has since been shown to have been offside. Some interesting words have been spoken since the Fulham game which do throw some light on what exactly went on. Emmanuel Adebayor had this to say:

"We saw that as soon as we don't play together, as soon as we don't put our spirit together, we can lose....We have to put more heart in, keep focused and play our football."

The question is why did we not play 'together', why was the spirit not there and why was there no heart in the performance? It was our second game of the season, there should not have been this obvious lack of motivation and desire. Losing is one thing, losing in that manner was not acceptable for many of us Arsenal fans. Even Arsene had to own up to the lacklustre nature of the team's performance, while he claimed that buying is not always the solution:

"I believe they wanted it a bit more than us in the first half, when you want to play at the top you must start the game with the right attitude and personality. Fulham started stronger and were sharper. The corner showed that we were not sharp enough. The mistake we made on the corner is not excusable."

“When you lose a game the solution is not always to buy”

As Goodplaya points out, we have a rather gaping chasm in the centre of our midfield, Flamini, Diarra and Gilberto have simply not been replaced. Buying is not always the solution, however in this situation it appears to be a very good solution.

This is most definitely the case if Song is to be deployed as a centre back, and not in centre midfield; personally I will be disappointed if this is the case, Song has the strength, drive and passing ability to be able to dominate games from the centre of midfield. I'm with Goodplaya who thinks that we need a more dominant and commanding centre back, someone who will take no prisoners, Gallas seems to be struggling at the moment.

Hopefully this defeat will be the kick up the arse that some of our players so badly needed, I hope we do not have to endure such a lacklustre performance again this season. It's easy to make the likes of Emmanuel Eboue the scapegoats, however in doing this we are simply living in denial, many of our bigger names were not at the races on Saturday, for example a certain Robin Van Persie. The summer has seen endless speculation about greedy footballers angling for pay rises, it's about bloody time that these men started to earn their salaries. I can take defeat, but I cannot take defeat without blood, sweat and tears.

PS it appears that big Phil Senderos is off to Milan for a year's loan, I can't help but feel sorry for big Phil who has been unfairly scapegoated at times; he's been a very consistent performer in my opinion, I certainly feel that many Gallas and Toure errors have been brushed under the carpet while big Phil has been relatively harshly treated. Is it really wise to be letting such a valuable squad player go with a gruelling season ahead, let's hope Silvestre can stay fit!