Siberian Khatru

Ups and downs are what life is made of. The pleasure/pain principle (which is quite difficult to say without tripping over your tongue - try it) is a force to be reckoned with, and tosses us around on winds we cannot control.

After the down of Chelsea came the up of Arsenal on Sunday. A good game, though I missed most of it (catching up on the execrable MOTD2 later) thanks to the timing of the annual visit from my friend who lives in Japan (Frank Cannon, Chuck Waggon, String, Victoria N Principal, among others - for those in the know. See his ghosted blog post from exactly a year ago for further information) meaning I had to leave the comfort of the pub, where a bunch of Gooner twats were playing a drinking game with some kind of forfeit every time the ball went out of play or a yellow card was handed out. I couldn't quite suss what the forfeit was, but a glass with money in it was passed from person to person each time one of the above happened. It couldn't have been simply that the person left with the glass at the end of the half had to buy the drinks, because that wouldn't have exactly been the rowdiest game ever invented, but they didn't appear to be taking a drink each time. Maybe they were in for the long haul, sticking around for the La Liga match and slowly and deliberately getting absolutely smashed. They did make a point of jeering City at every opportunity, though from what I could see we were all over them (with the odd exceptional save from Hart) in the first half.

A disappointing capitulation from QPR against the Rags earlier in the day had made a win even more important for us, and I was pleasantly surprised that we came through so well. If Arsenal possessed someone else with even an approximation of the potency of Van Persie, and if we didn't have the excellent Hart between the sticks, then things could well have turned out differently. I felt that Kün was a little unlucky, with an excellent take-down before shooting just over the bar, and Nasri - for once - had a (largely) decent game. Zaba was magnificent, as was Vinnie, and things are - still - looking good. So there was pleasure.

Next up, the pain of a visit from the Potters before we head into the festive fixture calendar. I will do my best to post again before the fat man comes down the chimney, but in case I don't, I'd like to wish you all (you sellers of replica watches and generic viagra, you purveyors of fake designer bags and iPhone unlockers, you SEO optimisers and all the rest) a very merry Yule.