Taylor Swift

Err...

Liverpool lose today and it'll have been a brilliant day of football.

8 of 9 from Arsenal. Not bad.

Wonderful.

What a game.

Brilliant by Ramsey.

Walcott!

Santos, 2-2.

Good penalty shout in the Everton game but Halsey doesn't give it.

He's better than his form is at the moment. Why are people writing him off so early? Vidic and Evra were complete crap in their first 6 months. Coloccini is an excellent example of someone who struggled playing in a defence with no confidence and no protection from midfield, yet I bet there's not more than 5 CBs in the league that we would want to swap him with at the moment.

The racist scores.

He's been pretty damn good for a while IMO. He is but he's getting better and better each game I see him. Be good to see him and Wilshere combine when the latter comes back. He's just gotten his agility and quick-footedness back after the leg break. Even when he scored at the end of last season against Man Utd, he looked slower than pre-injury, but now he's getting very close to player he was before. Seeing him play well gives me a lot of hope re: Ben Arfa.

If Arsenal win this then they'll have won 8 of 9 matches in all competitions. Not bad.

Wonderful by Ramires, Sturridge went just a bit early.

Lovely.

Good play by Fellaini.

he's playing.. My bad. I thought it was Tiote starting and Cabaye getting a rest.

I like that team a lot. It's good to see Cabaye getting a deserved rest.

Team news?

I have to agree with Phil though that they've created plenty of chances this season and sooner or later a few will go in. Their match away at Stoke was one of the most one-sided games I've seen this season, and they somehow lost that 1-0. Their draw against Man Utd was also one in which they had more chances and some of them were pretty easy too. I don't know. I think they're playing well. They've dropped some easy points and I hope they continue dropping points but the way they're playing is very impressive. Suarez creates so many chances by just wiggling in and around the penalty area. He's one of the best players in the Premiership right now, even with the poor finishing.

Play our best team. Stoke is five days after, and Everton is five days after that. I'd only rest the players who looked tired over the weekend, so maybe Ba. And I'd rest Cabaye because he's played in nearly every game this season. I would rest Coloccini too but we really don't have a replacement for him so he has to play. After Everton is an international break so there isn't any reason for us to rest lots of people over the next two weeks.

If people were saying he's lost it completely since the injury and won't get it back then you might have a valid point, however I don't see anyone saying this and more people reviewing game by game and for me he went missing for the first half an hour he was on the pitch on Saturday, that's not to say he won't get better as he gets his match sharpness back but he's not above criticism for when he doesn't do enough. This is not the same as when people were writing off Ba as a flop 2 games in or saying they had doubts about Marveaux after he didn't feature in the squad against Arsenal. For what it's worth I thought Cabaye, Tiote and Ba were all well above the high standards that they've set themselves this season and I've said as much in the match thread so it's not a case of picking on poor little Hatem, when he plays well he'll get all of the credit in the World from me but that last 2 appearances he's been average. Honestly, my post wasn't directed at any one or at any argument. It's just my opinion on why he has had two average performances so far. When fully fit, he's a Messi-type of player who can ghost past players for fun and pull multiple defenders from their positions, opening up gigantic spaces for our other players and being able to find them with a clever pass or two. That's my expectation of him when fully fit. He's obviously not Messi in that he takes too long to pass and isn't as direct, but I have very high expectations. He's not there yet and I think it's because his agility and pace isn't fully back yet.

And Ramsey's not just an example that I'm kind of making up. Wenger has come out and said the same thing. He looks a different player to the one that played towards the end of last season.

It takes a while to recover from leg breaks and ligament injuries. You look at someone like Ramsey and look at how long he's taken to recover to be a semblance of the quick-footed midfielder that he was before. It's been almost 18 months and just now he's starting to look like he's fully recovered. Even when he had a run of games at the end of last season, he looked slow and the agility wasn't completely there, similar to what I see from Ben Arfa. He was fully fit in the sense that he could play a whole match and not look fucked after 60 minutes, but he wasn't fully recovered. I can see the same thing happen with Ben Arfa. He'll recover his fitness much quicker and he'll probably be starting for us every match by mid to late November, but his touch and quickness will probably take until early next year to fully come back. And if you think that Ramsey's an isolated case then Valencia is another excellent example of a player who suffered a ligament injury/leg break, who even though fully fit now, has not recovered his touch and agility yet. He was playing towards the end of last season but didn't look like the player that he was, even though he was fully fit. I hope Ben Arfa recovers fully because I really rate him - he's potentially our 'Suarez' player ie. someone who single-handedly is the difference between winning and losing - but there are cases like Eduardo and Smith who had ligament injuries/breaks who never fully recover. For what it's worth, Ben Arfa looks like he's about 70% of the player that he was and this is after two matches from two pretty serious injuries, so it looks like he'll fully recover; it's just a matter of when.

Baggio's still desperate for N'Zogbia to sign.