Every time Robin van Persie scores, God kills a kitten

And van Persie scores again.

This blog is also available today over at http://www.arsegob.com.  Great site, check it out.
 
Morning guys.  It's a holiday here in the States.  It's called Labor Day, and yet nobody goes to work and instead we eat lots of meat and get drunk.  Doesn't make a lot of sense.  But it does mean that in addition to basking in the glow of yesterday's great result, I'm doing so from the comfort of my living room, and I may or may not be wearing pants as I write this.

A lot of talk on Twitter the past 24 hours or so about how van Persie has twice as many goals as Arsenal, which, at least to me, means exactly nothing at all whatsoever.  Here's a stat.  Manchester United have 6 points, and Arsenal have 5.  Here's another stat.  Arsenal have played 270 minutes of football without conceding a goal.  And while United were off having a rally against Southampton, we were busy dominating Liverpool at Anfield.  Robin van Persie is more or less dead to me.  I don't hate the man, but I don't give a shit about him either.  I'll start concerning myself with him as soon as we're set to play United in a match.  Until then, I'll be doing the best job I can at not giving a fuck about how many goals he has compared to Arsenal.

I watched yesterday's match at The Highbury Pub here in Milwaukee with my dear friend Cody who also happens to be a Liverpool supporter.  If you're ever in Milwaukee, which is probably never, be sure to stop at The Highbury for a beer and some footy.  Great place. Needless to say, bad day for Cody, good day for me.  Good day for all Gooners.  For a minute (or 31) it looked like we were going to have to endure another goalless draw or worse yet, a goalless loss.  Liverpool had the better start, aided by some terrible calls from Howard Webb.  For me, Webb had a terrible match altogether, but it was one where it was terrible on both sides so it just sort of worked itself out.  I'm sure, had we lost the match, I'd probably be moaning about it, but since we didn't I'm just going to let it slide.  Bad calls are part of the game, and you can never really be sure when the other team is going to suddenly adopt a 12th player to come in and fuck you over, but I don't think it would be fair for Liverpool to blame yesterday's woes on the referee.

In any event, we finally broke through with a couple of nice goals from Podolski and Cazorla.  Cazorla's goal was less nice based on the fact that Reina basically shat the bed on it, but I'm really happy for Santi.  His overall play has been tremendous and he received a just reward with that goal.  It was the one that put the match out of reach for Liverpool, stirring up that great feeling you get when you realize all three points have been taken. Caorla also played the amazing ball that allowed Pololski to smash the ball past the keeper for our first goal of the season.  I really can't say enough about the little Spaniard.  His play has been on par, or better than anything I saw from Fabregas in his time at Arsenal.  I know I'll get stick for saying something like that, and maybe I should, but I'm utterly amazed by the way Cazorla controls the attack.  And as we've seen, he's also a threat to have a shot at any moment.  We'll have to be careful not to wear him out, because having him on the pitch makes us so much better, and the temptation to play him all 90 minutes of every single match will be a difficult one to resist.  I would imagine that getting Rosicky and Wilshere back to fitness will help Wenger to use Cazorla intelligently, so that we might have him playing in top form and good health all season long.

Defensively, we kept a third consecutive clean sheet, and again, we did it with our 3rd choice keeper and without Bacary Sagna.  To his credit, Jenkinson has done a formidable job at right-back, and he even had a nice crack at goal yesterday.  Not really sure what to say about Liverpool.  One of the only down-sides to the match is that even though we beat Liverpool, beating Liverpool doesn't exactly mean the same thing as it used to.  In a way they looked a lot like us when we're at our worst; some creativity, and some dynamic midfield play, but no real threat to finish.  I don't really make it a priority to follow Liverpool's transfer business, but for the life of me I can't understand why, when you're a side that's having trouble scoring goals, you'd loan off Andy Carroll to West Ham.  Despite keeping a clean sheet, I felt like we got lucky more than once to have not conceded, and there were at least two or three times when the ball was either whipping past the face of goal, or ping-ponging around in the penalty area.  Andy Carroll may be a twat, but I'm glad we didn't have to deal with him on those occasions where it looked like Liverpool could have and should have scored.

All in all, a fine day.  I'm feeling a lot better about Arsenal football.  For a squad like ours, full of fresh faces, there was a feeling that it might take a few matches to get the engine firing on all cylinders and unless we've been mislead by yesterday's result, it appears that may have been the case exactly.  The first couple goals are sometimes the toughest ones to get, but I think we can expect to start seeing some much better things from this team.  And truthfully, if the defense continues to keep cleans sheets, we won't need loads of goals to be successful anyways. Thanks for reading guys.