Belated thoughts on Arsenal's mauling oop north & Transfers

Scientific studies have shown that holidays can protect your heart by as much as 30%. Never has this been truer than last week. As it happens, I was on my way to a lovely week in the Balkans on Sunday and therefore missed sitting through what I already knew would be a horrible 90 minutes.

I didn't quite predict how horrible.

It was inevitable that we'd lose (even though I predicted a draw....never bet against your own team!) and even more inevitable when Vermaelen & Sagna were ruled out. We took a League cup side to Manchester and the sharks smelled blood.

Didn't watch the game, so purely on the basis of very limited highlights from 101GG, I thought that both pens were stonewall, Man Utd took their chances very well, Jenkinson is nowhere near ready for 1st team football (been saying that since pre season) and interestingly, Szczesny seems to have a weakness diving to his left - his penalty save and his save this week vs Germany were flinging himself to the right, but several of the Utd goals were to his left and it'll be interesting to see how that develops in the future.

I missed Transfer deadline day too - I left thinking we'd sign Cahill last minute and probably no-one else (Park Chu Young deal was before I went) - so was pretty happy to see that we'd signed Mertesacker and Santos (who I know bugger all about) and was really hoping we'd get Arteta and Benayoun when I went out for the night.

Might have mislead the missus the next morning when we went to get breakfast and sneaked off to check if we'd signed them....hopefully, she won't read this!

**UPDATE** Apparently she does read this. She did find it funny however!

As far as I'm concerned, the major surgery that we needed was performed. I think we have a decent GK and solid enough back up in Fabianski. Defensive unit looks more solid, although I still think coaching and mentality needs to be worked on. Midfield is weaker than last year, but Arteta and Benayoun are solid signings who should fit right in (I don't understand the grumblings over Benayoun....I've thought he was class at West Ham and Liverpool - tore us up in the 4-4) and my only real concerns are what happens WHEN RVP gets injured...but I'm willing to give Chu (what's he being called?) the benefit of the doubt.

All in all - a solid squad that won't win the league but can certainly challenge and hopefully hold off Liverpool and Spurs and make Champions League football again this year. Still doesn't change the fact that the business should have been done months ago, but hey ho...

Finally, I woke up this week thinking of a song for Yossi Benayoun. It's not big or clever, but it's catchy....

Basically...."Yossi Benayoun" repeated over and over again to the tune of "Viva John Terry"...

Sing it in the shower and sing it loud and proud on Saturday!

I'll be back in a bit with the predictions results and my new predictions for this weekend!