Professional Arsenal

Everybody claimed that Arsenal won the first leg due to two lucky goals. Even Arsene and some of the players went on to posit this opinion. That being said, everybody quickly added that Arsenal clearly deserved to take a two goal advantage back to the Emirates.

There will be games where we struggle. Celtic was one of them. Credit Celtic for harassing us far more than either Everton or Portsmouth did. They were playing at home, and while they weren't impressive offensively, they did a decent job of disrupting our natural passing rhythm. Part of that disruption can be credited to the fact that we're still settling into our new formation. Andrey clearly approves of it, so we'll give it some more time before we make a judgment on it.

To me, this illustrates just how professional our squad is becoming. They're taking care of business and winning the games that Champion sides should win. It was a professional performance.

That hasn't prevented others from criticizing our team because our strikers aren't scoring goals. Such ridiculous tosh shouldn't be tolerated really. It would be one thing if the strikers weren't scoring and we were being shut out of games. But the fact is, we've scored 12 goals in 3 games and the goals have been flying in from everywhere else. People can talk about van Persie looking out of sorts and not effectively using Arshavin all they want, but this is something that was to be expected.

The bottom line is, we look more solid in possession and we're covering up our potential shortcomings.

There is much to look forward to.

Losing on Sunday may be a big disappointment, but it won't hide the fact that it has been a good month for Arsenal. That is, if we beat Celtic tomorrow and advance to the Champions League group stages as expected.