The Marble Hall Diaries

Hello and welcome to your second blog post of the week!  "Wow!" "Amazing!" "So cool and fun!" - (Your reactions) The sun is shining even brighter than when I wrote my last post, both literally and metaphorically, because I'm coming to you following a smash and grab 1-0 win away from home at Sporting C.P.  I think the result and the way it came about with a last minute goal of real quality definitely adds a bonus good feeling onto what would have been a still slightly improved feeling about the team had we drawn 0-0 instead, which seemed very likely at 90 minutes played last night.  The line-up was announced and I don't think there were any real surprises. Injuries and form pretty much decided it pre-game and I was very interested to see how we would get on with some of our key players back. It would be a telling sign of how impactful it was to not have the likes of Raya etc in the team for our two cup defeats. Turns out, it made a lot of differenc...

Good evening from a sunny (but still too chilly for my liking) London.  Spring is well and truly underway now and everything is starting to get brighter, unless you are an Arsenal fan or in any way closely associated with Arsenal Football Club.  Two losses in a row, the first time that's happened this season, and what a time for it to happen. After falling at the final hurdle in the Carabao Cup final to Manchester City, Arsenal managed to not respond at all in bitterly disappointing fashion by losing away to Championship play-off hopefuls Southampton. We now find ourselves going from tongue in cheek quadruple chatter to praying we don't throw everything away. To be clear, almost no Arsenal fans seriously believed we would win the quadruple, but the chatter around it from rivals was a nice reflection of how well we were competing on all fronts this season.  I completely agree and understand that the two domestic cups were our lowest priorities this season, but they certain...

Hello all and happy international break to all those who celebrate (FIFA officials and sponsors alone).  I appreciate it's been a whole week from when I should have posted the usual blog post, but for two main reasons I delayed it to today.  The first and main reason is my " real"  life got in the way of my time (ugh who needs one of those). The details are very boring and almost entirely work related, so nobody wants to hear about those.  The other lesser reason that I usually wouldn't have let stop me is that I was hurting after that League Cup final loss. I really wanted to win that trophy and believed that we could have because we have been the better team than City over the course of the season. However, for the reasons we've all read, heard and spoken about in the last week, we couldn't quite do it. I will share my thoughts on the game here, but I don't want to rehash it too much, I've never been one for picking at old wounds, it can leave a scar...

Before I get into things properly, can I just say one of my favourite things to come out of the Everton result is someone naming their new puppy Max. It is extremely cute: Anyways, hello one and all and welcome back to a brand new week, which means you lucky lot get to hear from me again in another blog post.  Lots to cover this week, including matches in our top two priority competitions (in my opinion) - the Champions League and the Premier League.  Leverkusen (A) This was a really interesting game, and by interesting I mean completely boring and soul sucking but the outcome was interesting. It happened in the midst of almost all the other British clubs faltering in Europe (that Kinsky performance will live long in the memory), and I saw many pundits and commenters lumping our result in with some of the others which I don't think our comparable. How can you put a battled 1-1 draw away to a team with one of the best home records in Europe in the same bracket as getting thumpe...

 Happy Monday all.  Now, other than the fact that I have opened this week's blog in the style of an all-staff email from that manager at work we all hate (you know who I mean), I'd like to start by summing things up with a Harry Potter quote. Watching Arsenal these days feels a bit like Ron's prophecy reading in the third film: " You're gonna suffer, but you're gonna be happy about it ". You see, my experience as an Arsenal fan these days is a strange one - I'm over the moon at how results are panning out across all four competitions and our defence is proving to be more robust than a Nokia 3310 wrapped in bubble wrap.  However, I can't help but feel like every second spent watching our games at the moment is tantamount to a form of torture that should be considered a war crime. The nerves, the anxiety, the fact my heart beats so fast over 90+ minutes that I question whether I'm in need of medical attention or if I'm about to start floating...

Hello again, only the one game to talk about this time, which is an unusual experience as an Arsenal fan these days, but it'll be the last for some time as it's two games a week from here on in until the international break (I think, don't quote me on it).  I'm not saying I found it challenging to wait a week between our games, but I've completed seven puzzles, painted 3 walls of the house and built the entire landmass of Africa out of Lego just to get through it. Turns out I have an unhealthy addiction to this class A drug - see what I did there 😉 - and 6 days feels like forever to have to wait to have my heart rate raised to 1000bpm by 11 men who struggle to stumble over the line.  The big question going into this game against Chelsea at home was this - what is the truth? Are we good or are Sp*rs terrible? (The latter is definitely true, but could both be true?) Have this team turned a corner since the half-bottle job at Wolves or was it just a one-off for the NL...

Just a quiet and uneventful first week for the blog then!  Before I get into things, thank you to all of you who have read and given your feedback on the first post, it means the world to me as you validate my delusional belief that people actually care about what I have to say regarding Arsenal.  But enough of that warm human stuff - let's get back to the unhinged madness that is a week in the life of an Arsenal fan.  I mentioned in the last post that the upcoming week would be pivotal to our season. Never did I expect it to go quite like this.  Wolves (A) Firstly, we come to the game against Wolves at Molineux. Now, looking at this four days later and post-NLD (haha), to say I have somewhat calmed down is an understatement. Let me first revisit my perfectly rational instant reactionary messages to my various Arsenal group chats (a.k.a. echo chambers of mutual suffering):  "Embarrassing and, I'm sorry but complete bottlers the lot of them" "Playing like th...