Back from the dead

Apologies for the outrageously long absence - I've been about as busy as a Portsmouth player's agent over the last couple of weeks. Fortunately there hasn't been too much to write about, but nonetheless I should probably catch up on the Hull and West Ham games. Two games to go over, but we won both of them - thank God I wasn't blogging last season.

I'm afraid that I won't be able to post as regularly until the end of the season, but I'll still be around and I will certainly give some notice if I need to do another Carlos Vela. (Thanks for the emails!)

Anyway, thoughts about the last two matches:

Hull:

I'm pretty relieved that the Hull board has mercifully given us a collective breather from the asinine rantings of Phil Not-Quite-Brown. He has never exactly mustered up any real words of integrity after defeat nor really endeared himself to Arsenal fans, but his level of professionalism was neatly summed up by his remark last week that George Boateng "has got no reason to apologise to anybody" after the midfielder poked Bendtner in the eye and then put in an extremely dangerous challenge on Sagna. Unfortunately, the Match of the Day lot fell for Brown's trick of relentlessly banging on about Sol Campbell's strong but perfectly legitimate challenge on Kamil Zayatte so as to divert attention away from yet another example of the Hull squad's complete and utter lack of discipline.

But what has changed is that we're actually coming out of these games with something. Last season, Liverpool were genuine title contenders because they picked up United's annoying habit of scoring completely undeserved goals in injury time, and the manner in which we won at Hull last weekend was, in a way, more amazing than the clinical nature of our demolition of Porto. Nicklas Bendtner is playing like a true out-and-out striker, and (whisper it quietly) Wenger's decision not to bring in a new forward is starting to look like a sensible one...

I was also impressed with Diaby, who adjusted his game well in Cesc's absence. Just like he had done against Porto a few days previously, he dropped deeper and took on more defensive responsibility - and when the rest of the team were pushing up into the final third, both he and Song held back sensibly. It's incredible how much more assured I feel about Diaby starting now than I did less than 12 months ago, and if he can finally shake off the knocks he could be a vital player during the run-in.


West Ham:

This was a strange match considering the venue and the nature of our opposition. After the opening goal it looked like it was going to become another one of our 90-minute Emirates footballing parties against smaller teams, but a couple of wasted opportunities later and we soon saw a bit of fight from West Ham. Just like the one given in the Hull game, the penalty didn't come out of a goalscoring opportunity (at the KC Stadium because of a clear offside, at the Emirates because Guillermo Franco had about as much control of that ball as I did) but at least the previous referee was confused enough not to send off the defender. Thomas Vermaelen was completely undeserving of a red card and were there anyone at the FA with any sort of control right now we would have succeeded with our appeal.

But we battled on and an exceptional performance from Alex Song kept West Ham at bay. I was a tad worried when Nasri started playing keep-ball at the corner flag in the 68th minute, but aside from a shot by Carlton Cole which knocked Almunia's Lucozade bottle over we got off lightly. We won a stonewall penalty (Cesc and co. seem to be onto something with these chipped shoulder-height passes) to pick up a much-needed boost to our goal difference, and I should note that this was our fourth clean sheet in eight games.

We keep on winning, Chelsea keep on stumbling and Robin van Persie keeps on improving... these are exciting times we live in. I'll be back soon to distract everyone with talk of Barcelona.