(technical problems are forcing me to post this from my iPhone – apologies in advance for any weirdness in the layout.)

Overall, 1-1 at Anfield is not a bad result…
… Irrespective of how long they played with ten men.

But…
… We would do well to note that for all the platitudes for our first
half performance from the likes of David Pleat, we created absolutely
zilch. Liverpool at least could point to Clichy clearing off the line
and an Almunia tip over. While it is preposterous to think you can go
to Anfield and create a hatful of chances, it is worth asking why we
didn’t create any.

Red cards often make life no easier…
… Just remember how we were galvanised by Adebayor’s dismissal in
the same fixture two years ago. I thought Cole definitely deserved to
go. Whether or not so and so is that sort of player is utterly
irrelevant except from the point of view that it is now abundantly
clear that you don’t have to be that kind of player to make that kind
of tackle. Koscielny’s leg was crunched between both of Cole’s and it
was only good fortune that prevented a serious injury.

The decision seemed the correct one: a red card and a suspension seems
a fair attempt at deterring such reckless, if not ill intentioned,
tackles. That Liverpool are appealing the red card really is pretty
incredible.

While we’re on that subject…
… At the current rate I’d be surprised if Jack Wilshere survives
until Christmas without a red card of his own. None of his tackles
yesterday were particularly bad but he seems to get away with being
minute and young at the moment when referees dig their cards out.

Talking of Wilshere…
He now looks like a unique football breeding experiment between
Arsenal and Bolton. One moment he’ll be shifting the ball
Arsenalesquely in small triangles, the next he’ll be hoofing it clear
60 yards when defending a corner.

It was the former description of Wilshere…
That saw him gift Liverpool possession in the run up to their goal.
Still though, it should never have been fatal. Manuel Almunia clearly
got something wrong with his positioning from Ngo’s shot and to be
honest, it was no great surprise. The thing about the goalkeeping
situation is that not even Arsene has been trying to convince us he
has two outstanding candidates for number one who he is struggling to
pick between. It is basically the battle of who he considers the least
shit and I can’t believe the saga has done either of the keepers much
good.

So we simply…
Have to buy someone. Frankly almost anyone so long as they come with a
clean slate. You only had to see Sagna’s unnecessarily panicked late
header to realise just quite how little the defenders believe in the
man behind them.

Our fight back…
Was pretty poor frankly. It was hard to argue a single player was
really pulling their weight, even if I was able to correctly call
Eboue and Wilshere as the subs. Should he have pulled Sagna instead
and put Eboue at right-back? Quite possibly.

One player who did make a difference…
Was Tomas Rosicky interestingly enough. By far and away our most
direct and driven player he should take a hefty dose of credit for our
belated fightback that in the end yielded a draw.

There was nothing lucky about the goal…
Until the final act in which Reina palmed it over the line. What went
before was ugly, but exactly the kind of goal many teams forge from
somewhere when they are in a pickle. It is worth remembering too that
this was far from the first time that we have found a late equaliser
when not exactly looking likely to. We have a knack of doing it that
is more than pure luck.

And so to the player ratings…
… Almunia (5) struggled and not just for the goal. One moment caused
that tightening around my heart quite unique to watching Arsenal and
absent for the past three months of my life (even when getting
engaged!) Sagna (6.5) was fine on the whole I thought, Vermaelen (7)
too and Koscielny (8) really rose to the occasion on his debut,
looking calm and confident but never too calm or too confident. We
will come to his red card in a minute.

Gael Clichy…
… Didn’t have a particularly great game (6) going forward and I want
to dwell a little on this. SKY were yesterday pushing the same idea
that what hope is there for Kieran Gibbs when he has Gael Clichy ahead
of him? The answer, which you’d have thought would come fairly
naturally to SKY, is that it is all about competition. If Kieran Gibbs
can do something Gael Clichy can’t he will get his chance. And the
point is he is very arguably a better attacker than Clichy. If he can
improve defensively in the same way Clichy did while Cole’s
understudy, Gibbs has a very decent chance of ousting the Frenchman by
the end of this season or perhaps next.

The midfield…
Wilshere gets a (6) – he did well enough but looked a little green,
Abou (6.5) was a mixed bag, Nasri (7) was good but ineffective
ultimately in the first half, Eboue (6) had his moments but faded and
Arshavin (5) was frankly hopeless. He looked knackered, but then again
he looked knackered in those photos taken on the first day of
pre-season training.

Chamakh (7)…
… Gets a good mark for fashioning a goal at Anfield on his debut.
Otherwise, he still looked like he was getting used to his new team.

Theo Walcott (7)…
… Offered more zip and urgency. And in his time off over the summer appears to have learned the rare skill of side footing a football.
Expect to see it repeated often. Rosicky (8) made a big difference in
the business end of the match, crossing for the goal and drawing an
excellent save a minute or two earlier. RVP (6) had little time to
make an impression.

Koscielny’s red card…
… Really was absurd, if for no other reason than it wasn’t even a
deliberate handball. How Martin Atkinson can make such a call (in such
an innocuous area of the pitch) is beyond me. Especially given the
utter inconsistency with Ngo’s one that both ref and lino saw but
chose not to card. But of course we can’t appeal because it was a
second yellow. Ridiculous.

And finally…
… Arsene arguably broke all records with his formation at the end:
two strikers, one forward, one winger and two attacking midfielders
were his front six. Brilliant.

Official confirmation has arrived that Arsene Wenger is now contracted as manager until 2014.

Uncertainty of any kind never does anyone any favours and the news will reassure the players we have and the players we might try to sign.

His committment is welcome and his place as one of the greatest figures in the club’s history rightly secure.

That said, even total loyalists would admit it is impossible to conceive any further extension beyond 2014 being agreed before silverware of some sort has been landed.

YOU have to start these season previews somewhere and I’m going to begin by looking at the negatives:

- A squad that conceded 41 goals last season has lost three central defenders and gained just one. The manager admits we need to buy at least one more and there is realistic expectation he will do so. But he hasn’t yet and that means that with Djourou injured, we are forced to start Koscielny at Anfield, whether we want to or not.

And while for all the world you would think we will sign a centre-back, it is perfectly plausible we won’t, because as we all know it’s better to have a whopping great hole in the squad than a player who conforms to anything less than Arsene’s idea of technical perfection.

- An already dire goalkeeping situation has been made worse. The best goalkeeper at the club was Manuel Almunia and yet his already shaky confidence has been done few favours by two things: the first is the fact that we want a new keeper and the second that even among the four we have, he is battling it out with Fabianski to be number one.

Of course, there should be upsides to Almunia’s pain. That upside would be firstly if we had actually signed someone and secondly if Fabianski looked in any way ready. Neither is the case. As it is, our chances of landing our main goalkeeping target depend on a favour from Mark Hughes.

In the meantime, it is hard to believe a defence who appeared to have already lost confidence in the keepers behind them will be greatly inspired.

- Whether Cesc Fabregas will deliver us a rip roaring season is pivotal to our chances and yet has never been less certain. These things can go either way after the kind of summer he has had and what is abundantly clear is that for all the talk of Barcelona, his displeasure at what was going on at Arsenal contributed to his desire to leave. Given the problems I have outlined above, it is hard to believe the captain will have been greatly reassured by his manager’s dealings in the transfer market this summer.

That said, he is a model professional who will pride himself on giving his best.

- We are side coming up off an appalling collapse at the end of last season that I am not really sure has been addressed.

And now the plus points:

- Chamakh in and Eduardo out should be a step in the right direction. The former looks better suited to playing the lone front man role and frankly when Bendtner and RVP were missing last season we struggled for goals in what is a very specialist position.

- Watching us in pre-season you are reminded that we do have an extraordinary array of attacking talent, who despite one or two sticky spells last season, generally do turn up with goals.

- We were right up there until three four games to go last season.

Conclusion:

I am someone who will never predict the outcome of a single Arsenal match for fear of jinxing it but am happy to be far more candid at this stage of the season.

This year, I would far rather make my prediction when the transfer window closes and we know whether we have signed a keeper and a central defender.

But I will make a prediction based on what we know now: the best case scenario in the league is a repeat of last season. But I can also envisage (and this is the first time I have said this in all my season previews) us dropping out the top four.

I make that judgement on the premise that a squad that were not good enough to win it last year looks, on balance, no stronger.

In a fortnight’s time Cesc may be firing on all cylinders and those signings made. I hope to be more optimisitic then.

I’LL be honest: the inclusion of three Arsenal players in Fabio Capello’s squad makes me far more inclined to watch my national team. Fickle maybe, but truthful.

Sadly, certain people who you’d think would welcome Arsenal finally contributing to England have found something new to moan about.

Bemoaning the lack of regular Premier League and Champions League football played by the likes of Gibbs and Wilshere, Alan Shearer says:

“It is the age-old problem of foreign imports taking priority over home-grown talent and I cannot see it changing because the pressure on managers to deliver instant success is greater than ever.”

Jack Wilshere is only 18. He first played Premier League football and Champions Leaugue football at 16. He played almost an entire second half of the season for Bolton in the Premier League last season, signing four weeks after turning 18. Ok, so Rooney and Fabregas started a year earlier, but hardly a late starter.

Kieran Gibbs is 21 next month but actually his football career stalled nine months ago when a frustrated Standard Liege player kicked him out of the season. When he resumes it he will fight it out for the left back berth with current France international Gael Clichy. Quite a few people think that within a year he will have won that fight and will be the Arsenal left-back.

What is there to argue about?

Commenting coincidentally after seeing four of his own players dropped from the squad, Harry Redknapp said: “It’s unusual that players not in their club’s team are in the England squad.

“‘Wilshere is a good prospect but I thought England were supposed to be better than than any club side. Maybe Arsenal are better than England.”

One of those was Peter Crouch. He was fit to play apart in every one of Tottenham’s 38 league games last season. He started just 21 of them.

Nice one Arry.