It's not yet time to write us off

We Arsenal fans haven't been having the best of times in recent seasons, for despite playing some superb football we haven't won anything for a long time. Defeats by Man. U. and Chelsea have helped to establish the widely held view that we may be a top four club but aren't good enough to entertain serious hopes of a trophy. They may well be right. After all, our lack of serious interest in the Carling Cup and our unusually early exit from the F.A. Cup blocked two of the four available routes to silverware, and we shall have to make up for a 1-2 defeat in the first leg of the knock-out round of the Champions League (debatably, there's never an apostrophe after that final s) away to Porto to get any further. Some of the keenest fans have even been airing the often-heard opinion that it's time for Arsene Wenger to go. But now, with ten matches (just over 25% of the Premier League season) to go and thirty points to play for, we lie third, just three points behind Chelsea, who were beaten at home yesterday, and we have the Champions in our sights. When Eduardo sustained a horrific injury almost exactly two years ago, our season fell apart. Yesterday, when Ramsey suffered a fracture so awful that the incident at Stoke was not shown again on television, his team-mates' facial expressions reminded me of those I had seen in the away match at Birmingham in 2008. This time, however, we converted a draw into a 3-1 win. Admittedly, we were playing against ten men for the rest of the match, but we seemed to show the 'mental strength' Wenger regularly mentions but is not always seen. I have a fantasy that as we raise the trophy in May before flying to Madrid to win the Champions League (hey, steady on!) we shall look back on yesterday as the time when we decided that we could do it, not just 'for Aaron', poor lad, but for all of us.

Cloud cuckoo land ? Maybe. We have an allegedly 'easy run in', which includes a visit to a certain rival north London club with the ambitions of playing European football next season and beating us for once. We are more than capable of falling on our faces, and have done it before, but now we have the chance to show that the most entertaining football in Britain can also, over a season, be the most successful too.