Arsenal vs Aston Villa - Emirates Stadium, London - Saturday 1st March 2008

I guess it is impossible to talk about the Arsenal vs Aston Villa game, without first referring to the shitty week that Arsenal had on the previous weekend. Spurs won the Carling Cup, then embarrassed themselves with quite how overboard their fans and players went in celebration. Well done, but let's not get carried away. "Are You Watching Arsenal", they sang - and I'm sure that many Arsenal fans were not in fact watching, because they Carling Cup Final is not a desperately important game. In fact, I watched Liverpool vs Inter Milan in the Champions League last week, with much more interest that I watched that game. So, well done Spurs, but try not to embarrass yourselves by pretending that anybody really cares about the Carling Cup. Even Middlesbrough didn't go this mad when they won it.

The other bad thing last weekend was the injury to Eduardo. Lots of complete rubbish has been written about this in the last week (this was one of the few sensible articles). I don't think Martin Taylor intended to break Eduardo's leg, but I do absolutely think that, in the 3rd minute of the game, he intended to come in with a robust challenge, to let Eduardo know that he was there. Challenges like that have a "worst case scenario", which is that the player on the receiving end gets badly hurt. On this occasion, the worst case scenario happened - and for that reason, I think that Martin Taylor should be punished more severely than a normal red card for violent conduct.

Its a bit like being caught driving with a bit too much alcohol in your blood - that's one thing. Being caught with too much alcohol in your blood, and mowing somebody down, is quite another, and should obviously be punished more severely. If that had happened to an English player on the eve of a major tournament, the culprit would be hung out to dry (remember Aldo Duscher?), and the double standards from much of the media in this case are ridiculous. The most ridiculous argument of all being that "Eduardo was too quick for him" - what a shame! Having seen Jose Antonio Reyes kicked out of English football, this kind of thing really isn't what makes our game popular across the world.

Anyway, enough of that, and on to the Aston Villa game. After a disappointing and frustrating draw at Birmingham, where we contrived to throw 2 points away in the final moments, a win was absolutely essential. The game was also a key test of this Arsenal team's character - now that everything is against us, what would they do? Backs to the wall and say "fuck the world", like the teams of 91 and 98 did, or fall apart at the vital moment? After all the talk from the players of "winning for Eduardo", Arsenal fans were expecting good things.

But, Aston Villa aren't a bad side this season, challenging for a Champions League place, so it didn't quite work out the way we'd hoped. In truth, many Arsenal players weren't really at the races, and I think the team in general were suffering from a hangover after the disappointing draw last week. We were definitely way below par, and that made things easy for Villa - Gabriel Agbonlahor in particular looking really impressive. They took the lead after about half an hour, Philippe Senderos scoring an own goal, which John Carew probably would have scored instead if the ball had reached him. There was an offside in the build up (and the referee generally gave Arsenal nothing at all for the whole game), but Villa probably deserved the goal.

Even after that, Arsenal didn't really respond in the way that we'd all hoped. Passes were not fluent, several players were distinctly off colour, and it was one of the worst performances of the season, all in all. Scott Carson was not tested at all, whilst Villa, despite being considerably more defensive once they had scored (or Senderos had scored for them), had a couple of decent chances in each half. Bendtner came on to try and change things, and just when it looked like all was lost, he controlled a knockdown from Adebayor, and rolled the ball into the back of the net. The relief, on the pitch and in the stands, was obvious - and hopefully all the early leavers heard the cheers on their way to the Tube station. 1-1, and a bit of a lucky escape given the Arsenal performance.

Whereas the Birmingham game was 2 points lost in injury time, this was definitely a point gained. Probably a point more than our performance deserved, and especially vital because it means that we stay top of the league - if only by the skin of our teeth. With Manchester United not playing a League game for a couple of weeks, that should stay that way for a little while. But, unless we get out of the rut in form that we seem to be in at the moment, it won't be that way in May.