Arsenal vs Fulham - Emirates Stadium, London - Saturday 28th February 2009

In a season that can only be described as a frustrating, depressing affair for Arsenal fans, this game was probably the low point of it all. After three successive 0-0 draws in the League, and an absolute paucity of goals generally, the Roma win gave everybody a lift, which most hoped would be carried over into our League form. Not to be. It wasn't just yet another 0-0 draw that was so annoying for many, it was the manner of the draw, the opponents, and what happened in the game.

Fulham showed up at Emirates with an awful away record. But, to their immense credit, they were willing to play football, to pass the ball around, and to go forward in search of scoring opportunities. Usually, Arsenal sides eat teams like this for breakfast - it plays right into our hands. But, this looked to be an Arsenal side that was shorn of any creativity whatsoever. Often, the excuse for frustrating home games is that the opposition were negative, they put 10 men behind the ball, and were only interested in not conceding. This cannot be said about Fulham, who were creative and positive from the word go. That fact just made Arsenal's performance seem like they had run out of excuses as well as ideas. Which, when you charge the prices Arsenal do, is always going to cause unhappiness.

Arseblog has a post which is considerably more emotive and fact laden than I am capable of (especially a few days later, now that I have calmed down a bit!), but a performance like this was really not good enough. I don't boo at Arsenal games - I don't think it does the team any good - but it was hard to be too critical of those that chose to boo at the end. The most upsetting part of it all was the total and utter disappearance of our midfield for the last 15 minutes. They looked knackered, and allowed Fulham to (literally) control the game for the last period. Embarrassing, and completely a reflection of how poorly Arsenal played.

All of this would and could have been a mortal blow to our Champions League qualifying hopes. By beating Stoke at home, Aston Villa could have gone 8 points clear of Arsenal, with (you suspect) not enough games to make up the gap. But, from leading 2-0, Villa contrived to draw their game the next day, then to lose to Manchester City whilst we beat West Brom. So, the gap could have been 8 points, in fact a few days later it was 3. A reminder of how quickly football can change, and lets hope that isn't the last dramatic swing back in Arsenal's favour. With plenty of players to come back soon, fingers crossed that things get better!