9th December 2004 - The Gunners focus increases with Chelsea

Today we had the continued numerous information from both camps highlighting the intensity and build up of confidence, approaching the Chelsea game.

You'll find numerous comments by our players finding more confidence, not to mention Reyes, who feels he may have been axed but has slowly found himself again. This is echoed by Bergkamp who said the kids did well on Tuesday. Bergkamp doesn't usually come out to say things so this is good.

Still little news regarding Sol signing. I haven't seen anything concrete yet but Sol has said on numerous occassions that he has signed. Oh dear, but the club has said nothing as yet.

Chelsea players? Have they ever come out and said so many things pre-game before? Did they, for instance, come out all teeth glaring when they played against West Brom?

No, they only do that when they face strong competition like, no, no Newcastle the other week - they were silent then too. - Teams like Arsenal.

John Terry said we will feel the backlash of Porto. What's that John? You're going to decide to do to us what you couldn't do to Porto?

My question is - why fail against Porto but make a claim to succeed against a better team?

Make sense Johnny boy!

We're still unsure about the keeper front. The papers haven't been kind to Almunia even though he only let in one goal against a tough european team and kept a clean sheet against Birmingham. In all competitions before this Almunia has let in very few goals.

He's a good keeper but this will give Lehmann the impetus to improve his game in order to get a "game".