Firing on all Cylinders!

Being born and bred in North London, I am an avid Arsenal supporter!! If you follow football you'll have noticed Arsenal haven't been doing too great lately. A string of defeats at the beginning of the season followed by an inability to score goals more recently had left us trailing Aston Villa in The premiership and contemplating a UEFA cup spot next season. Thus understandably I was nervous this week as we faced Roma in the second leg of our bid to reach the top 8 in the Champions League.

We took a 1-0 lead to the Stadio Olympico so I was hoping that if we failed to score we could at least hold on to that. Unfortunately my hopes were dashed after just 10 minutes when due to some shambolic defending, Juan scored and the playing field was once again even.

All through the game I watched nervously hoping we would score and equally hoping that Roma would not. After 90 mins it was still 1-0 to Roma on the night and 1-1 on aggregate. Thus I had to suffer another nervous 30 minutes...but still no goals. So after 90 minutes at the Emirates and 120 minutes at the Stadio Olymipco the last spot in the final 8 had still not being decided and we were headed for the dreaded penalties! I hate penalties!

Actually I don't hate penalties...I quite like them when my team is not involved. Penalty shoot out between Man United and Chelsea in the Champions League final last year? Loved it! Penalty shoot out in the Carling Cup final between Tottenham and Man Utd a fortnight ago? Found it relatively entertaining. Penalty shoot out between us and Roma on Wednesday? I couldn't bear it! I was absolutely terrified and when Eduardo missed the first penalty I couldn't help but fear the worst.

BUT my team stepped up and they did me proud, the held their nerve and we won 7-6 on penalties! I can't remember the last time I was so excited to see us win (actually when we beat Man Utd earlier this season lol) I was up out of my seat dancing around the room! It was a great feeling and one I've really missed :(

Luckily our good fortune continued and today we pulled out another good performance beating Blackburn Rovers 4-0 and ending our run of 3 games without a premiership goal at home.

So all in all I'd say it's been a good week for us and I am once again a happy Gooner! Now you may say barely scraping into the Champions League final 8 and beating Blackburn Rovers at home is not much to shout about but it's the confidence it brings. We're still in the FA cup, we're still in the Champions League and right now we're 4th in the table. Hopefully my North London rivals can do us a favour tomorrow by beating Aston Villa! And then we'll be back firing on all cylinders :)

Oh yeah one last thing... the cherry on the cake to my great week of footie was Liverpool thrashing Man Utd 4-1 at home! Hahahahahaha that's for all the Man U supporters that continually taunt me about Arsenal!