Arsenal made hard work out of Birmingham City

3-1 is a respectable result against Birmingham City, they played an organised game, with the usual physical approach.

It was what you would have expected, and they weren’t pushovers. Two early goals left me thinking that we would cruise to victory.

But Mannone’s flapping at a looping header in the box allowed Bowyer to make it 2-1 before half-time and we seemed to lose fluency.

RVP and Cesc were misfiring, although I was impressed by the workrate of Emmanuel Eboue, or Bouman as the mental man sitting behind me insisted on calling him all afternoon, in between shouting about the state of English football.

Walcott’s injury is a worry – he looks like he will be out for Tuesday, and it just causes another hold-up to his recovery.

The team looks good, and we are consistently moving up the table, what with Chelsea losing and Liverpool losing out to a beach ball.

Wenger has the balance right in this squad – as long as we don’t get bogged down in injuries.

The game looked in the balance for most of the second half – I’ll put that down to jadedness after the Internationals.

In the end Arshavin pulled something special out of the bag, and curled a lovely shot round Hart in the 86th minute.

A pleasing result, and another win. I think we now hold the record for most goals scored after this many games of the Premier League season.