Just as I thought another painful blow was about to take place with a goalless draw against Pompey, David James provided us with a late Christmas gift which Gallas didn’t turn down to hand us a very important win.

As Wenger said, there are indeed internal solutions

The thoughts of many, including myself, is that despite the win there’s still a lot of work to be done, although with the January transfer window upon us, a couple of new faces will hopefully be brought in to help the mission. Two positive notes from yesterday’s match, though, are two youngsters I’ve been wanting to see as regulars for a very long time: Aaron Ramsey and Carlos Vela. With Diaby, Denilson and Song all being asked questions on their performances, Aaron can surely be used in place of one of the three.

Too weak? Too young? No way, the Mexican is ready!

Carlos, on the other hand, should be a regular, period. I may be wrong, but I believe we were destined for a useless 0-0 draw had Wenger decided to keep him on the bench. The Mexican ran at Portsmouth and won us a number of corners and free-kicks out of which we found the winning goal. That is the position he so much loved in the Liga and it’s the position Arsene Wenger should utilise him in. The lad is very similar to Walcott but is very good on the ball and has a great first touch, something which Theo sometimes lacks in. Why on earth are many saying he’s too young, too weak and so on when he had a full season in the Spanish Liga during which he made the Real Madrid defense look like fools?

Something new had to be tried, and Carlos provided it

Yesterday’s match also highlighted a weakness in the Arsenal side which in a way comes to no surprise: a lot of passes, very precise, but no end product. Unfortunately, we don’t have the Javi Alonso who can pick the ball and try his luck from long range to try something new and although some, like Nasri, changed position a good number of times, we could only create two opportunities in the whole match. Until Carlos came in, of course. The Pompey match was not an isolated case this season, so many other matches could have seen the introduction of Carlos to try something new, but that didn’t happen.

Looking forward and happy new year

Ultimately, I don’t want to be hyper-critical of the side and would like to apologise if I upset some with my “some call him a striker” comment on Adebayor, maybe it was too harsh, but it reflected my frustration for failing to even hit the target there. If used alongside Eduardo, I believe we would have a formidable forward line, especially if the two are backed up by Walcott and Vela on the wings. I still want to believe that the future will be bright for us, not from next season, but already from this one.

As a final note, this is of course my last post for the year in the “Match Comments and Reports” section, which will be back next Saturday for the F.A. Cup match. May all of you enjoy your end-of-the-year holidays and may we have a successful and free-from-injuries 2009.