We owe these mercenary scumbags some payback for last season.

@Andy, don’t worry buddy, even you deserve a complaint once in awhile!

Even if I feel it is very important to beat Chelsea this coming weekend, I’m not too worried about losing. I don’t even want a scrappy win, I want them to outplay them and put a couple of goals in.

As to our striker issue, I believe Wenger is being fair to both Edwardo and Vela. He has given them their chances to stake claim here. Both did not take advantage of the chances they got so far. Whoever starts this weekend and influence the outcome of this game will be our striker up until VP comes back.

Who is playing left back this weekend, Eboue or Troure? At Sunderland, who was supposed to cover Campbell?

It was a shame to lose at Sunderland and the predictable big deal has been made of the defeat. Our title challenge is over, it was never real anyway and now the media can get it on with deciding when Chelsea or Manchester United have won the title, usually despite most of the season being left to play.

There is always a ridiculous media clamour to decide when something decidedly undecided has been decided: that a particular team is ‘out’ of a race, or that a particular race is ‘over’, or that a relegation issue has been all but settled. We are barely one third of the way into this season and yet we’re being told these things.

Apparently whichever of Hull City and West Ham lost their game at the weekend that team was all but relegated. As if! They drew, does that mean that they are both now down? That will be a big relief to the teams just above them, it’s all over! Spotting trends is one thing, deciding that trends cannot change is premature to say the least.

Every match offers three points. If you lose the match you have, on the face of it, missed out on three points. But you start each match with one point at 0-0 and if you can’t offer enough to win the match then you may not get close to landing the three points on offer. As I argued in an issue of The Gooner last season, defeats are not all they are cracked up to be.

If you are heading towards a sound win and yet end up losing the match then that is clearly the most damaging of defeats and it really is a case of dropping three points. But if you are only heading towards a draw and a win doesn’t look likely, then to lose is to go from one point to no points. You have only really dropped a point.

At Sunderland we did not look likely to win. We didn’t play well, we made few chances and a late sneaked goal looked our best chance. That late sneaked goal duly did arrive, it’s just that it arrived for Sunderland. We were heading towards 0-0 and one point but we lost 1-0 and got no points. In effect, we only really dropped a point.

Defeats may be unwelcome but to lose from a drawing position is not as damaging as to draw from a winning position. At West Ham we were 2-0 up late on and heading to a strong three points, but we blew it and drew 2-2. We went from three points to one point in that one split-second of West Ham’s second goal. That was a win blown and two points lost, Sunderland away was a draw blown and one point lost.

So why did we lose at Sunderland? How could our brilliant high-scoring ‘beautiful football’ heroes lose 1-0 at Sunderland? Firstly, context has a lot to do with it. It is often said that it is tough to have an away match straight after an international break.

This was an international break where many of our players were away trying all-out to qualify for the summer’s World Cup, some playing deep into extra time to qualify and others not managing to qualify at all. Arsenal followed this with just about our most distant away game of the season. That is a hell of a tough call.

If we’d played Sunderland at home we would probably have got away with a bit of a tame display and managed a 1-0 win ourselves, while readily admitting that it could have been worse.

Secondly and rather unhelpfully Sunderland played well. I’ve said many times that Steve Bruce is an excellent manager and is very shrewd. He makes good signings, good tactical decisions and gets the best out of players. The context was good timing for Sunderland but they still needed to take advantage. An average team would have avoided losing to Arsenal in the context and been delighted with a 0-0 draw. Sunderland realised they could take advantage and were not shy about trying.

Losing at Sunderland will not decide Arsenal’s season, how many wins we get will. In any competition, you need wins to achieve success. Defeats are no target but draws are almost as damaging. If you are heading to defeat but manage a draw you ‘pull off’ gaining a point, but to draw from a winning position is a clear loss of two points.

We lost more at West Ham than we did at Sunderland even though it wasn’t a defeat – what we must gain from it is to learn how to hold on to wins, because it is wins that are the be-all and end-all not defeats.