2007-09-24 : Arsenal v Derby County

Dear Supporter,
We kept our focus against Derby despite having a difficult Champions League game three days earlier.

Even when the game looked to become easy we kept good concentration on the quality of our performance. That's really enjoyable to watch because the players do not think 'OK, it's easy now', and start to become more individualistic. They are not there to be show-offs... they play a good collective game.

Derby played a real 'cup game' against Newcastle at home last Monday so I think mentally that cost them a lot of energy. Their home form will dictate whether they stay in the league.

Emmanuel Adebayor scored his first hat-trick for Arsenal. I feel physically he looks stronger, you see that in many challenges when he gets his body in the way. He really is a lion. He has a huge force coming out of him, basically he had that already but now he looks calmer in his finishing.

Cesc Fabregas scored yet again but I brought him off because he had a minor calf problem at half-time.

The game was over but he saw I wanted to take him off and quickly took advantage to score a goal. That is amazing because it tells you how much of a psychological boost you get from scoring goals. If Cesc had not scored his previous six goals he would probably not have tried to shoot.

I also took Theo Walcott off in the second half. In the first half he struggled a little bit to find any space but in the second half he looked more comfortable because I asked him to come inside to get the ball.

When Theo stayed out on the wing, Griffin, who has a lot of experience, didn't give him any room. But he has not played for a while. For example Diaby came on the other night and had a difficult game - but on Saturday it was completely different. The same could happen for Theo.
We have extended our lead in the Premier Leage but we have played four of our six games at home.

We are conscious that next week will be another test when we go to West Ham, so we will just go game-to-game and try to improve. We won in a convincing way at Tottenham and we could have won at Blackburn. Let's just keep it going and see where it takes us.

Thanks for your support.