It was always going to be a difficult game, anyone who expected anything more than a draw has probably been covered off in Bruce's "fans expectations" comments.
Arsenal are very much a team in a false position, have brought in quality players to compliment the proven players they already have and all have something to prove.
How many of you expected a drubbing after Van Persies opening goal - it is a positive that we did not capitulate, indeed equalised, had some good chances and had to be undone by an unstoppable free kick.
Arsenal are a big team(Arshavin omitted) and there height and physical presence ran the midfield - as it would against the majority of teams at home, they had a good game.
I'm saddened to see armchair critics resort to the "4 out of 21" argument, this type of statistic is like a lamp post to a drunk, as much for leaning against as illumination, it is an irrelevance as some of those games were last season and conveniently exclude the good run we had before Christmas - the one stat that matters is that last season we finished 10th, the one before that was 13th(an improvement)
I don't contribute on here much anymore as the negativity that seems to have become a hallmark of some of our supporters is tedious, it was commented on today on Sky - not in a good way either - ridiculous is the word that was used to describe the criticism of Bruce, these are professional sports journalists - they don't know it all, however they can be a bit more subjective than you (or I).
One thing would say is that I hope that Short does not focus too much in the business side - like developing the asian market -and lose track of the footballing issues - mush in the same way Murray was distracted by the AoL.