After a well earned rest for the team on Wednesday, the Arsenal medical staff were back to the ever familiar routine of assessing their casualties. I sometimes get the sense that some Arsenal fans are more worried about the injury roll call after every game, than they are excited about Arsenal’s encouraging prospects for silverware.

It’s the classic dilemma where it’s easy to view the constant injury gremlins that plagues this Arsenal team as the proverbial glass half empty. Some argue that this pessimist paradigm helps rationalize and make sense of the anxiety and high blood pressure inducing moments during this ’Squeaky bum’ spell of the season.

Of course, with the changing fortunes of the team in the last few weeks as Arsenal stubbornly clawed back points to haul themselves into the title race yet again, there are a sizeable proportion of optimists who see this glass as half full.

I’m one of those who take a more philosophical approach and avoid the red herring of whether to see the glass as half full or half empty. I guess I’m an opportunist who is just grateful for the chance to quench my thirst.

We start by taking the next game at the KC stadium simply as it is, the next cup final for Arsenal. We seem to have many of these cup finals now, and so far so good – just 14 more to win if at all we’re going to prove we have the audacity to defy the laws of establishment.

What I found really intriguing in the past week or so is how so much focus was placed on Arsenal struggling through the last round of the Champions League. I accept that this sentiment was amplified by two individual howlers that couldn’t have been legislated for when the Gunners visited the Estadio do Dragão 3 weeks ago.

In fairness, the dragons of Porto didn’t offer much of a lethal threat in both rounds. Yes of course, they offered a threat, but you have to begin to wonder when people complain, whether they expected Porto not to even enter our own half, let alone shoot at Almunia’s goal.

Besides, I was under the impression that the reason why we have a defence and a goal keeper is to – you know, defend and goal keep. I would suggest that a clean sheet and making Helton collect the ball from the back of his net 5 times is a pretty emphatic statement that once and for all slay that dragon of Porto.

Moving right along, we have the pleasure of visiting our good old friend Phil the Orange and his charges up in Hull this weekend. Incidentally, I found an appropriate Video of the Week to mark the occasion. It’s a video of Phil Brown apologizing to Arsenal and to Cesc Fabregas for the Spitgate incident last year. Make sure you check it out at the video slot in the bottom right of this blog.

The tigers have been more like pussycats this season and after their last loss, their manager was quick to point out that they won’t be playing that ’fancy Dan’ football that doesn’t work. I would suspect that was code for ’We’re playing Arsenal so you know what to do’.

Arsenal will have to be focussed and forget the triumphs that brought down the dragon this week, and concentrate on taming the tigers for the right to collect the next 3 points in the cup final series. It’s not good enough to focus our energy on the mounting injury list and missing personnel.

We’re in the mother of all dog fights that is ruthless and unforgiving for those who feel sorry for themselves. In truth, we have a squad capable of dispatching the tiger of Hull in a similar fashion to the dragon of Porto, and our only enemy will be complacency.

We have the physical strength and arrogance to match the uncouth approach of Brown and his charges, and if we really need to, I’m sure we can push our technical superiority to help us out a bit.

More importantly, Andrey Arshavin has gone the extra mile to match the ridiculous hair cut worn in previous encounters by the reprobate that is Steven Hunt. To be honest, I agree with my friend Yogi that both of them run the risk of being arrested for wearing those hair cuts in a built up area.

The most exciting thing that happened to Arsenal this week was the dilemma that Samir Nasri presented the manager. It totally relieves the pressure of having Cesc rushed back into the play maker role orchestrating our play in the midfield.

I think the young Frenchman has just earned himself a starting place in the Les Bleus squad for the World Cup, and what an opportunity he now has to stamp his authority in the Arsenal midfield and cement his place for the summer jaunt down south.

The only nerves around town seem to be regarding the choice of either Sol Campbell or Mikhael Silvestre to partner the most celebrated Belgian since Jean Claude Van Damme.

Sol seems to have recovered from the fatigue of playing 90 minutes on Tuesday, and since the next game Arsenal play after Saturday allows for a week’s rest, I would suspect Wenger would start with Sol alongside the Verminator.

Crocked or not, the team has to roll up their sleeves and get on with the small matter of collecting the next 3 points. Taming tigers is never an easy job, but that’s why we carry our cannon around.