The curse has finally been lifted. Eduardo started last night’s match against Cardiff, scoring two goals. I must admit, I had a little tear in my eye when Eduardo ran to the crowd to celebrate. I firmly believe that we’d have won the league last season if Eduardo hadn’t suffered his appalling injury – not just because we lost our finest striker, someone who doesn’t need four or five attempts to score a goal, unlike Adebayor or Bendtner, but also because of the dark funk it brought to the team. Having him back, and better, looking pretty tasty is a great bonus to the team. He’s almost like a new signing (joke).

What’s more, when his name was read out at the start of the game, the cheers were deafening, and carried on right through the substitute’s names. Even if the crowd were pretty quiet the rest of the game, it was great to hear. On that note, it wasn’t good to see so many empty seats. We’d better start filling those seats or money troubles will follow.

On the whole, we looked excellent. I’m still not convinced by the central midfield partnership of Denilson and Song, and Bendtner, although he worked hard, sometimes struggled against a Championship defence, which is frankly not a good sign. And missing an open goal, somehow contriving to hit the post, was pure comedy. I’m glad we’d already scored at that point.

The team also looks far, far more dangerous with Vela on the left and Nasri on the right. They ran, they harried, they made space, and we had more chances in the first fifteen minutes that the entire match at Cardiff. If that doesn’t show Wenger that Eboue is the wrong player for this team, what will? Funnily enough, on the way out, I overheard a guy say “We weren’t good because Eddie was playing, it was because Eboue wasn’t”. Too true.

All in all, though, a great night out. Made even more amusing by watching Cardiff fans taunt the police and then peg it as soon as the police started to walk towards them, outside the Tollington. Protect our sheep, indeed.

Other match reports from Goodplaya and Arseblog, with some ominous news about Usmanov. I’ll try and find out some more about that later.

In other news, I’m now on Twitter. Feel free to follow me, follow meeeeeee. I still think it’s the Interweb’s version of CB radio though.