Farce and mountains of frustration at Upton Park: where do Arsenal go from here?

Four moments of farce, at least:

1) After a lovely one-two Hleb is played into the box. Spector doesn't foul him, he scythes down Alex, crashing into his ankles, whilst getting the tiniest flick of the ball. Stone-wall penalty. And Spector, already on a yellow, should have been off. But no. No penalty, 11 vs 11, play continues.

2) Kolo scores. He smashes a rasping effort from about forty yards, which slams off the post and in. Everyone in the pub starts celebrating. Except the players aren't. The ball has hit off the back of the post holding the net up, having gone wide by a fraction.

3) Flamini is brought on to shore up the midfield. Again.

4) Marlon Harewood scores and Arsene virtually has a fight with Pardew. I was seething when they scored because I could see it coming: Harewood had already had one clear-cut opportunity stopped by a great save from Jens, and Clichy's marking at the back post is still, often, a little shabby. Its too early to tell why Arsene did what he did, and whilst in many ways I'd love to see him lay out Pardew it's not on. Pardew probably had been goading Arsene at times during the game, and Arsene was no doubt seething from the penalty decision, but its no excuse. Arsene had to be physically restrained, and also started pushing the fourth official about. I was, to be frank, a little shocked.

And we all know the real reason Arsene almost punched Pardew: a rubbish performance. Flabby, overindulgent, and, frankly, not good enough. We all know, and most other Premiership watchers do as well, that we play, on our day, the best football in the league, perhaps in Europe. And its here the free-form jazz analogy that I used before is applicable. At our best -Reading, Old Trafford etc. - we're like John Coltrane, effortlessly ripping through scales of beautiful free-flowing music. At our worst, we're Jazz Club from The Fast Show: bloated, over-complex and perhaps even pretentious.

We need to start scoring scrappy goals; we need an out and out goal scorer that Thierry can link up with up-front. What we don't need is more passing. The passing is fine, the passing is great, but we need to vary the play, mix it up a bit. I'm not defending the morons who shout 'shoot', but with the possession we're having, and the opportunities we either create or should be creating, something isn't clicking in the final third and it needs to be sorted out.

Because we wern't playing an 'eleven-man' defence team today: West Ham came out and played us, and it was an open, exciting game. Yet when our counter attacks started, we were ponderous. Fabregas often took too long on the ball; Rosicky couldn't seem to find a killer ball; Hleb - who is being unfairly substituted too often at the moment - was better, but too often tried to play a 'thread the needle' ball through four defenders, instead of a simple lay-off. Henry was maddening. He seems to be in a bit of a malaise at the moment, perhaps stemming from his role as a leader of the forward line, which he is not taking to on a regular basis. I would have to say, however, that I thought Van Persie played well; his increased passing and distribution was noticeable, and he seemed one of the few midfielders/forwards really fighting for the win. I would hope that the coin thrower is discovered, as well.

The only real positive was a generally good performance from the back-line, and the return of Eboue. Eboue immediately made an impact when he was moved back to right-back, overlapping and causing danger on the right. Hoyte has been good there, but doesn't have the ball skills to be a threat going forward. Kolo was awesome, while Jens, Gallas and Clichy all had good games. My main concern about Clichy is his sometimes sloppy marking at the back post from crosses - something that could cost us more goals.

The most depressing thing about today is the knowledge that Che£sea would have won that match. We don't have their ruthlessness and its costing us games. And if we can't win away matches in London, how our are we going to win matches up North?

Anyway, there goes my relaxed Sunday afternoon.