That result has put me into far more of a despondent mood than Sunday’s.

Blackburn knew exactly what they were going to do – sit back, put their top scorer on at the end against a tired Arsenal and hope for a win. And fair enough, that worked. But for all its faults, give me our brand of football anyday.

It should never have got that far though: old “three yellows” himself, Graham Poll [always dreadful, always], waved away two penalty claims, the first that would have been given by a majority of referees and the second by all but those with no eyes.

Adding to those bad decisions was a tired and decimated Arsenal, and a profligate attack. We had Gavin Hoyte and Mark Randall on the bench, and for a squad as large and as capable as ours is, that pretty much says it all.

Between them, Baptista and Ali Oh Dear should have scored with the chances they had. It wasn’t for a lack of endeavour – both ran hard all night – but nothing went for them. The arseblogger mentioned yesterday that Baptista is running out of time to prove himself, and the same applies to Aliadiere.

In fact, I suspect we can answer that conundrum ourselves. If Henry, Adebayor and van Persie were fit, would either of Bap or Ali get near the first team? Not at the moment they wouldn’t.

No use crying over circumstances though. We’ve got to pick ourselves up for Saturday and, more importantly, for Wednesday, which represents our only chance for silverware now.

Ah, Robin van Persie. How we could have done with him last night.