What’s all this back-scratching going on with Arsenal at the minute? Ok, so it might have gone right over Ray Wilkins‘ head, but first we had Wenger standing up for Drogba’s bad behaviour, now we’ve got John Terry returning the favour.

You see, Arsenal’s poor performance and subsequent defeat at home to Aston Villa (yes, just a week after the sound of gooner’s trumpets being blown everywhere following their win against United), saw them fall nine points behind the Premier League leaders at the weekend. And yet, even with a gap almost double the tally the Chelsea captain had suggested United would struggle to overturn last season, Terry refuses to write Wenger’s lot off. In fact, with Chelsea still to play both home and away games against Arsenal, the Chelsea skipper reckons we’ll need all six points from them if we want to stay ahead.

Terry says “I still consider Arsenal a contender, you should never write off the big sides” (so last year clearly taught him something?) “They have the players to do it and they will put a run together. We still have to play them at home and away and anything can happen. We have to make sure we pick up the six points against them in those two games. It is really close at the top at the moment. Liverpool are playing well. I watched them before we played West Brom and Manchester United had a good result against Stoke. The main thing for us is to keep winning and try and frustrate teams below us. We have experienced that in chasing Manchester United the last couple of years. It does get to you.”

Of course this could all be just the calm before the storm because when the first game against Arsenal comes around it goes without saying Wenger will accuse us of roughing his players up and John Terry will probably come out and say what everyone else is thinking already – they haven’t got a hope in hell this season really.

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