After the international break, two Premiership games on the road and an away tie in the Carling Cup, my last set of programme notes for the Arsenal game seem like such a long time ago.

So getting quickly back into it may I extend a very warm welcome to West Ham United, their staff and supporters for this afternoon’s Barclays Premiership fixture at the City of Manchester Stadium.

We come into today’s game on the back of a disappointing Carling Cup defeat at Chesterfield and as I said to the players after the game, the only thing they can do is draw closer together and learn by it, starting on the pitch today against a team in a similar position to ourselves and just one point above us in the table.

Despite Wednesday’s result going against us, I felt the players gave me everything and at the end of the day, I am the Manager and therefore the first person that takes the flak. That’s always been the way with me and that will continue to be the case. I'm the one who should take the criticism, not the players.

In the recent Premiership matches we have created more chances as the games have gone on, which is good, and we are going to have to take those chances and get our nose in front and that would give us a better chance of going on to win the games.

With the two away defeats in the league, I feel the same way about both games, if we score first we win the game.

At Ewood Park we were disappointed with our defending at times. Apart from that we passed the ball as well as we had done in any of the games thus far and like at Reading it’s just a case of converting the chances when they come. Over 90 minutes games ebb and flow and when it’s against you we need to make sure we don’t concede.

The Arsenal game was a tough game for us and the character the players showed was fantastic, the crowd got behind us as well and they gave us everything they had, and we hope for that again this afternoon. It was a great result for the club and the first time we’d beaten Arsenal since December 1991.

When you look at the league table it is still very tight with just seven points separating the bottom team from the side in fifth place. If you take any fixture list on any given day and make your predictions the chances are you could be quite wide of the mark.

Looking at last weekend’s fixtures proves that, take today’s opponents against Newcastle – I thought that was going to be a West Ham victory and it wasn’t. Fulham away at Tottenham – home win – it wasn’t. Everton playing Wigan – home win – it wasn’t. That’s the nature of the game and the way it seems to be going at the minute. Blackburn versus us, people thought it would be a low scoring affair with us both defending fairly well going in to the game and it finishes 4-2. It’s defying logic at the moment.

Going into the Blackburn game on Sunday if we win that game, we could have gone eighth, we lose the game and results go against you we end up seventeenth. Now they are the dividing lines we are working to. We’ve had two Premiership away trips and if a neutral looks at the games would have turned around and said we probably deserved something out of both of them, certainly on chances created and possession. You don’t get that, so you don’t bleat about it, you work harder on the training field.

On the injury front new signings Andreas Isaksson and Hatem Trabelsi will be unavailable for selection in the meantime. There was a collision between Andreas and another player in the training session before the Blackburn game, and his knee ligaments have been extended a little bit.

After a promising start against Blackburn, Hatem suffered a groin strain that happened when he overstretched for a ball, so we will see how that goes. Better news is that Daruis Vassell is continuing to make progress with his knee injury, as are the hamstrung Nedum Onuoha and Sun Jihai.

Enjoy the game.

Usual blah, blah, blah bollocks from Mr Pearce, the last three words od the piece are a fucking piss take.