For my money, although they were not over threatening us, the Magpies definitely held sway in the first half. I couldn't remember watching a Newcastle side as compact and solid as this lot did as a team. I picked out Emre as the man the Gunners needed to watch and although he faded as the game went on I have to say that both he and Scott Parker ran the show in the opening 45 minutes.
It was the dismissal of Jermaine Jenas that changed the course of the match. I thought that his tackle on Gilberto was a bad one but I wasn't convinced that he warranted a straight red card for it particularly given that I couldn't remember him making another tackle of any description up to that point.
Still, even with the Geordies down to ten men and our ascendancy in the game growing by the minute, the Arsenal still found it a struggle to break them down. We were guilty of our usual failings, playing too much football in front of the opposition without anybody really getting in behind them. I lost count of the amount of times that we got into advanced wide positions only to cut back inside and try and feed the ball through the eye of a needle.
But just when I had almost resigned myself to seeing the game fizzling out to a goalless draw, a burst into the box by Freddie was curtailed by Newcastle sub Charles N'Zogbia. As we were awarded the penalty, I remember Eamon saying that the points were finally going to be in the bag but given the frustration we had all gone through up until then I said to him "Let's get the damn thing in the back of the net first". Thankfully, Monsieur Va Va Voom duly obliged and Eamon wasn't left with egg on his face.
Of course, by this time, Van Persie and Hleb had replaced Fabragas and Bergkamp. I must say that the new box Alex certainly looked lively when he came on and he actually played a part in the build up to our second goal.
It was vintage Arsenal, wasn't it? Hleb started the move off by finding Ljungberg with a neat pass. The super Swede in turn fed the ball on to Lauren and then made a surging run down the right to pick up a return pass form Lauren. Having made it to the by-line, the Swede looked up to see Van Persie making a dash to the near post, fed the ball into his path and Van Persie flicked the ball past Given from point blank range. Quality - sheer quality.
Van Persie's strike put a little bit of sheen on what was, by our standards, a pretty average performance. We did just about enough and whilst some of the press predictably poured scorn over our win, I will use the old cliché which is that it's a sign of a good side when you win when not playing well.
On Monday morning, I popped into my local newsagent to see my old mate Geordie. He was also at Highbury the day before (though he didn't tell me he had a ticket) and when I walked in to the shop, he jokingly said that I had some front showing my face given all that went on. Mind you, Geordie is no fool and he said that the bits of good fortune Arsenal got were nothing in comparison to what a certain West London team enjoyed up in Wigan. Oh, how right he was.
I had retired to my resident watering hole, the Twelve Pins, to watch the Wigan game with my mates. As usual the place was packed to the rafters but even though there wasn't quite 38,000 people in there watching it with me, the atmosphere put the one that was generated at Highbury earlier in the day to shame.
As the game unfolded I got the sense that everyone that was there in the hope of seeing the PRF get beat actually genuinely wanted Wigan to win in the end – and rightly so, because the Premiership newcomers were outstanding over the piece.
However, the last minute of that game will certainly live in the memory for a quite a while. Scores of Arsenal fans were holding their heads in their hands as Wigan had just wasted yet another golden chance to open the scoring one moment and in the next, with the Sky cameras only just managing to squeeze in an instant replay, the ball was suddenly whistling its way into the back of the net at the other end. As Hernan Crespo wheeled away in celebration, time almost seemed to stand still and you could literally have heard a pin drop anywhere in the pub.
It really was surreal. Here we were, Arsenal fans all, watching a match that we were not even involved in only to find ourselves consumed, almost to a man, by the same sense of devastation that every Wigan fan would have endured. I was going around shaking my head in disbelief, the rest of my mates were just staring at each other without saying anything and we ended up cursing the PRF well into the night.
However, as we were sitting down outside the pub on Sunday night, little did we know that trouble was actually brewing in West London's Anglo-Russian paradise. Ricardo Carvalho broke ranks to have a pop at Moaninho for omitting him from the squad that was picked to face Wigan. And, more interestingly, he apparently went on to reveal that both he and Moaninho didn't always see eye to eye when they were together at Porto.
Now, I know that you cannot believe all that you read in the papers but the statement Carvalho apparently made, particularly about his supposedly stormy relationship with Moaninho, actually rung true to me. You see, I always found it a little strange that Carvalho, having built a real reputation for himself at Porto, never actually followed Moaninho to the Bridge straight away (like Paolo Ferreira did).
The fact that he and Moaninho didn't always see eye to eye could have been part of it but the main reason for that was Carvalho had actually set his heart on a move to Real Madrid. Real actually offered £13 million for him and I understand that the deal was on the verge of going through when Moaninho and the PRF stepped with a counter offer at the last minute.
A mini bidding war ensued which resulted in Porto slapping a price tag of around £20 million on him. Real were not interested in paying that much for him and the way was laid for Carvalho to join Chelsea instead. With Moaninho having come out and turned the whole affair into a slagging match by claiming that Carvalho needs an IQ test, it will interesting to see how things pan out from here. Given the plethora of defensive problems Real Madrid have had over the last two years or so, I'm sure that they would still jump at the chance of signing him if Carvalho was to give off the right signals. It's a case of watch this space on that issue I think.
Speaking of signings, it appears as though the Michael Essien saga has finally come to an end. Mind you, the deal would have probably been concluded far sooner if the PRF hadn't had the cheek to moan about being exploited by other clubs when it comes to trying to buy players.
They know damn well that they have brought this whole situation on themselves and given that everyone in Europe knows what their policy is and that they are going all out to try and monopolise Europe by trying to buy every "hip and trendy" player that they can possibly lay their hands on, I don't think that people around Europe are going to start reaching for a violin.
In the case of Essien, the Lyon president was no different to everyone else in as much as he knew that he wouldn't be able to keep the boy once the PRF came sniffing around. But he also knew, like everyone else, that the PRF have a track record for being unscrupulous in their attempts to get who or what they want. So what did he do? Play hardball and hold out for the best deal he could get for the player in the interests of his club. Can anyone honestly blame him for that?
It was not only laughable when the PRF were going around saying that they were being exploited, it smacked of real naivety. I mean, if you are a rich man and you choose to have your suits tailor made in Saville Row, then you would look a little stupid if you then complained about the fact that they cost just a little bit more on average than suits that come straight off the peg at Marks and Spencers.
In any case, the fact that the PRF have actually got Essien now isn't really of any particular significance to me as an Arsenal fan but the amount they paid for him is. His £24 million fee means that the PRF have spent more money in the time that Moaninho has been at the helm (barely just over a year) than Wenger has in his ENTIRE time at Arsenal.
How do I put that into some kind of perspective as an Arsenal fan? Well, it goes something like this. Whenever I am accused of being jealous of the PRF and all their money, I simply have to remind myself of one thing – the history of English Football. I know that there are only two teams in the history of English football that have won the title more times than us – neither of them are Chelsea. I know that there is only ONE team in the history of English football that has won the FA Cup more times than us – and it's not Chelsea. Now, I could go on and on here but I think that you are all catching my drift.
Moreover, when people accuse me of being bitter about what the PRF have achieved of late I simply say to them that they are mistaking bitterness for contempt.
For a start I had the pleasure of actually seeing us win league titles with a team full of homegrown players. And of course, I'm not just talking about English players; I'm talking about players that came through the ranks having been at the Arsenal from the year dot. I have also seen us win titles and trophies in recent times with out seeing the Arsenal spending anywhere near £270 million in any given two-year period. And above all, the Arsenal have achieved all of this as a club run along genuine business lines. Nobody that holds the financially doped franchise from West London dear to their hearts can (or ever will be able to) say the same. So why the hell should I have any respect for them or their achievements?
Looking towards Sunday and the game itself, well, the only thing that I have fear over is seeing us not do ourselves justice down at the Bridge. In fact, when I think about it, this is the first time in living memory (well, mine anyway) that we will actually go into a game with nothing to lose.
After all, if we do lose, then in the eyes of the all the smug so-called "experts", the PRF would have only confirmed what they THINK they already know. On the other hand if the Arsenal win… Well, it would certainly put the cat amongst the pigeons, wouldn't it?
The press and the media have a tendency to be a little bit stuck for words whenever Arsenal have done well for themselves. I am hoping that a brief and almost eerie silence to descend over them by the time Sunday night comes around.