There may be grumbles and gripes after the weekend's result but columnist Giles Smith calls upon his fellow Chelsea fans to remember what is important.


You've got to love Arsenal, haven't you? Partly because the papers and the pundits are always telling you to. Beautiful side. Lovely football. Play the game the way it's meant to be played. Can't do it any other way. It's just not in their make-up, and so on.

Good news stories pour out of the club on a daily basis. Did you know that the football played at the Emirates actually reduces global warming? It's fantastic news and not only for the club's supporters, but for people all over the world. And not just people. Endangered species, too, including the giant panda and the Rwandan mountain gorilla, support Arsenal and wish them success.

Arsène Wenger? A saintly figure, clearly. And no money behind him at all, you know. Not a penny. When Arsène needs a new player, he has to save up bottle tops or grow one in his garden. Or, if not his garden, then the garden belonging to the youth department of another club in France.

Cost of the Emirates Stadium? £357 million, it says here. But that can't be right, can it? I believe the stadium came to David Dein in a dream. People in Ashburton Grove just woke up one morning and there it was, all organic and shiny and free. Because otherwise it's throwing a big lump of money at the problem, and that's just not the Arsenal way.

Arsenal's wage bill? More than £83 million a year, according to Deloitte Touche, but I don't believe that for a minute, either. I don't think any wages change hands at all at Arsenal. I think the players there do it entirely for love - love for Arsenal, and love for football, the way it's meant to be played - and maybe at the end of the year there's an outing - to the seaside or something.

And that's why I felt so positive after Sunday's match. Because, yes, we lost. But consider what humble, grubby little us had come up against. Not so much a football team - more a moral superpower. I mean, in many ways, it was a privilege just to be admitted to the same pitch, let alone to end up bossing the second half.

And how heartening it was, then, given the circumstances, to lose only very narrowly, to one enormously scruffy goal which, to be strict about it, ought really to have been ruled out unless we're going to agree that it's absolutely fine for attacking players to wrestle defending players out of the way while the ball is still in the air. (And I guess if Arsenal are doing it, give it time.)

In fact, we could easily have had a point, which would have been a truly cherishable thing, lacking, as we were, Drogba, Essien, Carvalho and (for the best part of the game) Terry.

Indeed, we probably would have had a point if only Shaun Wright-Phillips hadn't chosen the moment when he was one-on-one with Almunia in the 74th minute to deliver his first genuinely dangerous cross of the league campaign so far. But that's nothing to worry about. It's just a minor refinement on the training ground.

Some supporters will also point out that we were a touch unlucky when our captain broke his foot in three places midway through the first half. And I've heard a few people say quite dark things about that particular incident, even going so far as to suggest that it might have been (how can I put this?)? deliberate.

But that's clearly impossible, because it's not what Arsenal are about. Read the papers: they're not about stamping on people and getting into punch-ups. They're about emulating Real Madrid at their finest, while simultaneously lowering the average age of their first XI to 15-and-a-half.

So, more than likely Eboué was in the middle of one of those fast and exciting, quick-passing moves that Arsenal specialise in, and Terry's foot happened to get in the way. Serves the captain right, really, for trying to stand there when something beautiful and morally unimpeachable was going on.

So if anyone needs to say sorry, it's probably us. I don't know whether the club intends to issue a formal apology to Eboué and to Arsenal in general over the incident, but by all means read this as an unofficial apology on Chelsea's behalf, expressed in the humblest terms.

And thanks for letting us play, too. We were flattered to be invited.