Arsenal are on 74 with a game in hand, that's after sitting out the last third of the season. At some stage I will do some serious analysis of why we missed so narrowly. However there is one thing you do need to win things and that is luck, or call it the rub of the green or perhaps favourable referees decisions, whatever you will.

Remember when Arsenal went on their invincible run? It all started when Van Horse Face hit the bar with a penalty kick. If he had scored we would never have heard of the invincible. It was the last minute, if he had been on target there was no time to recover.

Now Man Utd have suffered a serious setback conceding a penalty on 86 minutes, and at Stamford Bridge that is a good as full-time. Ferguson was red faced with indignation. How could anyone give a penalty against his team? Good question.

It wasn't until a mate rang me that the significance of that dawned on me. It was the first penalty United had conceded in the league all season, it may, or may not, prove decisive to the outcome of the Premiership.

Now Gallas's ramblings on how he conceded at Man Utd made sense. Alex couldn't believe that a penalty could be given for anything so soft as handball. Now I haven't kept a record of how many penalties we have conceded, but I do remember two very soft ones. The one at Birmingham which was clearly not a penalty, so let's add two points that's 76.

Let's imagine we had some luck and Gallas got away with his handball, that would have been 77 and Man Utd on 79, but Arsenal still with a game in hand. Or we had got the penalty in the Premiership game against Liverpool in the league.

I know it's only "If", but if would have meant a victory at Derby would have put the Gunners on 80 points.

Oh well it's only a dream, but it would be good to hear that accusation "Lucky Arsenal" once again. It could be argued that the Gunners are not that unlucky, but only someone with a full frontal lobotomy could argue we have been lucky.

What about the preview, do you really care? Yes three points will be good it would assure third place, but I can't get out of my head what could have been. Does Wenger's view of the season have a justification? His team were good enough to win the league and just bad luck got in the way? I would argue that events this weekend increasingly do justify, at least partially, his view that luck was central.

The most interesting thing about the Derby game may be how the youngsters play, Denilson, Walcott and Fabianski, plus any others. Derby are a very poor team on only 11 points, I just hope that Wenger doesn't weaken the team so much that we don't get the goal fest we are all dreaming of.

Of course Derby have nothing to lose, everyone expects them to do so. They do have a big prize in their sights; perhaps bigger than finishing third, that prize is to avoid being the worst team in the Premiership ever.

More bad luck

On luck the injury crisis has just got worse with Flamini, Sagna, Rosicky, and Diaby all out for the rest of the season.

The Squad

Arsenal Probably From: Fabianski, Toure, Gallas, Song, Clichy, Walcott, Fabregas, Gilberto, Denilson, van Persie, Adebayor, Lehmann, Almunia, Bendtner, Senderos, Eboue, Traore, Djourou

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