That wasn't Arsenal's best week, was it? I think on terms of performance, and the expectations that we had, it was certainly worse than the first 3 weeks of the season. In fact, I haven't seen Arsenal seem less likely to score in maybe 4years, when they went 4 games in a row at home without scoring.

We talk about Arsenal's failures this week, starting with the terrible performance away at Milan, on a pitch that is slightly better than my backyard. We then go on to talk about Sunderland in the FA Cup, on a pitch that definitely is worse than my backyard, which has tree roots in the middle (conveniently marking the "penalty" box). There's also some general discussion about Arsenal, another Oliver Perez reference (sorry), and some very pessimistic predictions for this weekend's North London Derby. The only positive prediction was my fanciful dream, which involved Arsenal actually winning!

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Okay, so maybe the first half wasn't all that beautiful, and I'm sure Per Mertesacker's ankle hurts quite a bit, but if I get a chance to quote Kurt Vonnegut, I'll do it even if it's not all that relevant. You know what to do.

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It's here, it's finally here! The 5th episode of Fusillade, and the first one after a league win, covers Arsenal's thrashing of Blackburn, discusses Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Tomas Rosicky, and previews the league match against Sunderland.

First of all, we apologize for the lateness of the episode; because of work/school obligations, and because all 4 of us live in 3 different time zones, it was difficult finding a time to suit everyone, which we eventually did. Secondly, apologies for the quality of the sound, and the heavy breathing (which I think is me, coming down with a cold). As we were getting into the podcast, disaster struck on Skype, forcing us to make some adjustments which may have turned out to be wrong, affecting the sound quality of everyone but me. The sound quality is not up to our usual standards, but it is listenable, and it will be returned to it's usual quality for the next episode.

You can listen or download from Podomatic, or listen right from this very page.

So, as you should know by now, Arsenal had a great comeback to win 3-2 today. But you know what will make your day even better? That's right, the 4th episode of Fusillade. No, I'm not apologising for the title.

This week, both Thomas and Paul were awol, so I host the show, and I'm joined by Ted. No, this is most certainly not a coup d'etat. We talk about Arsenal's victory today, Jack Wilshere's injury, what Arsenal's ambitions should be this season and then have an extremely brief preview of Arsenal's matches this week.

If there's any difference in sound quality, it is solely down to me using GarageBand instead of the Windows program that Thomas uses.

Regular podcast service should resume next week, as Thomas and Paul should return from being tied to chairs while I and Ted run amok with the podcast on well deserved vacations.

iTunes update: We shall be applying to iTunes soon, given that we now have 5 episodes. Until then, Fusillade shall be on Podomatic.

Fusillade, Episode 4

Rss Feed That Opens in iTunes

So it's Monday night and you know what that means: I'm ridiculously tired and I have a headache! In a completely unrelated matter, it also means that this week's edition of Fusillade is out. So, uh, here it is.

Obviously we talked quite a bit about the Manchester United loss, because, you know, if we didn't there wouldn't have been much to talk about. As it turns out Michael Owen didn't end up playing nearly as big a role as we had all hoped. We talked at great length about the performance of young winger and budding cult leader Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, and what it might mean for some of the more experienced players in the club for the rest of the season (or at least until Gervinho comes back from the African Cup of Nations). We also have a frank discussion about the booing that accompanied the Oxlade-Chamberlain/Arshavin substitution, which is almost entirely serious, in a minor departure for us.

Two notes: First of all, Paul wasn't on because of family obligation-type stuff (not for more nefarious reasons). Secondly, I apologize about the sound quality. I don't know what was going on, I guess our Internet connections weren't as good as they usually are. I DID WHAT I COULD, OKAY?

We didn't get to any questions this week, but remember that if you have things you'd like us to answer or talk about, shoot us an email at fusilladecast(AT)gmail(DOT)com, and we will do our best to get to it. No really, I promise.

Fusillade 3: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

So there's something you're probably going to notice when you open this week's Fusillade (and no, it's not that it's on iTunes. I'm still working on that part). It's a little bit long. Not that much longer than the other episodes have been, but still. There's a good reason for it, though - catharsis. Basically this episode is your friendly neighborhood bloggers going through at least two of the stages of the grieving process; namely, rage, and snark. Snark counts, right? You can also blame Aidan for napping through his alarm and postponing the recording, thereby making those of us not on the west coast sleepy. THANKS A LOT.

We talk quite a bit about the Swansea game. We apologize for that. We had to, though, because the first stage of grief is acceptance, I think. That seems like what they said on Scrubs, or something like that. We also do a preview of the Manchester United match next weekend (editor's note: eep). What else can you find? Glad you asked!

• We talk about the fall of the Arsenal midfield, and how it basically cost us the Swansea game.
• How can we fix the midfield? Well...transfers, I guess. Maybe?
• So, so many Michael Owen jokes. Like, we had some really good ones. You'll like them.
• I display a massive lack of knowledge about the travels and travails of the Bulgarian national team, and evidently had a dream about Owen actually playing in the 2011 Champions League final. He was on the bench, though. That definitely happened in real-life for some reason.
• Ted says "Francis Coquelin" really French-y, and I call science out. Science totally had it coming, though.

So yeah, here's some Arsenal ear-candy for you. Get it. There's a 100% money-back guarantee. Also, make sure that you don't forget that you can send in questions for us to answer at fusilladecast@gmail.com. We've gotten some really good ones that we haven't used yet - don't worry, we're just saving them for later. So keep them coming.

Fusillade 2: The Michael Owen Injury Watch

This week on Fusillade, we actually managed to get all four of us on the thing at the same time. The results were less cluttered than you might expect. Also we all have pretty cool-sounding voices, so you can enjoy it on multiple levels rather than just the massive Arsenal expertise we all bring to the table.

The topics covered include:

• the Fulham match (for as long as we could all stomach talking about it)
• Thierry Henry, the king who has returned
• the Leeds United FA Cup match tomorrow afternoon
• the league match-up with Swansea City next weekend
• Mo Vaughn, how good I am at FIFA 12, and various other things that have little to do with the topics at hand

So yeah, get this in your ears as soon as possible, it'll make your life at least slightly better for an hour or so. Also the introduction got a little bit of a refurbishment, so hopefully you all will enjoy that as well.

Fusillade 1: Return of the King

You know how a lot of blogs have podcasts that supplement the textual content they produce with some sweet, sweet audio content? And you know how to this point, The Short Fuse hadn't been one of them? NO MORE. From this day forth, there shall be a podcast known as "Fusillade," and it shall be the audio arm of the Short Fuse empire forevermore.

Anyway, yeah. We've started a podcast. Obviously there are going to be a lot of kinks to work out, as the thing is brand new and I don't believe that any of us have done a podcast before, aside from guest appearances. But we have a vision, and that vision will be realized.

There's a part for you all to play as well. The comments section is probably the most important part of this blog to me, because the thing I enjoy most about the Internet is the fact that it can create new communities that are independent of physical location. I'd like to think that we have a good community here, and because of that I wanted to be able to involve everyone in the podcast much as we do with the text posts here. So I've made an email address for the podcast, which is fusilladecast(AT)gmail(DOT)com, and one of the regular features will be the answering of questions sent in by listeners (you) by the hosts (us). If you like you can also send them to us via Twitter; just make sure you specify that it's intended for podcast discussion.

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