It was nice having a Sunday yesterday in which the results of the football didn’t really matter. Having done our business on the Saturday and also seeing City and the Scum drop points, it was only Liverpool who got a result that we wouldn’t class as delicious and juicy, so I spent my day enjoying doing little except for having the Luton v Man United game on in the background. It was a bit of a basketball game and in all truth United weren’t great but they had some chances that you’d really expect a side like theirs with players like theirs to be putting away. Garnacho had about three one-on-ones I think.

And inevitably it made me think about our own team. We were lamenting our profligate finishing over Christmas, but we never got chances like United had yesterday to kill the game off. Had we have done, I’m pretty sure that we’d have been able to pick up more points than we did, which again shows you that the media talk about us needing a striker is more because of their narrative and need for a story than anything else. United have scored 35 goals this season, yet the talk about them needing a forward doesn’t exist because they have Rashford and they have Hojland who has been bagging goals for the last few weeks. We spread our goals around, have scored 23 goals more than United, yet we are the ones that need a striker. Go figure.

I guess it’s probably also because we’re ‘in the conversation’ re: the Premier League title race. Were United the ones in the conversation then there probably would also be conversations about their scoring stats, but then again the reason they are not in the talk is because they don’t score enough goals. That’s why they’re currently sixth on 44 points and have a +1 goal difference.

As for us, our goal difference right now makes for very impressive reading and I’m reminded of a couple of conversations I had in the pub towards the beginning and middle of this season, in which friends were overheard saying “we’re due to give somebody a hiding soon”. We’ve seen the fruits of our labour in the last two weeks, but actually we’ve also done it on a number of occasions this season, which is a lot of fun I have to say. It makes for very entertaining watching when you do it the way we’ve been doing it too. a 5-0 win is great but if you’re only two up on 80 minutes and then get a flurry of goals at the end because the opponent has tired or is generally just trying to ‘having a go’ which opens them up, battering’s can take shape that don’t look likely at halftime. But last weekend and this weekend just gone had goals in the first half that effectively killed the game off and for me that has meant watching a second half of football can just be enjoyed as I did on Saturday. We’d also scored our third and fourth goals by just after the hour mark, so it became even more of a procession and those Arsenal players could play out the game with little worry or stress ahead of what will be a tough week for sure. Porto away will challenge us and so Arteta’s ability to bring players off with that game in mind could be massive. Saka, Trossard and White came off on 69 minutes, Rice on 79 minutes and that extra ability to give those players even that small bit of rest will hopefully bode well for us in Portugal and then at home to Newcastle on Saturday evening.

There’s been talk by a few Arsenal fans about the importance of rotating this week but if you can have your best players coming off for much needed rest two weeks in a row, then maybe you don’t need to worry about that as much? That’s the hope, anyway.

We won’t have it all our own way for the upcoming games like we have in our last two, however, I don’t think. Porto may be struggling at the moment in the Portuguese Primeira Liga table (their third behind Sporting and Benfica) but they will still cause our back line more stress than our two claret and blur opponents have done these past two weekends. Then Newcastle might be struggling to replicate last season’s form, but they still represent a big challenges and compared to other teams around them have a pretty decent scoring ratio (before this weekend’s action we’d scored 53 goals and they’d scored 51), so I’m expecting Raya to be tested a bit more than he has done recently. So to have our players looking like they are changing up the gears whilst also being able to get pulled off for rest and recuperation for two weekends in a row, really does warm the cockles of the heart.

The next thing we need for things to be falling in to place is for some of those injured players to be coming back from injury in the next few days. We’ve managed to get through these last few weeks ok, but it does feel like we need some reinforcements arriving soon as the games start to stack up, so I’m hoping that Arteta gives us good news ahead of his Porto presser and that we hear something about the likes of Tomiyasu, Zinchenko, Gabriel Jesus and maybe even Thomas Partey. He seemed to suggest that Fabio Vieira was in line for the trip to Porto and yet he wasn’t in the squad for the weekend, so I wonder if there’s a few that were just being given that little extra time in training to get themselves ready for a matchday squad, whilst the current squad were playing so well and bagging goals. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Arteta and Arsenal were happy to leave it that couple of extra days and we’ll now start to see the bench looking a little more familiar in terms of those first teamers all all know and love.

But that’s a discussion for tomorrow and Wednesday. For now I’ll leave you with only positive thoughts and catch you wonderful humans tomorrow. Have a good one.