Morning folks and happy Monday to you and yours. We got an unexpected bit of good news yesterday, didn’t we, eh? Honestly when I saw Liverpool go one up in the first half against an injury-hit and out of form Man United, I was tempted to just turn the TV off and go and do some Lego or something. But I persevered and as a result in the end every Arsenal fan got the result they wanted – United took something off of Liverpool and it means we end the week top of the league, albeit on goal difference.

Jurgen Klopp said afterwards that if Man United play like that against us towards the end of the season then we will absolutely beat them. Tiny bit of mind games whilst also trying to have a dig at United, but he’s probably right. Liverpool wasted a host of chances in the first half and the fact that in the opening 45 Man United didn’t even have a shot on goal in their stats column, felt a little embarrassing to me. In the second half they also gave the ball away so much and I thought in general the quality of the game was really poor. When you think about how we went about dispatching a good Brighton team on Saturday evening, it certainly does give you the feeling that we are more in control of our destiny.

And that is now official this morning, because our goal difference is better and we have the same points as Liverpool, with us sitting right at the top. I still feel like we should be third favourites given our difficulty of games and the bookies are still saying that Man City are the favourites with Liverpool dropping a little bit based on yesterday. But we all know it can swing so quickly. We play last next weekend with our home game against Aston Villa and with Man City at home to Luton and Liverpool at home to Palace, ours is the one you feel will end up with the most likely of slipping up against a Villa side going for a top four spot.

That will be a Villa side who will be without Douglas Luiz, after he picked up a booking against Brentford on Saturday and with Villa also playing in the Europa League on Thursday, we’ll have an extra couple of days on them in terms of rest time. That could be vital for us because as we all know, tomorrow is the big one and we face off at home against an ailing Bayern Munich side. They have a few question marks over some of their team but they will still be incredibly hard to beat and today’s training session along with the press conference will be interesting to see what Arteta says about how we approach it. I’m seeing a fair few Gooners talking up us giving Bayern a hammering and whilst they were poor at the weekend losing to Heidenheim away in the Bundesliga to all but hand the title to Leverkusen, I think it’ll mean they will be ploughing absolutely everything they have in to beating us over two legs now.

Next weekend they play my German Team CF Koln and even though they’ll probably rotate so they can put everything in to the games against us over two legs, they will still have a side capable enough of doing Koln damage and we should be feeling the same about our games home and away too. There will be the inevitable Harry Kane goal at some stage, most likely through a penalty he has dived to win, then there will probably also be Serge Gnabry back to haunt us in some way. But the difference this time is that this is an Arsenal side who have proven that they can go toe-to-toe with anyone and with the way we are playing at the moment, you’d hope that when Bayern rock up at the Emirates they won’t be expecting an easy evening like they have done in the past.

We’ve also been able to rotate players a fair bit lately, which is good news – we hope – for getting some players fresh for tomorrow night. Whether or not Arteta does undertake a bit more rotation tomorrow remains to be seen; right now I can’t see him doing too much except maybe Martinelli coming in, or perhaps Thomas Partey, but I’ll save some of the squad line up thinking for tomorrow’s preview I think.

For today, I’ll be spending a bit of time looking at the Premier League table. We’ve scored the most, we’ve conceded the least, we’re top on goal difference and I think (and am of course completely biased) that we are currently playing the best football in the league. Whether that is enough, or whether we can sustain it all the way through to May, I’m still not so sure. The vibes the team are giving are one of a side who is one of the big boys in this season, but I still look at those fixtures and think that it might be a step too far for us in the end. If we had the remaining fixtures that Liverpool have – Palace, Fulham, Everton, Villa, Wolves, West Ham and the Scum, then I’d probably feel a little more comfortable. Our fixtures are similar, but as bad as United are, we’ve got them at Old Trafford (where we seem to lose every season whether they are good or useless) where Liverpool have Everton at Goodison. You can talk up the Merseyside derby side of it all you like, but Everton are down there in the league for a reason, so Liverpool will roll them over. City’s run in is the easiest and that’s why they are favourites; they do have to go to Brighton but as we saw on Saturday that could be a game they make light work of and whilst there are those that are arguing about the Scum and their record against City, I suspect that Man City will give them a bit of a beat down if I’m honest. The rest of City’s games are basically bankers; Luton, Forest, Wolves at home, Fulham and West Ham – so we are going to have to be pretty flawless to get our hands on that Premier League trophy.

But we’re in the best possible position to do it and we feel like we are the form team at the moment. Let’s hope that continues for the next seven weeks or so.

Catch you all tomorrow for a pre match preview.