I’ve woken up this morning to an absolute gale swirling around outside my house, but it was Arsenal who were doing the blowing away yesterday, showing their true colours to absolutely batter Nottingham Forest yesterday afternoon.

Pre match talk was of how impressive Forest have been this season; they know their strengths and they play to them with rapid forwards, a defensively organised side, who can rope-a-dope you if you aren’t careful. But Arsenal were ready for whatever they could throw at us and you could sense within the opening minutes that we meant business yesterday, even with Arteta rotating the team, which raised a few eyebrows. In came Calafiori, Jorginho, Trossard and Jesus, with Havertz, Partey, Martinelli and Rice all dropping to the bench. I’ll admit that made me slightly more nervous before a ball was kicked because it kind of smelled a little like we were de-prioritising what was on paper a tricky encounter. But if you think about how many games we have coming up, about the fact we have to play Sporting on Tuesday and how busy the schedule gets now, it makes sense in hindsight. Some of these players need to get minutes so they are ready for being called upon and so Arteta made the call and ultimately it worked perfectly.

And within five minutes we thought we were ahead through Timber. The free kick in to the box was good, the ball spilled out towards Timber as it came back across goal and he knocked it in. To be fair, although the VAR took a bit of time and it was a very tight offside, because the lino had his flag up in the stadium I personally didn’t feel like it was a goal taken away from us. Instead it kind of felt like a ‘oh that will be nice if we get it’ rather than the disappointment of it being chalked off if the linesman hadn’t raised the flag.

But the fact we’d opened them up within the opening few minutes was positive and it was a sign of things to come, because we only had to wait until 15 minutes before we were ahead. Step forward that Starboy, who really is something special, eh? In true Championship Manager 97/98 style, I am running out of superlatives to describe this kid. I’ve seen the Forest Fan TV channel talk about how bad their players were, but I think they just came up against an Arsenal side ready to prove a point and Saka did it emphatically with his finish. It was a rocket and it was worthy of winning the game of its own.

But 1-0 always feels like a scary score line, so when in the second half Partey made it two with his “you only get one of these a season, guys” moments, I started to feel much more comfortable. That is very much a trademark of his; edge of the box, the way we shapes up to hit it like he did, then whipping the ball with top spin – delicious stuff. And now, with the benefit of hindsight I can say, it was comfortable and ‘job done’ from thereon in. To be fair, in the first half Forest had offered little anyway and in the second they had a few half-chances including a looping header from Chris Wood that I thought Raya had pretty much covered, but other than that it was pretty much all us and the stats showed it too. 67% possession, 19 shots and seven on target (where Forest had zero on target), 18 key passes to Forest’s five, 587 passes to Forest’s 295, 91% passing accuracy – whatever way you look at it this was a dominant Arsenal side that were thoroughly worthy of all three points.

And we were treated to a first Premier League goal from the wonder kid himself, Ethan Nwaneri, who came on and once again looked imperious. Arteta referenced it afterwards, but his first action was to pick the ball up and drive at Forest players. His goal was accurately and expertly timed and it was even nice to have Raheem Sterling pop up with an assist too.

That match yesterday was Arteta’s 250th game and it went probably as perfectly as Arteta would have wanted it to go. Goals, clean sheets, dominance of the ball, control, all doing it whilst rotating the team so we have players fresh for Sporting on Tuesday and then West Ham next Saturday. In his post match presser Arteta also referenced that for the first time in months this last week we’ve been able to train with 19 first teamers out there rather than 12 or 13 and that he’s been working with. That is, I think, a really important quote because it shows you how we’ve been operating with one hand tied behind our backs. But now we are hopefully starting to see the real Arsenal and hopefully just in time too, because City’s defeat yesterday has narrowed the gap to them to one point and although Liverpool will go back to being nine points clear of us when they beat Southampton today, I think we have an opportunity to build some momentum and test them over the coming weeks if we can get in to our rhythm.

I don’t think I’m quite in the place where I’m willing to be bullish about the title being ‘back on’, but this was a very positive baby step in the right direction.

I’m also delighted in some of the performances of some of the rotated players. I thought Jorginho kept things ticking over in his 45 minute opening half and it was only his harsh booking that had Arteta bring him off at halftime for Partey. The referee felt rather trigger happy with his cards in that first half, so it made total sense that Arteta would do that. Trossard too did ok I thought and much better than his form has been recently. It was, of course, our big players who stepped up though. Saka was brilliant. Odegaard absolutely ran the show. Saliba and Gabriel ensured Forest never got a sniff and Awoniyi – who can be quite a handful for sure, never really looked like he was getting any change all day. And to have Calafiori and Timber doing their bit and looking strong was great too. Both were subbed – although Timber’s was in the 88th minute – but both will absolutely be needed on Tuesday and next Saturday.

Let’s hope this is the start of things kicking off for The Arsenal now. Enjoy your Snday.

Bonus content – we’re going early on the Same Old Arsenal podcast if you fancy joining us – we’ll be on YouTube from 9.30am UK time here.

Back tomorrow as we look ahead to Sporting.