Sometimes football can feel like a slog. Like some kind of grind. Something you just have to endure.

Sometimes it feels like it goes on forever.

“This game feels like it’s been going on for four hours” The Management said to me on around 84 minutes. Arsenal had huffed and puffed their way through a 1-0 score line at that point – which was to be the eventual result – and I have to admit that I felt the same as her as I sat there watching the final minutes unfold on my phone in Portugal (cheeky weekend away to say the parents).

It really was a grind though. Arteta named the expected line up that I thought he might, giving Eze the right eight role, naming the expected back five, giving Rice and Zubi those alternating double pivot and attacking roles in midfield, whilst showing his clear favour for Leandro Trossard, starting again in a season of which some of us wondered how much game time he would get. But he started, he scored and dare I say it, he’s in form and playing well at the moment. Well, in terms of end product that is, because I didn’t think overall he had a stellar performance, but then again neither did a number of those Arsenal players yesterday. Big Vik just needs something to go in off his arse. Eze is looking like he’s realised that he’s a big fish, but he’s gone in to a big pond. Saka was functional but not spectacular. Which is also the Modus Operandi of our defensive players, who have now got that borification of the art of defending down to a fine art.

And I love it.

1-0 always feels like a precarious score line, as we all know, but with this defence, it feels like a bit of fun in London to hold on to it. Three goals conceded all season. Fulham restricted to something crazy like 0.47 xG. Not a shot allowed after we scored. Messeurs Raya, Timber, Gabriel, Saliba and Calafiori just do not let up. Clean sheets are our bag. And yesterday the back line delivered a wonderfully comfortable defensive display that has the journo’s talking about ‘Boring Arsenal’ once again.

Bring. It. On.

You can’t obviously say it in the moment, but when we scored that goal in the second half off Trossard’s thigh, I thought to myself “that’s it. Job done”, with the only thing stopping me from saying it out loud being the fear of footballing karma coming back to bite me on the arse. But it was ultimately job done and those Arsenal players saw out a functional 1-0 win that see’s us top of the league by three points which allows us to sit back with our hands behind our heads in a comfortable pose as Liverpool take on United today.

Let’s remind ourselves of what happened at Craven Cottage last season, too, because it was another ground in which we dropped points and in terms of knocking down blips from last season, that’s four we’ve managed to do already. United on match week one, Newcastle, West Ham and now Fulham. All with a pretty hefty injury list. Arteta is removing the jeopardy we’ve previously had and whilst it won’t see us first on Match of the Day too often if we deliver more matches like yesterday, there is not a single Arsenal fan who will care, if we pick up a trophy at the end of this season. I’ll take about 30 ‘one-nil to the Arsenal’s please. With bells on.

We should probably talk about how Gyokeres cut a somewhat frustrated figure at times, which I can understand, because he isn’t getting the service, space or opportunities to do what he loves. But I didn’t think his performance was terrible. He forced Leno in to a couple of saves and Martinelli nearly got a second by following up on a rebound. But for his own mind he probably needs to bag a goal sooner rather than later for this to not become a “thing”. Arteta will be less worried because of the role he is performing for the team and his occupation of central defenders means the likes of Saka and Trossard have more space on the flanks not to be doubled up on. But the Swede will be wanting to get this goalscoring monkey off his back and I suspect he will have had his eyes on that penalty that was overturned as one of the opportunities. It was a weird one, that, because I think you can argue the toss over both. If it’s not inside the box I think Saka is getting a foul and a free kick and nobody is saying anything, but because it’s inside the box they have to look in detail at the foul. I think there’s a knee-on-knee clash which happens before Kevin gets the ball, but he does ultimately get the ball and because we won the game we can fob off the end result, but had that been a match-defining decision I might have been minded to argue the toss. It wasn’t, we won, we move on.

And more on we do because looking at that table this morning feels lovely. There’s a slightly disconcerting and familiar name next to us in the shape of Man City, but my hope is that their reliance on Haaland’s goalscoring won’t last forever. However having said that, people will most likely be talking about  us and set pieces in that regard, so perhaps we should be checking ourselves and be wary of City creeping up that table. Poor little underdogs City, who have spent around £400million in the last 12 months or so.

But for now we need only look at a very impressive and orderly 1-0 away win, which means we stay clear at the top and have a couple of home games ahead of us in the next seven days. Let’s hope for more of the same against Atletico Madrid, before the visit of in-form Crystal Palace, where Eze will get a bit of a reunion against guys who were his teammates just a few short months ago.

Catch you all tomorrow.