I really don’t like Chelsea. I’d go as far as to say I hate them. I hate what they represent. I hate the way they started the spiral of financial doping that is now so prevalent in the game. I hate their game model of stockpiling players and then farming them out on loan. I hate their chirpy fans. I hate that they crowed about that tin pot cup they ‘won’ last summer. I hate that they’ve had more success than us over the last 20 years.

So to see one of their castaways, a guy who we all love and has become so integral to our squad, bag the winner to send us through to the League Cup Final, felt poetic to me. It felt like vindication. It was a visual manifestation of our superiority and having missed out on a few semi-finals in recent years, it felt like what we deserve for what this season has been so far.

We haven’t ‘won’ anything. We’ve got to a cup final. That’s it. But for some years now this team has been knocking down milestones. The final one has been to start winning trophies. And to do it against a team that really are quite odious and reprehensible as an entity – that was lovely.

There’s also nothing more lovely than a last second goal. Chelsea were pushing, they were probing, they left the back door open and Kai Havertz walked through it by rounding Sanchez. Oh, and Kai, the touching of the badge? “Chefs Kiss” my friend. Chef’s Kiss indeed.

I kind of predicted how this game was going to unfold yesterday morning, but I didn’t think it would be the level of cagey from Chelsea that essentially meant nothing. They offered basically nothing. We didn’t need to go and win this game. We had the goal advantage. We had the home advantage. We have the best defence in the country. So the onus wasn’t on us to go and force anything. Was I surprised that Chelsea were just happy to stay in their shape and offer little in that first half? Not really. We, of all fans, are aware from Anfield in 89 what you can do in a second half when the clock is ticking down. Rosenior had, I think, tried to invoke a little of that George Graham spirit; keeping it tight, make the first half a bit dull, let Arsenal force it, then pick them off on the counter.

The only problem with that, is that Arsenal were happy not to force it, we didn’t need to. So why turn this into an emotional game? Screw the neutrals. Screw people switching on to ITV and wanting to see a basketball match of end-to-end stuff. That’s not Arsenal – have you not been watching? We can – and do – have the ability to shut games down. Arteta has been trying to master this for some years now. Control, dominance, possession, minimise jeopardy. Sure, Enzo taking a shot from 30 yards produced a bit of something for Kepa to do, but if you’re relying on outside-of-the-box efforts from the likes of Marc Cucurella as your source of attempted joy, you’re going to be in a bit of trouble playing this Arsenal side.

We had our chances (Hincapie’s early effort was decent and maybe Martinelli could have made more of being put in behind in that first half), but this was a professional display that, personally, I loved. That’s because it felt like – and I put the Leeds game into this bracket when I say this – the Arsenal from earlier in the season. You know the one that just shut teams down and bagged themselves a clean sheet. Of late, we’ve seen us concede a few too many sloppy goals. Sure, there’s been some golazo‘s in there with the two United scored, or the second one from Kroupie at Bournemouth, but we’d let complacency creep in, and now it feels like those kinks have been ironed out. Arteta spoke about doing a bit of a reset a few weeks back. He talked about how some bad habits had started to emerge. But clearly this team has decided that our defensive identity, which has been such a feature of this season, needs to be restored, rather than the slightly helter-skelter results that we saw in parts in January.

It’s been a really testing period for these players, but they’ve come out of it with a cup final to look forward to. Declan Rice said in an interview afterwards that he’s ‘knackered’ and given Arteta went pretty strong with his starting XI yesterday, I can understand why. But I think we probably need to be mindful of that in the coming weeks and Arteta probably needs to be thinking about a bit of rotation. We now have four days until we play again on Saturday at home to Sunderland, so I think there is enough space there between matches for those players to refresh themselves. But after that it starts to pick back up again, because we play Brentford on Thursday, before Wigan on Sunday, which will 100% be the opportunity to sit some players down again. The good news thereafter is that we’ll have a solid week until we have to go to the Toilet Bowl to play the Scum, so I think that will be on Arteta’s mind as he and his staff start to plot the approach for the next block of games we have.

But for now it is job done, Kai the hero, Chelsea vanquished and another impressive Arsenal victory in what has – up until this point – been a great season so far for us. Let’s just hope it continues all the way to May.

I’ll be back with some more thoughts tomorrow as we prepare for the visit of the Mackems. Speak then.