Victory over Chelsea this week was the most soothing of salves after an extremely difficult run.
Three draws and a defeat in four games leading up to Tuesday had dealt a hammer blow to our confidence and sent our ambitions of a first Premier League title in 20 years into intensive care so a chance to really hammer a London rival was not to be passed up.
And while it may not have reanimated the comatose husk of our title ambitions, it at least keep it breathing for another week and, at the moment, that’s as much as we can ask.
As satisfying as that Chelsea win was, however, it’s worth bearing in mind that Frank Lampard’s side find themselves in a lamentable state – as bad as they have been for a generation. They cannot defend and they cannot attack, they lack any identity, plan, or any semblance of the sort of unity required to function as a single entity. In short, they’re shit.
That’s to take nothing away from the way we dismantled Lampard’s meritless band of mercenaries but it is to say that far tougher tests await us in what remains of this campaign and there are things we can still learn and take onboard, however late it may be.
Even on Tuesday night, there were parts of our game which weren’t quite as good as they could have been. Though much improved, our defensive efforts were still pockmarked by lapses in concentration and carelessness. Chelsea’s goal was a case-in-point but Oleksandr Zinchenko was by no means alone on the night.
Against a side as bad as Chelsea, we could well afford it. This is a team so bereft that, should they have scored more than they did, you could be confident that Arsenal could score yet more. But that won’t always be the case.
This weekend, we travel to St James’ Park to take on a Newcastle side scaling the heights, with a manager in Eddie Howe who has performed miracles. A vast injection of cash has helped, of course, but his is still a squad littered with the sorry detritus of the Mike Ashley era. Those players, hirtherto the butt of all jokes, now find themselves very firmly in the running for a Champions League place next season.
At the heart of their turnaround in fortunes has been their sheer physicality in midfield. Joelinton, Bruno Guimares and Joe Willock, among others, have just run the legs off their opponents, while strikers Alexander Isak and Callum Wilson have been, if not prolific, certainly productive in front of goal.
The sort of mistakes and moments of carelessness we saw against Chelsea will most certainly not be excused so easily at Newcastle, of that we can be sure. If we are to do what almost no other team has done this season, therefore, and win in the north east, we’re going to have to switch on for no less than 90 minutes and get ready for battle.
Much of this was, of course, just as true 12 months ago when we made the trip to St James’ in need of a win to keep our top four hopes alive and in our own hands. On that day, with everything on the line, the Gunners were wretched. We were out-muscled, out-fought and out-thought from start to finish and came away utterly chastened.
If we’re to keep any dim hopes of the Premier League title alive this season, there can be no repeat. This time, we must be everything we were not before. The occasion calls for combativeness, belligerence, and bloody-minded control, anything less will see us well beaten.
The Magpies have hit a rich seam of form at just the right time in their season, just as they did last time out. In Arsenal, they must run into some bedrock.
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