Nketiah provides telling moment as Arsenal again display their title credentials

Eddie Nketiah showed against West Ham he’s good enough for Arsenal, who again showed why they’re good enough to go all the way this season.

It was, in the end, just about the perfect Boxing Day evening for Arsenal.

As Liverpool can wearily attest, putting yourself in a title race against Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City is an exhausting business. A marathon-length sprint in rarefied air with minimal margin for error.

It means it’s not even enough to just win games – that becomes pretty much mandatory in almost all situations every single week and certainly in home games against relegation-threatened teams playing gloomy football drearily under David Moyes at his least bullish. As well as winning all the games, you must also win all the games in a manner that suggests you will go on winning all the games.

Against a West Ham side who were initially obdurate, then opportunistic, and eventually overwhelmed, Arsenal did precisely that. It would be wrong to say as many will that this was the performance of title winners. Again, Liverpool will attest that normal conventions don’t apply in a race against City. But it was absolutely the performance of contenders. It was absolutely the performance of a team that could win the title.

Even in the first half, one that ended with Arsenal a goal down and not at their very best, it was still fine. They were still playing fine. They were still the better side despite having to shake off that post-World Cup rust. Few teams had more reason to resent that break than Arsenal given the flow they’d found in the first part of the season but it didn’t take long for it to return.

The first half was one of several minor frustrations at the final pass not quite coming off and one major frustration at William Saliba’s uncharacteristically careless and unnecessary lunge at Jarrod Bowen that gave West Ham the chance from the penalty spot.

But all the elements were in place, it just hadn’t quite come together. Arsenal showed they have one necessary title-tilt quality: being quite good even when being by their own standards a bit shit.

And then in the second half they were just excellent. Michail Antonio had one half-chance early in the second period to make it 2-0 and interesting. He failed, and the game was promptly wrenched from the Hammers with lightning speed.

So clever was Martin Odegaard’s general string-pulling all afternoon that one could almost be tempted to make a case that the shanked shot turned…