Arsenal have an elite mentality and Oleksandr Zinchenko; that is no coincidence. And Man Utd have work to do despite the promise, starting with David de Gea.
1) That roar. That roar.
It was joked about for years that Arsenal moved from Highbury to a library. That the Emirates was a millstone around the neck of a directionless club. That this passionless theatre of self-contempt could so often be used against them. That the home support was anything but. That the atmosphere was actively detrimental on the rare occasion it even existed.
A lot of those views – as remains the case with even this undeniably brilliant version of Arsenal – were grounded in preconceptions of a team which was pretty but bulliable on the pitch and infuriatingly incompetent off it. But things have changed.
Mikel Arteta prowls the touchline to the impotent rage of grown adults for whom his behaviour is not designed. These players do not cower. Those fans scream and dance around the fire, fanning the flames with delirious joy.
They believe. Not necessarily that Arsenal will win the league; a five-point gap with a game in hand in late January does enough work in that regard. No, they believe in this team, this club, that manager, those players. They believe in what they do and what they represent. They believe in Arsenal. And particularly after both Eddie Nketiah’s second goal and then the final whistle, they made fucking well sure to make that known.
2) “You can see how much it means to everyone,” said Bukayo Saka after the game. “They’re the only team that have beaten us this season so we really wanted to beat them for the fans.”
Shortly after the Boxing Day win over West Ham, it was noted that Arsenal faced a run of Premier League fixtures against the four most recent teams to beat them in domestic competition: Brighton, Newcastle, Spurs and Man Utd. Revenge was exacted against three of them and the other is posting such ludicrous defensive numbers that that dish can afford to be served cold if necessary.
As Saka’s comments hinted, vengeance can be a strong motivator and Arsenal have just rounded off three weeks of almost exclusively exorcising demons, with a quick FA Cup detour to Oxford in between. That is an incredibly powerful feeling to disseminate throughout a squad which is running out of wrongs to right and critics to confound.
3) The Premier League’s tectonic plates have shifted again. After Liverpool and Chelsea revived the energy of those…
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