Oh I know you came here this morning because you wanted a pint-size serving of primo positivity ground from the beans of a plant that has been juiced in a year’s worth of propaganda.

You came to the right place, pull up a chair.

Some things to get out of the way early doors.

We haven’t finished 4th place. It will still be incredibly hard. There are likely going to be twists and turns you didn’t see coming. This is the Premier League. The worst team in the league this season just be Chelsea.

I am on the record as saying that, as it stands, however our season finishes from now, we have reached our target. Arsenal WILL be in Europe next season. The worst we can finish is 6th. Wolves can’t catch us nor can West Ham. We have 20 wins, that’s 1 more than Chelsea. Liverpool registered 20 wins in the whole of last season, 2nd place United registered 21.

Arsenal needs two more points over 4 games to guarantee 5th over Manchester United.

The West Ham game was NOT our finest performance of the season.

The biggest reason for the ‘ugly’ performance, for me, is quite simple: We lack experience.

The team played within themselves for most of the first half, there wasn’t a lot of swash-buckling boldness, and that’s because the players are kids and they’ve never competed at this level before. Every game is a learning experience. If it makes people feel any better, Spurs were dreadful against Leicester for the same reasons, despite having a far more experienced team and manager.

That doesn’t mean we deserved to come away with anything less than the three points. I know there are some misery guts saying we’ve been lucky of late, but if xG is your standard for gauging luck, we haven’t lost a game via that metric since Palace.  The xG for West Ham was 0.45 to our 0.96.

David Moyes, Arteta’s footballing father (Scottish Darth Vader), oddly decided he needed to get one over his protege. Brendan Rodgers rested all his best players against Spurs, Moyesy, for some fucking weird reason, decided he’d put all his stars out.

That was a big curveball, I don’t think many managers would have been that shortsighted, but Moyesy rolled the dice on ‘unpredictable’ and certainly showed the game the respect it deserved. That put us in a bit of a spin early on, I don’t think our players knew what to make of the plan, so our response was to be careful away from home and ease our way into the match.

We broke the deadlock, Bob ‘with the beautiful hair’ Holding banged home a Saka corner like a KING. Most fans worried we’d do something stupid within 5 minutes, because that’s happened in the prior two games, and sure enough we did. Declan Rice found Coufal in so much space, the Czech pulled the ball down, moved into the box and found Bowen who scored a lucky deflection off Gabriel’s leg.

I think every Arsenal fan was catastrophizing at that moment, we’ve all forgotten what it’s like to compete, and we all think every bad moment needs to be followed by another.

Well, that didn’t happen. Arteta had some big words at halftime, our players came out for the second emboldened. Xhaka kicked up a gear, Martinelli got more involved, and Odegaard started pulling strings. Our goal came in the second phase of a corner, Martinelli picked out Gabriel at the back post and the finish was most excellent.

After that, it was basically no drama. Moyes didn’t have an answer, he didn’t seem to mind that his team looked leggy, not even Antonio could impact the game.

In fact, I can barely remember a second-half chance that West Ham had?

Arsenal were organised, calm, and good defensively. Can you remember us being able to do that under late-stage Wenger or Unai Emery? Of course you can’t. We are more mature than most of those teams with an average age of 23.

Eddie really stepped up in my opinion. I know I’ve been his personal PR agent over the last 5 months, but I still feel the need to clear some items up.

He’s 22, he’s on his 4th start in a row, and he’s been brilliant.

Yesterday, he had 6 shots, 4 hit the target. He gave us 8 ball recoveries. His running was relentless, he was strong on the ball, his link play was really positive, and he absolutely rattled the whole West Ham squad at the end of the game.

This ‘suspect finishing’ nonsense is ridiculous. This is his 4th start in a row for Arsenal, he’s never done that in the Premier League. I’m astonished at how short so many memories are! Adebayor was a disaster in front of goal after 40 starts. Dennis Bergkamp was a slow starter. Thierry took 12 games to get going. Freddie was SHOCKING at finishing for his first season. No one even understood what Bobby Pires was about for a year.

… but we have ‘certified Gooners’, who should know better, writing off 22-year-olds as finishers after their 4th start in row for the first time ever?

Please…

Do you want some stats? Tell me how many 23< forwards there are in the Premier League top 50 scorers lists (for forwards)

There’s just two.

Broja: 6 goals

Cucho: 5 goals

I’m not sure we can count Kai Havertz who plays there because Lukaku gave up on sport.

So what have we learned via these stats?

Gabi (5), Odegaard (6), ESR (10), Saka (11) are doing an incredible job in the grand scheme of the league.

We also know that Eddie isn’t supposed to be baked at 22 and if he can score 2 against Chelsea, have one disallowed against United, and have 6 shots with 4 on target against WHU inside his longest run of 4 straight starts: there might be something worth keeping.

Eddie was one of the best players on the pitch yesterday. If we don’t sign him, we will, without doubt, regret the disrespect we have shown his talent profile. He’s missing chances, which is part of the process of all rising talents. Lacazette wasn’t even in a position to miss. If history is predictive, I’d say the record-breaking England U21 goal scorer likely has a good chance of eventually converting those chances. Thierry was a record-breaking kid striker for Monaco, he moved to the left because of striker congestion, he lost his goalscoring edge at Juve, then Wenger rekindled it. If you read that post, took offence, and are halfway through tweeting me ‘YOU SAID EDDIE WAS THIERRY-LEVELS’ then we cannot converse

(note that Eddie’s rise coincides with a shit Arsenal spending £120m on Auba and Laca)

Other notable performances?

Bob Holding was sensational. He has too much hair now IMO, but it makes him powerful, so I CANNOT ignore it. I love that he’s just slipped into the side and done a massive job in a huge game.

Xhaka and Big Mo showed they can handle the midfield without Thomas Partey. The first half was a bit crabbish, but Granit stepped into the second half with way more force. Another great game against a tough team. Also… I’m a HUGE fan of the verticality Big Mo has found. Superb stuff.

Martin Odegaard kept things calm, he never stopped, even if he was a little understated.

… but the real MVP was certainly Tomiyasu. Can you believe we’ve survived so long without him? He’s strong, aggressive, technically brilliant, and so mature for a person so young. He went off with what I suspect was a little cramp.

Same as Bukayo, who landed another assist, taking him into the top 10 for g/a this season. What a starboy. He’s so consistently good these days, it’s hard to find new things to write about him. How hasn’t he landed a player of the month award?

So where are we now in the fight for top 4?

Spurs has to go to Anfield, against a team fighting for the league, and take 3 points.

If they don’t deliver, there’s a chance we could beat Leeds and be 5 points clear of them by the time we play the NLD.

That would be delicious.

If Arsenal could avoid a loss, Spurs has to go to Burnley at home for an early kick-off that Sunday, something any footballer will tell you is the worst combo in the game. I would fancy Burnley in a deep block, especially as they are in survival mode.

The Champions League is important to Arsenal, but far more consequential for Spurs than it is for us.

Antonio Conte will likely stay with Spurs this summer, we need that, we don’t want Poch back there galvanising their messy squad. The Italian will be far more awful for Spurs if they finish 5th. They won’t get the luck of having Kane and Son fit all next season, there will be limited money, and those massive stadium debts will look bigger. Keeping Spurs out of the CL will speed up the crash that’s coming their way.

Arsenal?

Well, CL would speed up our progress massively.

Our young players will start pumping their Arsenal XP. They will learn what it feels like to succeed, they will start getting their winner’s teeth, so tough games will become more formulaic next season.

We’ll have more money to spend on players this summer, so instead of two big buys, we might land 4.

Top 4 this season also means our best players are more likely to commit to the project and it makes it easier to lure continental talent this summer.

Remember though, we’re still not at the cherry-on-top phase, this summer is still a stepping stone window, so don’t expect £200m expenditure. But think about the job to be done and how clear it is:

• Sign a midfielder as good as Partey so we have depth if he gets injured
• Sign a beast striker that can give us an added dimension in the final third

Just those two players alone would have made us a top 3 team this season. Next season, those two players alone could make us a guaranteed top 4 team so we can go big the season after.

Football is a long-term process in 2022. All the frauds that told you there were easy fixes out there have all been proved wrong because none of those fixes are ahead of what we’re doing.

Ralf? He says it’ll take 6 years to fix United

Conte? He’s 2 points behind Arsenal and his tactical genius is basically ‘give it to Kane’

Jose? He’s pumping Roma in a tournament so pony, I forget it exists

Brendan? Remember all the folk that said they were a preferable option to Arsenal last summer? Where are you now?

Arsenal is in good shape, we’ve done the hard work, and even if we don’t deliver on the stretch goal this season, we are still set for a blistering future.

• Arteta will get better next season
• Our young players will naturally improve
• The team will start to develop winning habits

Let’s focus on what’s ahead of us, we can make 4th this season, to do that, we have to deliver against Leeds.

One Cup Final at a time.

Now listen to the latest Arsenal Opinion Podcast.