The 3-0 victory over Manchester City felt like a huge result for many reasons. It can sometimes seem as though Arsenal are written off for the league title more than any other top club due to their capacity to fuse brilliance against most teams with frustration against the very best. Arsène Wenger's men have excelled in building up expectations only to scythe them down.
But here appeared to be the cold, hard evidence of a team ready to turn the corner. A title challenge had surely been ignited and Arsenal's players could have been expected to thump the tub. For a start the north London club have got out of the way their fixtures at Chelsea, City and, for what it is worth, Liverpool.
They sit second in the table, five points behind Chelsea, and they have players returning from injury and others running into form. The midfielder Samir Nasri, whose goal at City was his seventh of the season, has never been in better touch and even Lukasz Fabianski is threatening to become the goalkeeper that Wenger has always said he would be.
This is where Cesc Fábregas comes in. The captain, also outstanding at Eastlands, is not the cheeriest post-match interviewee but even by his standards this was downbeat. If the result had been difficult to read due to the City defender Dedryck Boyata's red card within five minutes, then the same was true of Fábregas, who looked closer to irritation than happiness.
"It looks like after every win you have to say, 'Oh, we are mature, we are more than last year, we are more than that,' but no, it's just one more game," he said. "Let's not get carried away. We just want to play the game against Newcastle now [in the Carling Cup ], which is the most important one at the moment and that's it.
"The time to talk about if you have matured or if you are better than last year is at the end of the season."
Fábregas sounded as though he was fed up with the knee-jerk reactions to victory or defeat or, frankly, just fed up. "You know how it is, you know football," he said. "You know what people will say when you win; you know what people will say when you lose. You just have to keep focused on what you do, which is playing football. Our focus is on every training session, every match and just giving everything for the team; and the rest, it's not up to you."
The captain was asked whether he felt that the team was gelling under his leadership? "We will see," he replied. "It does not matter who the captain is. We have to make of this good team, a great team by winning things."
It has been well documented that Fábregas wanted to leave for Barcelona in the summer and what Arsenal fans are seeing now is the arch-professional, a player putting his personal feelings to one side to give his all for the club until the last breath of the season. Yet a by-product of the intense focus and brutal realism is a certain touchiness. Fábregas's day job is feeling like one.
The cynics say that any team that loses at home to West Brom, as Arsenal did last month, cannot be crowned as champions. Chelsea beat West Brom 6-0 at Stamford Bridge. But if Fábregas was reluctant to look further ahead than the next game, Wenger did take the broader view, saying that "we look like we have matured", and recognising the importance of getting "a win in a big place to strengthen the belief of the squad and continue our march forward".
The big bonus for him at present is arguably Fabianski. With Manuel Almunia not only injured but also out of favour, Wenger needed Fabianski to raise his game and the Poland international has done exactly that. It is highly debatable whether Almunia will replace Fabianski once he has recovered fully from his elbow problem.
"Sometimes in our job you have to be steady and fight against opinions," Wenger said. "From game to game Fabianski shows what we see in training. At the moment, looking at his performances, you can absolutely not fault him at all."
Fabianski sounded the upbeat note from the dressing-room. "Now we are second and in touch with Chelsea," he said. "Within the team there was always big belief but it was still important to win a major game like this."
Source: David Hytner, The Guardian on 25 Oct 10
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