Every now and again you get a weird day in Premier League land. Arsenal and West Ham channelling the spirit of Ange Postecoglou in the first half at London Stadium was a case in point.
Seven goals in the first period is extraordinary but wasn’t it fantastic to see those tactically astute but sometimes admittedly slightly boring systems and styles being torn up and ignored – for 45 minutes anyway.
It was one of those days when you can score a ‘worldie’, as Emerson did from a free-kick, and it gets swallowed up and quickly forgotten amid the rest of the mayhem.
Clearly Mikel Arteta had enough of that nonsense by half-time and made sure his team were back on a more sober message in the second half. We can’t have the players having that much free-styling fun!
It did underline that Arsenal – when on form and with Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka not just hand in glove but clearly cheating by using telepathy – are a force to be reckoned with.
West Ham were extremely well organised against Newcastle earlier in the week, so I am willing to accept that those five goals in 45 minutes from Arsenal were more about their brilliance than the Hammers’ inadequacy.
The Gunners are clearly the biggest threat to Liverpool this season and they only have to travel outside London once in their next 12 games. This is a huge help when squads are always being stressed to the max over the festive period particularly.
Their next league game is against Manchester United on Wednesday (20:15 GMT) at the Emirates, which will be a true measure of where both clubs currently are.
I suspect it might be just a bit early for Ruben Amorim’s new United project.
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