Now, that’s more like it. None of this allowing the Dutch to come back from the brink bullshit. It’s just a joy to watch this team when they’re clicking and really having a good time out there. Am I right? Honestly, what team would stand before them when they’re playing like this? Not many. Not very many.

It started pretty soon into the match when Robin van Persie let loose a wicked curling shot to the far post. Romero did well to get a few fingerprints on it to turn it wide, because it was headed for net. Shot fired, across bow. At 25′ Cesc Fabregas did a little dancing just outside the area, trying to shake off defenders. He let fire into the bottom left corner to put us up 1-0. In real time it appeared to be goalkeeper error, but on replay you could see that Cesc was simply waiting to fire his shot once the keepers view was obstructed a bit. This gave him the slight jump on getting the ball moving and delayed Romero’s reaction time. Another quarter second would have seen him palm the ball away. Gorgeous. Does anyone know what Cesc was yelling about after the goal? Instead of celebrating, he seemed a bit pissed. I can’t tell who he was yelling at, though. Romero?

Just before the half, Samir Nasri pulled an excellent move on one of the AZ defenders which simply caused him to fall down without even being touched. From this day forth, I dub that “being Nasried.”  This little move gave Samir the room he needed to step forward and bury our second goal, 2-0. It’s really great seeing him back and in fine form. Can you imagine how much better our start would have been with him available? We went into the tunnel feeling pretty in control of the match. True, we’ve let those sort of leads slide recently, but this one never felt like that was going to happen.

Back on the pitch at 52′, Diaby steals a pass, pops it up to Andrey Arshavin (quite the goal creator lately) who drops the perfect pass in front of the onrushing Fabregas and it’s 3-0. Twenty minutes later, Eduardo Da Silva on for RvP,  gets the ball in the center circle, whacks a vicious back heel to get the ball up to Andrey who wisely dumps for Abou Diaby and we’re at 4-0 and looking to put this one entirely to bed.

There was a bit of a defensive lapse at 82′ which saw us lose our clean sheet, but we deserved it for going to sleep a bit. Apart from that, there is simply nothing negative to say about the way this Arsenal side have performed. Spell binding football. I’d really hate to be Wolves after watching that last night. If we show up at Molineux Stadium in this sort of mood Saturday, they’ve really got their work cut out for them.

There’s not much of a better feeling in the world than to soundly dispatch the hated Pond Life, is there? Well, I can think of a few unrelated to football, but not many.

For 42 minutes, I really had a bad feeling about the way the match was going. Although they didn’t seem to threaten much, Spurs seemed to be enjoying their ability to break up our fluid passing game. But the memo they didn’t get, is that this season, unlike seasons past… we don’t always need to have our passing game on full click to be dangerous. And finally, at 42′… Bacary Sagna put in a low cross from the right and Robin van Persie used his catlike agility to step alongside the defense and right foot it home for our first. It felt great, but I felt we needed more to settle my nerves, especially after the 4-4 fiasco of last season.

Our Captain must have been thinking along the same lines, because they still hadn’t finished showing highlights of Robin’s goal when the announcer burst in with “And, here’s Fabregas!…” and they cut back to live action just in time to see Cesc Fabregas striding across the edge of the area with two Spud defenders closing in, but too late… he slotted home neatly into the bottom left. 2-0! Two goals in 50 seconds! The replay showed that seconds after the restart, there was a mistimed pass by Tottenham which caromed off one of our players when Cesc picked it up and danced around two of the opposition before letting fire. How good does he feel today? His first North London Derby as Arsenal Captain, and he simply eviscerated the entire Tottenham side to score on a solo effort. Now that’s what I call sticking it to them. Way to go, Cesc!

And, as great as it felt to go into the tunnel up 2-0, I still felt we needed more. I hate to admit it, but this Tottenham side is playing better than the one that we drew with last season at home. We couldn’t let them get a toehold. We needed at least one more to end it. Preferably two. And that’s just what happened at 60′ after a bit of confusion as we moved up the right side. The touchline official called for a foul, gesticulating wildly, which made both offense and defense take pause. But when it was clear the ref was not stopping and to play the advantage, Bacary & Robin repeated their efforts of 20′ earlier by crossing in and Robin tapping it home for our third. How that ball got through not only Gomes, but a Spud defender, I’ll never know. But Robin was waiting on the other side to finish the match off. A brace for the Flying Dutchman!

Great match and a great effort by the Arsenal. This is the sort of thing I love to see from them. When it looks like things aren’t quite going their way, they still dig deep and find a way to go forward and win. And in such an important match for us. We sit soundly in third place in the league, still with a game in hand. Assuming we get three points from that match, that puts us in second by goal differential, and only two points off the leaders. I haven’t checked yet, and I know we’re the highest scoring team in the league so far, but we must be breaking some records with this per game goal average. We’re positively free-scoring now. If we can put a nice string of clean sheets together too, we’ll be in fat city.

COME ON YOU GUNNERS!