All Hail Leandro Trois-sard!

Well, that escalated quickly. Before the match, Leandro Trossard was a doubt, facing a late fitness test after also having missed the trip to Lisbon. Fast forward about 45 minutes from kickoff, and Trossard had notched tree assists and was unlucky not have more but for some wasteful finishing from his mates. He probably should have had a goal or two to his name, but let's not be churlish. Thanks in large part to his false-nining his way about the pitch, Fulham were thoroughly discombobulated to the point that Martin Ødegaard had time to take four touches in the box on his way to scoring our third goal of the half. This made Trossard the first player in Prem history to get a hat trick of asissts in the first half of an away game.

Bookings and hand-balls and shirt-tugs, oh my!

Well, that was anticlimactic. What was billed as a titanic clash between heavyweight contenders for the Prem title fizzled into a dour draw. Fair play to Newcastle, though. All they had to do as the visiting underdog was not lose, and not lose is what they did. Despite our keeping a mammoth 63% possession and creating any number of gilt-edged chances, we couldn't penetrate this immovable object. In that sense, Newcastle came away the victors if not actually victorious, the draw doing more to validate their ascension than it did to coronate our campaign. Still, at the risk of sucking on some sour grapes, I have some griping to do, and griping is perhaps what I do best. Let's get to it.

Arsenal 3-0 Lyon—Highlights!

Arteta named the strongest side he could from the players available, and they absolutely battered Lyon 3-0 through goals from Big Gabi, Nketiah, and Vieira. Arteta basically replaced the entire outfield with youngsters, and they still ran Lyon ragged. It could have been 6-0, but the woodwork did a better job of keeping us from scoring than did their keeper, to be honest, and our own Karl Hein turned away four of the five end-of-match pens to secure that fourth point. Anyway, not a lot to analyse here, just some good clean fun.

Diego Costa: Coward. Yeah, I said it. Come and get me.

The thing about bullies is that they usually shrivel up and blow away once you stand up to him. Usually.  It's what that in mind that we travel back in time to what was going through what passes for Diego Costa's mind when he head-butted Ben Mee in stoppage time of Wolves' 1-1 draw with Brentfod, earning himself a three-match suspension, a suspension that coincides nicely with Saturday's match against Arsenal. In the pseudo-sentient tapioca that swirls around between those ears, somewhere there arose the realisation for Costa that he wouldn't be facing Gabriel Paulista; he'd be facing Gabriel Magalhães—and that tapioca decided to get sent off rather than get embarrassed for however long he'd have lasted against us on Saturday.

Chelsea 0-1 Arsenal—Vote for Player Ratings & MOTM!

We're back on top. That's three consecutive wins at Stamford Bridge. Three consecutive wins over "big six" opponents. According to Granit Xhaka, the atmosphere was ducking unbelievable...or something. We dominated most of the match but had to wait for Big Gabi to poke home Saka's corner (which may have been going in anyway). From there, we had to hold on tenaciously, which was made more difficult by all the holding and kicking and fouling Chelsea resorted to and largely got away with. Michael Oliver and VAR waved off a pretty blatant handball from Cucurella, who extended his arm to deflect the all as he entered the area, but in the end we didn't need the penalty to take all three and re-claim our position at the top of the table for another week. We'll revisit the match in more detail later. For now, let's get to the post-match poll and rate the lads!  Click here to open the poll; a results-graphic will be made available tomorrow.

Arsenal 3-0 Southampton: Vote for Player Ratings & MOTM!

After a tetchy opening fifteen minutes in which Southampton looked the brighter side narrowly kept at bay by Ramsdale, Arsenal finally took this match by the scruff through goals from Lacazette, Ødegaard, and Gabriel. It's a welcome return to winning ways after two disappoint away losses in which we looked likely to win. It's only the third time we've scored more than two goals in the Prem, and to so while keeping a clean sheet makes for a tidy improvement to our goal difference. It's still negative, but don't let that get you down. Off the pitch, the big pre-match news was the exclusion of Aubameyang due to after returning late from an approved trip. which inspired a good deal of tongue-clucking and beard-stroking. We may have to revisit that later, but for now, let's get down to the post-match poll!