Three Things We Learned This Week as Arsenal vs Manchester United looms

Here's Ian Mills with his regular series Three Things We Learned before Arsenal host Manchester United at the Emirates 

Credit must go to the club for the work put into the squad last summer which sees us with our strongest squad in living memory, a seven point lead in the Premier League, a guaranteed final position in the top two teams in the Champions League table after seven successive victories, into the FA Cup fifth round and with a lead going into the Carabao Cup semi-final second leg.

Mikel Arteta's side are in a great position, however, the mantra must continue to be ‘one game at a time’.

This season could well turn out to be one of the greatest ever yet the hard work to achieve our goals must continue on Sunday for the visit of Manchester United.

Here are three things that stood out this week ahead of Sunday's big Premier League clash at the Emirates, after the Gunners made history with a seventh straight win in our Champions League campaign, following a brilliant display at the San Siro.

1 - Jesus has risen:

– Gabriel Jesus’ impressive performance here not only won him the Man of the Match award from UEFA, he has almost certainly played himself into a starting berth for the tricky fixture at home to Manchester United this weekend.

He played something akin to his early days at the club, buzzing around upfront, linking play well and always on the front foot. He scored his first when he diverted Jurrien Timber’s scuffed shot past Yann Sommer to open the scoring after just ten minutes.

He added his second when Leandro Trossard headed Bukayo’s Saka corner across goal, via the crossbar and onto the Brazilian’s head. He made way for Viktor Gyokeres on seventy-five minutes and the Swede took only nine minutes to also get on the scoresheet when he latched onto Gabi Martinelli’s superb pass and after a fortunate assist via Saka, he struck from long range and hit the top corner of the net. Sommer might have done better yet Gyokeres will not be overly concerned on that, I am sure.

Jesus spoke warmly afterwards in praise of Gyokeres and how pleased he was to see him score – a sure sign that the team spirit is firmly in a good place despite Mikel Arteta juggling such a large and talented squad.

Hopefully, Kai Havertz’s long awaited return will come to pass in our final game in the ‘League’ stage versus Kairat, who find themselves rock bottom whilst we are top.

2 - A night of records:

– Arsenal's San Siro win ensured several records were broken.

We became the first English side to win an away game in four different competitions within the same month – Premier League (Bournemouth) Champions League (Inter) F A Cup (Portsmouth) Carabao Cup (Chelsea). We are just the second ever team to win seven consecutive European Cup/Champions League games by a two+ goal margin.

The other team to achieve this was Bayern Munich en route to winning the trophy in the 2019-20 season.

The victory also ensured that we finish in the top two in the League stage thereby securing home advantage in the second leg for all remaining rounds of the competition.

3 - A quiet January window in stark contrast to a year ago: 

– twelve months ago we made one bid of £40m to Aston Villa for Ollie Watkins and when they insisted his price was £60m, we walked away from any potential deal and that summed up our incoming business when we were clearly short in a couple of key areas.