Viktor is spot on as we claim a crucial three points to record a Christmas Number One

Viktor is spot on as Arsenal claim crucial three points to record Christmas Number One ahead of Palace's Carabao Cup clash 

Here's Ian Mills three things we learned after Arsenal beat Everton 1-0 as Crystal Palace loom in the Carabao Cup.

1 - Viktor’s penalty prowess:

– After an underwhelming start to the game, Jake O’brien’s moment of madness in handling a corner, moments after our Swedish striker had taken a tumble from the same player when, had he stayed on his feet he surely would have had a simple header to open the scoring – gifted us a chance to take the lead.

Without a goal since the 2-0 win at Burnley on November 1, it was something of a surprise to see Martin Odegaard hand the responsibility to Gyokeres.

While there remain questions marks over certain parts of the former Sporting Lisbon hitman’s general play, one area in which he does excel is his tremendous ability from 12 yards.

His emphatic penalty seemed to have more than a little of an air of frustration about it – he has now scored from his last 19 penalties for Sporting and Arsenal.

It will do his confidence no harm at all, the more so given this proved to be the winner.

2 - Declan and Bukayo driving the team forward:

– both of our England Internationals are playing leading roles in the side as part of Mikel Arteta’s leadership group, and both have a sense of pain from very recent near misses for both club and country as they look to end Arsenal’s five year trophy drought.

Declan Rice is seemingly everywhere in midfield and is battling for every ball whilst our Starboy remains a consistent supplier of goalscoring opportunities and was unlucky here to see his effort cleared off the line.

We will need them to continue this form and ensure their teammates produce something akin to it if we are to finish this campaign with some much-needed silverware.

I believe this squad is good enough to finally win the big trophies – now is the time to deliver.

3 - Test of character passed as City briefly reigned supreme:

– as with any Title race sometimes the fixtures look in your favour and other times they do not. The previous weekend saw us with the easier fixture albeit we really struggled to beat Wolves to temporarily stretch our lead to five points before City crushed Crystal Palace the next day.

Fast forward seven days and City faced struggling West Ham at 3pm and, as expected won comfortably to move top of the League table by a single point.

Facing Everton away at a raucous Hill Dickinson stadium in an 8pm kick off live on TNT it felt like a game where we needed to lay down a marker and respond. While it was not pretty, we got the job done and in truth should have won more comfortably as both Leandro Trossard and Martin Zubmendi seeing second half efforts hit the woodwork.

Attention now turns to a tricky Carabao Cup Quarter Final at home to Palace.

Mikel Arteta is sure to shuffle his pack for this one however we should still be able to field a side good enough to advance to the semi-finals.