As always, you can view this and almost-daily Arsenal posts at woolwich1886.com. Enjoy!

All is right in the universe. The Great Chain of Being, after weeks of chaos, decay, and upheavel, has at long last been restored, long may it persevere. Yes, Arsenal are top of the table, and would-be foes such as Tottenham, Man U, and Chelsea are squabbling for the crumbs that we deign to let fall from said table. I am completely and utterly confident that nothing will change the current status quo. When has it ever? Well, enough dithering and throat-clearing. Let’s get to the round-up.

Arsenal (9W 3D 1L: 30 pts.)
It wasn’t pretty, and there were altoghether too many moments when it almost got ugly. In the end, though, we escaped Brentford with all three points. Just when it looked liked we’ve have to settle for a scoreless draw. it was none other than Kai Havertz who finally flickered to something resembling life, nodding home a Saka cross at the far post, megging Flekken in the process. Yes, he’d scored before, a relatively innocuous penalty against cellaar-dwelling Bournemouth were already put to the sword. This one, a crucial goal against a somewhat-more determined opponent, truly earned us the three points and sent us top. Let’s hope that muzzles at least a few critics and gets the kid’s season to kick on.

Man CIty (9W 2D 2L: 29 pts.)
Guardiola, perhaps betraying a sense of nervousness if not fear, had to be warned to return to the technical area and was even seen exhorting the Etihad for more noise as Man City laboured against a Liverpool side many have pegged as the favourites to overtake them. Hm. It was an uncharacteristically histrionic display from a manager so accustomed to success that he probably simply expects it the way most of us expect spam email. He probably accepts it with similar levels of excitement. That Man City have suffered two consecutive draws just a month after suffering three losses (across two domestic competitions) has to be at least a little alarming. Of course, we know that the monolith will at some point begin its remorseless, mirthless march towards the title. Are there enough cracks for someone (namely the Arsenal) to slip through?

Liverpool (8W 4D 1L: 28 pts.)
Journos and pundits and other dunces by other names have annointed Liverpool as the odds-on favourites to finally displace Man City from their perch, and this draw does suggest that they can at least go toe-to-toe with the behemoth. However, one has to ask whether Liverpool’s anointment has more to do with recency bias than with actual evidence. In another universe, they’d have won the Prem several times in the last six years. By contrast, we’ve languished outside the top four—but, between the two of us, is it really that clear that Liverpool are better? Yes, they’ve emerged from the Etihad with a point; we’ve hosted Man City and won. Their antics late on suggested that they were content with the draw when a win would have not only nabbed all three points; it would have given the squad a massive psychological boost. More’s the pity, I guess…

Aston Villa (9W 1D 3L: 28 pts.)
Does this mean that we at the Arsenal will have to swallow some pride or eat some crow or some other idiom if Emery and Martinez lead the Villans into the top four at Tottenham’s expense? By rights, Villa should have gone into halftime trailing 5-0 but for wasteful finishing from Tottenham. Instead, the halftime scoreline was 1-1. The early talk was of how much more ground they’d covered…which turned to talk of heavy legs and fatigue as Villa started to run rampant in the second half. Yes, it’s worth remembering that Tottenham were without the services of no less than 10 players, but they’ve now lost three in a row despite taking the lead in each one. After disrupting that Great Chain of Being early on, they seem to have reverted to de history of de Tottenham.

Elsewhere, Tottenham have become just the fourth side in Prem history to lose three matches in a row after taking the lead. Spursy. Man U somehow managed to thrash an Everton side so hapless that they’re lucky not to have negative points. Garnacho scored the kind of wundergoal that both suggests he’s better than Saka and that he’ll never score that kind of goal ever again. Chelsea imploded at St. James’s Park, which just might suggest that they might still be quite a bit more fragile than their “brave” 4-4 draw against Man City before the international break offered, and Newcastle are still chasing ghosts, perhaps hoping to crash out of the Champions League in order to focus on domestic options.

Well, that just about does it. We’ve come a long way from the days when I had to go five or even six sides deep to include the almighty Arsenal. Our current position is almost certainly temporary; we know all too well how false it is to occupy the catbird’s seat at this early stage. Still lots and lots of football to be played, after all. Still, let’s enjoy it while it lasts. Our lads learned a lot from last season’s supposed “bottle job,” and I’m sure they’ll be applying those lessons to this season.