The morning after the night before, the performance of the kids against Wigan seemed even more extraordinary than it did at the time.

Wigan’s team was pretty much their first choice and they were clueless for the most part. Had Vela shot first time with his first early chance and Kirkland not made a couple of stunning saves, it could have been 3 or 4 by half time.

Song was a little overconfident (sloppy even on occasion), Ramsey and Randall both tried backheels which were unnecessary and let a couple of passes go astray, and Wilshere’s touch occasionally looks a bit heavy; sometimes, when he receives the ball it can seem to bounce away a little too far and against better players he may not get so much recovery time. But all that is being a little churlish, even by my hyper-critical standards.

Overall it is hard to fault any of them. They won’t all make it at Arsenal of course, but I’d have any one of them in the team against Villa on Saturday; in fact I’d have Djourou, Gibbs, Ramsey and Vela in the starting 11. That won’t happen I am sure, but one day it would be so nice to see Arsene give these young players a chance in the Premiership.

The sublime Vela apart, for me the best players on the night were Gibbs and Simpson; Gibbs will, I am sure, be a better understudy to Clichy than Traore, but Simpson will, I fear, have no more than a few appearances and then move on. How can he get past Adebayor, RVP, Eduardo, Bendtner, Vela and Walcott? Or maybe Arsene will decide he can really play two XIs next year?