1 - There's now nothing to fear about October...

Back in June when the Premier League fixtures were released it wasn't just Halloween to be scared of this month. Fixtures at home to Tottenham, Liverpool and Manchester City loomed large. Enough for any pundits, and some more realistic Gooners, to not get carried away with our early season form.

To win the first of those fixtures so emphatically yesterday lays down a huge marker and also means we control the media narrative. After our unfortunate defeat at Old Trafford, it would have been easy for the usual outlets to say "they still can't perform in the big games" if we hadn't won on Saturday afternoon. But we didn't just win the game we were completely dominant (see point 2).

The sad passing of The Queen led to events which have now moved the Manchester City game, Liverpool are bang out of form and probably fear coming to us next week more than we fear them. October is suddenly looking like a month to embrace with nothing to fear.

2 - We can now dominate in big games...

Don't let any Tottenham fans tell you that the red card changed Saturday's game. I'd actually go as far to say that even though it was an identical scoreline to last season we actually showed a far more dominant streak throughout the game. One thing levelled at the 2020/21 version of Arteta's Arsenal was that they rarely put two good halves together. It's difficult for even the best teams in the world to control a game for the full duration.

Yesterday we only had one low performance period of ten minutes, the five minutes either side of Tottenham's goal, where we looked off the pace. To therefore control a derby for 80+ minutes as we did is a huge achievement. A lot of that was down to an incredible collective midfield performance (see point 3). No luck involved it was a completely deserved victory.

3 - We saw one of the best Arsenal midfield performances in recent times..

.Those of us fortunate enough to be attending Arsenal matches when Vieira and Petit were running things in our midfield would have had a nostalgic glimpse of the past yesterday. Granit Xhaka and Thomas Partey were key to everything in winning this game, and I'm not even talking about their goals. Xhaka's trust in Partey to do the hard work in behind unlocks another level to his game.

Let's also give praise to the boss, who scouted Kane's 'drop deep and spin the ball into the channels' by having Partey touch-tight to him every time he ventured into the middle third. So much so that Tottenham had to resort to using Son as that outlet, when it was clear that the England striker wasn't getting his own way. On the rare occasions he did get beyond our midfield he was expertly martialled by the incredible William Saliba.

Let's hope we scout and deal with Mohammed Salah with the same effeciancy next week.