Ten wins out of 11 games. It was a statistic Mikel Arteta stressed twice in his six-minute post-match press conference after Arsenal’s eye-gougingly dull 1-0 win over Nottingham Forest at the City Ground, like a man who’d been rehearsing lines in the mirror.
He is right, of course, although if we’re being picky, one of those was the Community Shield, which isn’t a real competition, and another was the Carabao Cup. One game was on the first day of the season at home to newly promoted Coventry, and of the remaining eight games – one of which was that chastening 3-0 defeat at Brighton – it is hard to pick one in which Arteta’s team were truly impressive.
