The sights walking around a balmy Birmingham this morning - beer gardens full, shorts (prematurely) summoned from the depths of drawers for the first time in months - gave this fixture the aesthetic backdrop of an early-season August encounter.
But this is the business end, next week’s international break the last staging post before the run-in gets underway in earnest, and after the midweek defeat to Liverpool that ended a streak of five straight wins, it was crucial that Arsenal hit back immediately.
