West Ham were made to wait until the dying embers of last season, to a home clash with Manchester United in May, to pick up their first win of the year over a ‘Big Six’ club - their first, in fact, across the course of that entire campaign.
Then, victory over Erik ten Hag’s side all-but assured survival, but heading into 2024, the Hammers have loftier ambitions, thanks in large part to the rediscovery of their ability to feast at the top table.
The latest example of it came here at the Emirates, a 2-0 victory David Moyes’s first ever away to Arsenal, after 22 previous failed attempts. It sent his side back into the top six and added the Gunners to a list of Premier League scalps that already includes Chelsea, Tottenham and Manchester United this term.
That is four League victories from six matches against the traditional - if not contemporary - cream of the crop, not forgetting that it was Moyes’s side, too, who knocked the Gunners out of the Carabao Cup. Brighton have also been dispatched and Newcastle held to a draw.
Perhaps it is the confidence delivered by last season’s silverware, perhaps the knowledge that in Jarrod Bowen, Lucas Paqueta and Mohammed Kudus, they have a forward line to rival any of the division’s elite.
But after last season’s relegation scrap, the Hammers are back revelling in their role as disrupters, picking up points in the matches that will surely prove vital with so many teams vying for European places. Perhaps for the first time in 18 months, you feel the Irons’s route to another season in continental competition need not rely on winning one.
Here, they had to overcome notable setbacks, forced to start without first-choice centre-back pair Nayef Aguerd and Kurt Zouma due to illness and injury, and then losing Paqueta midway through the first half after he had struggled in the warm-up.
By then, though, the visitors led, Tomas Soucek smashing in from close range after Bowen had at least kept the ball close enough to in play to ensure there could be no VAR overrule.
After the break, as Arsenal threatened to rally, up popped Konstantinos Mavropanos, part of a makeshift defence, with his first Hammers goal at the home of his former club.
For all the recent raving over their star forward trio, though, West Ham’s triumph here owed everything to their midfield three.
Soucek scored, James Ward-Prowse delivered a trademark corner for the second, but both were even more influential without the ball, relentless workers who ensured that for all Arsenal’s possession, gaps were few and far between. Edson Alvarez was even better, the player of the match as he faced up to Declan Rice, the man he was bought to replace, and came out firmly on top.
And special praise, too, must go to Angelo Ogbonna and Mavropanos, one defender who has looked past it at the level and another still new to it and yet to convince he belongs. True, Gabriel Jesus twice escaped to squander free headers, but otherwise the pair stood up manfully in Moyes’s hour of need.
At full-time here, the away end responded with a chant of their manager’s name louder than any heard since Prague in June.
“I've always wanted to be a team who can give the top teams a game,” the Scot had said after his team toppled Manchester United to ensure the merriest of Christmases on Saturday. “We've given them some really good games.”
Here, they did more than that, so much so that Said Benrahma’s stoppage-time penalty miss could hardly have mattered less.
