It’s perhaps a little hasty to say that the Gunners are back with a strong chance of winning the Premier League, merely because they raised their game to beat Manchester United. After all, Arsene Wenger’s team have had by far the easiest start to the season fixture-wise, although they have still managed to drop enough points to mean they are playing catch-up with the front runners.

Sky Sports reports that their French manager is expecting a closely fought title race this season, although whether Arsenal will be included in this remains to be seen. While the North London club always seem to fare well against other ‘Big Four’ teams, it’s beating some of the lesser, but more physical, opponents that seems to cause problems.

“It could be tighter than everybody expected it to be because the teams in the second part of the league have improved,” he said.

“To go away and win at Stoke, at Blackburn, at Bolton, at Wigan, it’s difficult, more difficult maybe than 10 years ago.

“And to deal with the Champions League and all these games is very difficult.”

While Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool can afford to rotate the team to deal with challenging on multiple fronts, Arsenal are desperately short of numbers and might struggle if the injury count continues to be so high. It was testament to the manager that they managed to win the match without Adebayor and Van Persie, although the jury is still out on the Gunners when it comes to testing away matches. Who is going to win the Premier League this season?