Good Form

Is the current Arsenal team our best for years? No, of course it isn't but I can't remember the last time our form was this good. This could have more to do with the in and out nature of my brain but we seem to be winning a lot recently. We're not playing as spectacularly as we have in the past but we're at our most cohesive as a unit possibly since 2007/8. Obviously I would take Fabregas back in a shot but when he was in midfield we didn't have the balance we do now. There is a calmness to our play that is completely at odds with the gung-ho, attack-at-all costs mentality we've seen in recent years, there is dare I say it a maturity to our play. Now this is probably because our players are a bit more mature. On Saturday our least experienced players were Szczesny and Ramsey. Both established internationals, one of them the captain of his country. Our team is finally coming of age.

You would think then that we'd be pretty confident going into tomorrow's game against Dortmund, the 4th seeds for our group, but despite the results on the pitch I still get a sense of tension from the Arsenal fans. We are of course conditioned to believe that Arsenal will do things the hard way, we always have, but it's a bit more than that. I think at the moment none of our fans want to put they're heads above the parapet and admit that right now we're actually a pretty damn good team. Which is fair enough because the first person to do that will be responsible for the inevitable jinx that such a statement would inevitably cause. And I think I may have just done it. Whoops.

But we really are good at the moment. Mertesacker's mistake aside our defence looks more solid than it has done for years, and we have a commanding keeper behind them. Our midfield is getting such a good understanding that I'm not even certain Wilshere will walk into the first team when he returns and up front Robin, Theo and Gervinho all look like creating chances even if only Robin looks like scoring them.

All this can change in an instant, of course, but you can't judge the team on what might happen but on what is happening now. Too often in the past we've got ahead of ourselves, imagined glory based on what ifs and now we're imagining tragedy on the same basis. But I've decided to live in the here and now and right here and right now, we're doing pretty damn well actually.