Gunners Gain after another away win

Premier League weekends don't get much better than that do they? A great away win for Arsenal, Chelsea get stuffed at home by a mid- table team, Man City only draw at home to Birmingham and Man Utd fail to win a game they probably should have. Oh, and Liverpool lost but we don't need to be concerned about their results do we?

That win at Everton showed qualities in the team that are necessary for a team to win the Premier League. Grit, determination, resilience, solidity and good finishing (apart from Chamakh!). I think I could list a load of different words to describe The Arsenal yesterday but the point is they showed improvement and, again, went to a difficult place to win and did so. They generally looked solid, didn't do anything silly and made the most of chances at crucial times. They also saw out the late fightback from the Toffees at the end, which fellow title contenders Man Utd failed to do back in September.

I was worried at the start of the weekend about the possibility of being seven points off Chelsea, or even 8, yet here we on Monday 2 points away from Chelsea who stay top. That's football- last week things seemed easy and turned out terrible yet this week things seemed hard but are now rosy again.

Praise today goes to Fabianski and Nasri. It could go to a lot of the players but these were two that stood out for me in particular. Nasri looks like he's come on a bundle since when he first arrived, and even from last season. He's also looking world class and getting better by the game. The way he breezed past Jagielka for his chance at 2-0 was sensational, not many get past Jagielka. His passing, intelligence and working back are great and his strength has also improved among many other attributes, not to mention his improvement in front of goal.

If Fabianski can keep us this form, not only will he shut up people like Merson who are overly- critical of him, but he'll be a key figure in our season and become a very good goalkeeper for us. OK, he made a mistake in the Newcastle game but look how he's responded. A MOTM display at Wolves followed by another great display at Everton. not to mention his form before the Newcastle game at Man City and other games. Great saves and great in the air from crosses and corners.

And a final note: I don't think our squad ever gets the credit it's deserved as I happen to think it's the strongest squad in the league. But the point is that yesterday we had one of our hardest away games of the season without our first choice centre halves Koscielny and Vermaelen and yet looked solid. Chelsea on the other hand, had Terry and Alex unavailable and got slaughtered by Sunderland at home. That's no coincidence. Chelsea never seem to have multiple injury problems and when, for once, they did yesterday they got beaten badly. In addition, if you look at each team's bench, we had van Persie, Walcott, Denilson, Rosicky, Gibbs and Eboue on ours yet Chelsea had Bruma, van Aanholt, Sala, McEachran and Kakuta alongside Kalou. There's no contest there. OK, they had a couple of key midfielders out but so have we many a time and this again just proves my previous point that Chelsea just didn't cope well when they had more than one or two injured players. Looking elsewhere, I think we have a far better squad than Man City, tottenham and Man Utd too. Just look at what Man Utd's bench was against Villa.

The fact that Arsenal have the best away record in the league got an even stronger one too which is a very mimpressive thing. Not only have we got the best away record, but we've had hard away games against Man City, Everton, Liverpool, Blackburn and Sunderland, and Wolves ain't easy. The one we lost was at Chelsea too so there's plenty of room for pride as far as Arsenal's away record is concerned. We haven't played numptys like Wigan and West Ham yet like Chelsea have either (at the perfect imes I might ad).

So, to sum up, a very good display and a great weekend for Arsenal.

Player Ratings:

Fabianski- 8

Sagna- 8

Squillaci- 7
Djourou- 8
Clichy- 7
Fabregas- 8
Song- 8
Wishere- 7
Nasri- 9
Chamakh- 7
Arshavin- 8

Denilson- 7
Rosicky- 6
Eboue- 6

Away Fans- 10