Match report – Player ratings – By the numbers – Video

However your head is this Sunday morning, and mine is a touch delicate, waking up to pore over a 5-1 win over West Ham makes it all seem a lot easier.

Having seen Chelsea beat Man City 3-1 earlier, the pressure on us to take three points was palpable. If their win was a statement of their title intent, it really felt like we had to do something similar, and boy did we do it. Perhaps later in the game than we might have preferred, and we definitely wasted chances to make this game safe much earlier than we did, but four goals in twelve second-half minutes were enough to ensure our first visit to the Free London Stadium of London in London was a successful one.

The first half was pretty much all Arsenal. West Ham were, frankly, terrible, and we had so much joy down their left hand side. Monreal and Oxlade-Chamberlain found themselves in all kinds of space time and time again, but couldn’t quite find the final ball.

The first goal came from Coquelin pressing high and blocking a pass, Alexis picked it up, nicked it past a defender, drove into the box and squared it for Ozil to tap home the easiest goal he’ll ever score. The Chilean should have doubled the lead when sent in behind by the Ox, but took a heavy touch which allowed the keeper to snuff out the danger.

The second half seemed a bit more even, and at 1-0 there’s always the danger of being hauled back in despite being in charge for the most part. There was more about West Ham, and they had the looming threat of Andy Carroll. We know this because on BT Sport at least, they gave us a running commentary about the looming threat of Andy Carroll.

Andy Carroll is warming up. Andy Carroll is warming up quite vigorously indeed. Andy Carroll is taking off his bib. Andy Carroll is sitting down again. Andy Carroll has put his bib back on. Andy Carroll’s introduction is not as imminent as we thought. Andy Carroll is wondering whether human consciousness proves that immaterial entities exist. Andy Carroll is Andy Carroll.

Meanwhile, there was a football match going on in which Andy Carroll was taking no part yet. I thought we were just a little bit passive, not quite as aggressive and pacey as we could have been, but around the 72nd minute we didn’t just click into gear, we hit turbo boost – most of which was thanks to Alexis Sanchez.

The Chilean decided he’d had enough of this not scoring goals for fun, so decided to score some goals for fun. The first came when he took a pass from Mustafi and with his first touch span around the defender. He held him off, shaped to shoot, took it a bit further then lashed it into the far corner. Brilliant. The second came when he picked up a half clearance from Reid, had a look then drilled it into the bottom corner.

West Ham got one back via Andy Carroll who had, at last, made peace with the great philosophical mystery he’d been pondering, and come onto the pitch. He was quickest to react – which says something about you, Arsenal’s defenders – to a free kick which rebounded off the bar, and he headed home.

If the Hammers had any hopes of staging a comeback though, they were well and truly dashed by Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain who almost immediately restored the three goal cushion with a beautiful strike which curled beyond the keeper and in. And he turned provider for Sanchez’s hat-trick, my favourite of his three yesterday. Running at the keeper he shaped, dummied, and then just clipped the ball over him to make it 5-1. Audacious for sure, and the goal of a man whose confidence is high.

It was a genuinely fantastic trio of goals from a player who looks to be really hitting his stride as a striker. He was basically unstoppable in that period of the game. They tried, they really did, but they just couldn’t. Afterwards, Arsene Wenger said:

He has all the ingredients to be a top class striker and he shows that now in every game. In a game like that today, again he is quick, he is quick to close down, he can dribble, he has short backlift. He has a killer instinct and it shows again that the South Americans, at the moment in world football, are the leading strikers. You have to acknowledge that. If you look through the top strikers in Europe, they are basically all South American now.

Give him what he wants. Money. Puppies. Whatever. He’s just so, so good, and maybe it’s just me but I feel like he can get even better. What a contribution he made. It was so decisive and so much fun to watch a player who can do that playing for us. Wrap his muscles in soothing balm and give him what he wants.

On the win itself, Wenger said:

We had many strong periods in the game. The regret we had at half-time was that we didn’t take advantage of the chances we created. We just felt it was important for us to maintain our pressure and not let them come into our half as they have tricky players around the box. Overall, I’m pleased with the result and the performance.

It’s impossible to be anything other than delighted, a 5-1 win away from home is very pleasing indeed. Yes, we might have been a bit wasteful, and it might have come back to haunt us, but it didn’t, so I don’t see the point in fretting over something that didn’t happen.

The team looked balanced and cohesive. I thought Granit Xhaka’s passing from deep areas of midfield was superb at times, and that added another dimension to our game, and on a day when we had to show we were hot on the heels of the leaders, we did just that. A win that will make people sit up and take notice, and hopefully this is something that we can really kick on from, because it felt like just the kind of result and performance we needed.

All in all, a very pleasing evening. James and I will be here to discuss that and everything else tomorrow in the Arsecast Extra, for now have a great Sunday.