November can be a bit depressing. With the clocks having gone back, dusk starts descending in the afternoon, the mornings get steadily darker too and Christmas dominates the retail agenda to a surely unhealthy extent. If you are Arsène Wenger it is also a worrying time. During a tenure spanning two decades as Arsenal manager, November has consistently proved the cruellest month for the Frenchman.
Statistics crunched from Wenger’s reign show his team average 2.18 points per game in March, 2.14 in September and October and 2.09 in April, but they manage only 1.59 during the 11th month. It is as if they are suddenly afflicted by seasonal affective disorder at the awkward junction between autumn and winter.
That explains why there was a certain nervousness on Saturday among those visiting supporters celebrating the 4-1 win at Sunderland, where Alexis Sánchez and Olivier Giroud scored twice, the latter with his first two touches after stepping off the bench to game-changing effect.
Instead of revelling in Sánchez’s gloriously subtle, frequently deep-sitting interpretation of the lone-striker role and Giroud’s imperious, home defence-dissecting contribution as a second-half substitute, there was a slightly cautious mood among the Arsenal squad flying home from Newcastle airport.
Wenger and company will be back in the air on Monday, heading for Bulgaria and the Champions League group game against Ludogrets which promises to get this November off to a fairly gentle start.
Tougher Premier League assignments at home against Tottenham Hotspur and away against Manchester United and José Mourinho await but, to the neutral eye at least, there is abundant cause for optimism for the team level on points with Manchester City and Liverpool at the top of the table.
Even if Wenger is neglecting to dose his players up with maximum-strength vitamin D tablets or scatter sun lamps around the training ground, there is every reason to believe a month also featuring a Champions League date with Paris Saint-Germain, a league game at home to Bournemouth and a League Cup tie against Southampton will prove the exception to the general rule about the perils of darkening days.
It should be stressed that, in collecting only two points from 10 games, David Moyes’s wretched Sunderland have registered a record-equalling worst start to a Premier League season and were always there for the taking.
Accordingly, an Arsenal ensemble lacking, among others, the injured Santi Cazorla – whose absence has so often proved seriously undermining to regularly dashed title hopes – Lucas Pérez and Nacho Monreal sparkled in the balmy Wearside sunshine. Significantly Kieran Gibbs shone so brightly at left-back that it will be difficult for Monreal to oust him.
Wenger’s side have now gone 14 games unbeaten and appear to have acquired some of the resolve and resilience they sometimes lacked in the past.
As awful as Sunderland were at times, they did not fold until the final 20 minutes and briefly hauled the score back to 1-1 courtesy of Jermain Defoe’s penalty. Arsenal had missed several inviting chances by then and, for a little while, a question hung in the air. Would Wenger’s players lose heart or could they raise their game?
Tellingly, they took the latter option with three goals in seven utterly ruthless minutes, not only ruining Moyes’s weekend but suggesting this latest title challenge is underpinned by hitherto elusive mental strength.
After praising his side’s resolve and “great response” to the equaliser, Wenger agreed that in previous seasons this was a game Arsenal could easily have ended up drawing, or even losing.
“Yes, but not only us,” the Arsenal manager said. “The statistics of home teams who equalise show they will probably go on and win, but Sunderland were surprised by the strength of our push after they got back to 1-1.”
A follow-up inquiry suggesting his players had acquired a previously elusive “maturity” seemed to please Wenger. “I believe so, yes,” he said. “That’s what we want to show over a longer distance.
“We now have some difficult games coming up, we have a difficult November, so by the end of November we’ll know more about ourselves – but the desire and mentality is great in this side. We have a great togetherness and we have quality as well. They are good ingredients.”
For the moment at least the body language of Mesut Özil, Mohamed Elneny – impressive in a holding midfield role – and especially Sánchez offers immense encouragement.
Variously kneed, niggled and shirt-pulled as Sunderland persistently fouled him, the Chilean appeared impervious to such disincentives, typically affecting an air of utter disdain before delighting in wrong-footing Lamine Koné, Papy Djilobodji and company once more.
“Beating Sunderland like this strengthens our belief that we can bounce back from disappointing results [notably last week’s home draw with Middlesbrough] and that we can also bounce back within a game when it suddenly doesn’t go our way,” Wenger said. “Now we have to show we can do it week in, week out.” And throughout November, too.
