It would have been easy for a dispirited, depressed, even defeated Arsenal squad to arrive at Molineux on Saturday ready to throw in the towel, ready to accept the bottle-job label that all of our opponents and too many of our supporters were eager to tar us with. Even if or precisely because Wolves were depleted, conditions were ripe for us to slip on a very slippery, very ripe banana. To see us go out and shrug off those former factors and overcome the latter suggest that we do in fact have the minerals to end the season precisely where we find ourselves as of this writing—top of the league.

Is Havertz turning into the signing of last summer?
This is bold talk for someone whom we splurged £65m on, not to mention his weekly wages. At a risk of offering a back-handed compliment, he’s a more-expensive Giroud. He presses relentlessly. He wins aerial duels. He creates chances for others. He puts shots straight to the keeper. Wait—scratch that last one from the record. More to the point, it’s starting to feel like our attack hums like a beehive when he’s played up top. He creates chances for others, and, increasingly, finishing chances that others create for him. He’s second only to our precious Starboy for goals and assists. Given the going rates for out-and-out strikers these days, signing Havertz on that fee might turn out to be a bargain. He’s only just now finding the kind of form that convinced Chelsea to sign and then ruin him. He’s only just now finding the kind of form that earned him comparisons to Michael Ballack, Toni Kroos, and Thomas Müller. I’ve offered a comparison to Dimitar Berbatov. That all might be a bit breathless, but the body of evidence is still growing.

Whither Martinelli? Trust Trossard…
Gabriel Martinelli, for as effervescent as he was last season. After going for 15 goals and six assists in 45 appearances, he’s only gotten 8 goals and five assists in 39 this season. It’s not as if his minutes have dropped, nor have defenses committed extraordinary resources to denying him as they have to denying Saka, so what gives? Something is off, even as we admit that Martinelli is still just 23 and has been hampered somewhat by injuries. We’ll have to explore his situation in more depth when we’re no longer playing matches every three or four days. In the meantime, Trossard has stepped into the breach, chipping in 14 goals and two assists. His goal against Wolves may have been of the “did he mean that” variety, but there’s something Cazorla-esque about the Belgian that makes him indispensable.

Did I assert that Havertz might be the signing of last summer?
Declan Rice is proving every single critic, pundit, rival, skeptical fan, and just about anyone else who dared to suggest that the “exorbitant” £100m fee just about as dead-wrong as anyone could have been proven. At this point, there are more zombie-critics of the transfer than there are zombie-extras in The Walking Dead. He’s turning on MOTM-level performances over and over again (most recently against Wolves), scoring goals at a rate he’s never done before, and starting to make our midfield buzz like it hasn’t in recent memory. He’s done this while being asked to play a kind of hybrid 6/8 role while an ever-changing cast that includes Ødegaard, Trossard, Havertz, and Jorginho whilst being deployed at least nominally in the left, centre, or right of a 4-3-3.

These are just a few of the takeaways to explore. Still untouched: do we have the best CB pairing in the Prem? Has Ødegaard overtaken De Bruyne as the best #10 in the Prem? Is Ben White in the conversation for best right-back in the Prem? All of these and other questions get to the heart of what Arteta is building: a young, dynamic squad that is still just barely scraping the surface of what it’s capable of. That might not be quite enough to win the Prem this season, but it’s surely enough to put our rivals on notice.