Arsenal and Saka bring energy and noise to their renewed title challenge | first division

TOThe Arsenal players didn't celebrate much at the end. But then, Mikel Arteta's team could be excused for feeling a little spooked by what was a truly strange afternoon, a haunted house of first division game.

They somehow managed to go into half-time with a 4-0 lead, but still looked like a team that could probably do with a proper centre-forward (there should, frankly, have been seven or eight). On both sides, the home crowd disappeared, returned and then disappeared forever, leaving so much empty plastic in the stands that the London Stadium could have been designated an environmental disaster area by the United Nations.

In the end, the lasting memory was the energy of Arsenal, still out of the title race, but here too brimming with heat, light and a tangible sense of hunger. By contrast, West Ham's role in this 6-0 home defeat can be sorted out fairly quickly. Basically, they didn't have one.

It will be tempting to describe West Ham's performance as miserable, appalling, lazy, an abdication of professional responsibility, because it was all of those things. But this is also dignifying it with a form and a set of recognizable defects. Instead, this was something else, an absence, a hole in West Ham's form.

There were shirts, colors, figures half glimpsed on the edge of things, football not played in front of anyone. At times you almost expected a group of agitated van drivers to stride out and start carrying the West Ham players off the pitch, mistakenly believing that this was some kind of protest against the unnecessary waste of energy, a first blow for Just Stop. Soccer movement.

It was a horrible sight for David Moyes, even more so for a manager whose contract is up for renewal, who spent much of the game looking completely distraught, getting up from his dugout to walk down the touchline. Playing on the counterattack, allowing the opponent to have the ball, all this can be done with energy, threat and aggression.

On the other hand, it can be done that way, and West Ham's breach will receive its own extended post-mortem this week. The happiest story here was the energy and bite of Arsenal, a team that looks genuinely refreshed and recharged, for now, after that training break in the winter sun.

Before Dubai, Arsenal had lost three on the rebound and scored five goals in seven. After the break, the record indicates four consecutive victories and 16 goals scored. Bukayo Saka has four goals and one assist in those four games. He looks like Saka again, the same movements, the same twists and turns, but now done with precision, bites and snaps. Knowing what he's about to do is one thing. Stopping it is another.

Arsenal were once again excellent from set pieces, with deliveries from Declan Rice scoring two goals, the first of the afternoon scored by William Saliba. At that moment the green-yellow shirts gathered next to the corner flag to commune en masse, the day was already beginning to dawn. And yes, it is also a good time to talk about those celebrations, and the temperature of this team, about what they are trying to do this season, two points from the top but still outsiders in the race. Celebrations are easily misunderstood, but they are also part of this.

In old school terms, to celebrate is to show weakness, presumption, complacency. You have to channel your emotions. The fear of hysteria or “enthusiasms” lurks. In Victorian England there was a fashion of holding something called an orange board while eating fruit in polite company, for fear that the sight and sounds of an overtly sensual juice-eater might cause society to crumble and the hierarchy to tremble. Perhaps Arsenal could introduce a celebration board for their players, which would be passed around after the match, thus containing any displays of unmanly weakness.

Actually, there is a logic here. Why do Arsenal celebrate so intensely? A better question is: How does this team write a narrative where they could actually win the league? Take a look at the other two teams in this race. Arsenal will have to finish ahead of Manchester City, who seek greatness, who have an incomparable cutting edge in Erling Haaland and now a chance to achieve supremacy. Liverpool have their own narrative. Late Klopp energy, last things, homely delirium. This also feels like a story, dots to connect, plausible champion energy.

Why would Arsenal finish before this? What is the story here, the tool they will use to derail these competing forces? The answer is energy, will and youth. There are many parts that work wonderfully here, but other teams also have strengths and Arsenal are still a little more inexperienced.

That's why they need to make noise, be disruptive, be as ruthless as they were against Liverpool, be hungrier, wilder, more united than you. This is the most obvious version of how they win a league now. That is also why Arsenal will celebrate, they will seek to create their own internal story, to be wilder, more intense.

It's a tactic, a vibe, an attempt to write a successful narrative. It can seem a little clumsy and forced at times, like Kendall Roy walking into the acquisition room without a tie and yelling, let's get this party started. It could come off at the end. But here they replicated that same collective energy on the pitch and reduced West Ham to a team playing a half-remembered version of their own game.