Revival

It has become the way of the Arsenal.

When things seem on the brink of falling apart, when Wenger's long tenure starts to seem untenable, the team  lurch back into life.

The 2-1 defeat at Spurs opened up a big gap and spawned a typically measured headline from Moral Courage Dot Com- "Forget Fourth".

Since that game, Arsenal beat Bayern Munich away, beat Swansea away, battered Reading at the Emirates.

Spurs lost at Liverpool, lost at home to Fulham, beat Swansea themselves to get back on track.

Chelsea have stuttered too.

Fourth, or even third, remains the target for Arsenal.

BUT, and there's always a but, can Arsenal put together the kind of run they need?

The upturn in form is welcome and undeniable, but Arsenal have failed to sustain a winning run all season.

The run-in reads like this:

WEST BROM (A)
NORWICH (H)
EVERTON (H)
FULHAM (A)
MAN UNITED (H)
QPR (A)
WIGAN (H)
NEWCASTLE (A)

The time when Arsenal could have been expected to win every one of those games is, sadly, long gone.

They are all winnable, sure, but we ought to have learned by now that every single match represents a potential banana skin.

The revival of last season, kick started by that rousing comeback win against Spurs, was truly rousing stuff.

But Arsenal were a better team then because they had Van Persie.

And Spurs absolutely imploded.

Arsenal did not sustain form until the end of the season anyway- they actually did their best to throw away 3rd place by dropping seven points from home games against Wigan, Chelsea and Norwich.

Spurs have suffered a blip, but they still have a match winner in Bale who Arsenal can't quite match.

With high stakes in the final games of the season, can we trust in Giroud, Podolski, GERVINHO to do the business?

It's good that Arsenal have given themselves a chance at yet another year in the Champions League, because after the Spurs game a few weeks ago it seemed that the season was set to merely fizzle out.

But in the words of The Wolf, let's not start sucking each other's dicks just yet.