Arsenal are top of the league. Just let that sentence sink in for a few moments. It's one we haven't heard from a while, and you'd be forgiven for worrying that we won't be hearing it for long. 4 wins from 5 domestically and 3 from 3 in Europe mean that the Gunners are sitting pretty after a turbulent start against Aston Villa, and reports of Wenger's managerial demise have, it would seem, been greatly exaggerated.

So what's happened in the last two weeks? Well quite a lot as it goes. The anti-fascist cause received a shot in the arm when first Arsenal and then West Brom tonked Sunderland, helping to expedite the sacking of that duce loving asshole Di Canio. Manchester United were also on the end of a spanking at Eastlands (O Robin, where art thou?). Oh, and the Gunners have won another three on the bounce. 

First came the aforementioned tie in the North East, the main point interest of which was of course the debut of the 40 million pound man, the Teutonic titan himself and our new resident übermensch Mesut Özil (whose arrival at Arsenal has forced journalists everywhere to familarise themselves with umlauts and their keyboard shortcuts; alt 153 if you're wondering). Arsenal's most expensive player did not disappoint, creating a goal within a quarter of an hour after first bringing down a ball over the top before squaring for the marauding Giroud to stroke it home. Pleasingly he also seemed to develop an understanding with the rest of his teammates fairly quickly, and was involved in the build up for the third goal. Özil will undergo a period of adjustment due to more physical nature of football in this country, but his sheer raw talent and ability should ensure that it doesn't last too long.

The trip to the North East was followed by a dreary 2-1 win in Marseille. The game wasn't a must win, but with the two home fixtures against Napoli and Dortmund up next, the opening match was one Arsenal couldn't really afford to lose. Thankfully a tie which nearly got away from them at several points remained goalless, until a tidy volley from Walcott put his team up 1-0. A deflected shot from the edge of the area gave this season's surprise package Aaron Ramsey his 6th goal of the campaign, and despite a late penalty concession, Arsenal held on to go top of the group after matchday 1 (in the group's other fixture, Napoli ran out 2-1 winners, and if you haven't seen Dortmund manager Jurgen Klopp's frankly bonkers reaction to seeing his goalkeeper sent off, check it out immediately: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MJ7gxuDGxI).

Finally we were visited by those awkward and ungainly chaps from Stoke, a team which looks and plays like they were put together by a villainous comic book scientist trying to create the evil antithetical version of Wenger's Arsenal side. The team is under new leadership, but if your manager coaches like Tony Pulis and quacks like Tony Pulis, then it's still Tony Pulis managing your club in all but name. That new gaffer is of course Mark Hughes, better known as Pulis lite, whose teams are best known for kicking whatever is in front of them as hard as they can, be it a football or opposition player. 

Previous trips to the capital have not ended well for Stoke City, and it often seemed as though Pulis' sole concern was that his team not lose by a cricket score; it was a rare sight when two or more of his players ventured to leave their own half. Hughes at least allowed his team to attack on occasion, and they were rewarded in kind when their first chance of the game led to a goal which cancelled out Ramsey's opener (the Welshman, incidentally, now has 7 in 8 to start the season). A bit of Pulis style defensive organisation might have ensured that parity was maintained for longer than a few minutes, however; Mertersacker was the man to restore Arsenal's lead after his looping header somehow dropped into the far corner of the goal.

2-1 was the score at the interval, and though Stoke had a few bright spells in the second half, the game was put to bed when Sagna jumped highest at another set piece twenty minutes from the end and his header flew over Begovic and into the net. So what did we learn from Sunday's game? Well firstly that Stoke, for all their 6 foot plus behemoths, look peculiarly vulnerable at set pieces. You allowed Arsenal to put two headers past you; that's how many we score in a season. It was like seeing Thelonious Monk out-blow Miles Davis on trumpet. Football fans don't like change and heading the ball is your raison d'etre. Get. It. Together.

Secondly, apparently all we needed to start banging them in from set pieces was assist machine Mesut Özil to be the man delivering the crosses. The German now has 3 assists by my reckoning in two league games, which is not a bad start. In terms of the other areas of his game, our new number 11 seems to be settling in ok. For all the exuberance  after his move to North London, the one caveat suggested by a few pundits was that he has a tendency to drift in and out of games, something that his critics might argue happened in Marseilles. If that does happen it's far from the end of the world though, given his already apparent ability to change games completely. Moreover once Cazorla returns, if either one loses focus the other should be able to pick up the slack. Plus I think Özil should be allowed a grace period of a few months before we start pointing out flaws in his game. For the first time since Arshavin's half season after he arrived in the January window, we've got a player who makes you sit up and take notice every time he's on the ball, simply because he has the ability to make something out of nothing; it's difficult to overstate the importance and impact of players like that on a club like Arsenal.

So what's next? First an away trip to West Brom in the league cup this midweek, about which it's proving fairly hard to muster any interest. Following that will be a trip to Swansea this weekend. After winning the league cup last season the Swans seemed more concerned with their summer holiday than they were with seeing out the league; after their surprising 3-0 demolition of Valencia at the Mestalla earlier this month, they seem to have got back to the business of passing teams to death again however, and Liverpool were probably lucky to escape the Liberty stadium with a point. Expect a stern test.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. The source of this quote is indeterminate (and was not made, as John Fitzgerald Kennedy once suggested, by Edmund Burke), although we can be certain that it was not made within the context of anything so frivolous as football.

Nonetheless, it resonates now more than ever about the state of the play in British football's top league. For too long the combined evil of those despicable spendthrifts at Chelsea, Manchester United and now Manchester City has been allowed to grow unchecked; for too long have they been given free reign to wreak their despicable brand of havoc on an unsuspecting league, and for too long have they been the dominant power in English football. Fortunately the arrival of one man will usher in a new age of peace and prosperity. That man is Mesut Özil.

You'll have to excuse the grandiose language but I'm afraid it's difficult to resist the urge to think of the German as anything other than a complete game-changer. Since his arrival at Real Madrid, only Lionel Messi has matched Özil's assist tally in any of Europe's top 5 leagues, both notching a highly respectable 47. Moreover the 24 year old made more key passes than anyone last season, completing them at an average of one every 22 minutes. In short, his addition to the squad has captured fans' imagination in a way that no other signing has in recent memory.

Although the position of playmaker was not demonstrably one in desperate need of an upgrade, it would have been an error to let Özil slip through our fingers (as I'm sure Man Utd will discover soon enough). His presence eases the pressure on Cazorla, who can operate with greater freedom since he's no longer the attacking fulcrum through which all attacks must flow; he scores goals too, grabbing 9 in 23 starts last season; he's also just an exciting player in a way that's incredibly difficult to put into words. Signing him makes me feel like the kid who's been given socks for Christmas for as long as he can remember, only to be surprised one December 25th with a Ferrari in the driveway.

For once fans and journos were as one - everyone expects him to light this league up, and no one can believe that Madrid would let their second best player go, none more so than the fans who chanted at the unveiling of that Welshman whose name escapes me, asking Madrid chairman  Florentino Pérez to keep the German midfielder. Pérez is consistent in his capriciousness however, and evidently Özil had to go. Their loss is our gain and in Özil we have a player around whom we can begin to build a league winning team.

Özil was joined on deadline day by goalkeeper Emiliano Viviano on a season long loan from Palermo. The Italian is expected to challenge our man Szczesny, who for too long has been assured a starting place simply by virtue of the fact that the number two and three goalkeepers at the club couldn't catch a cold. I must, as much as it pains me, question the Professor's logic on this one - Szczesny has never shown the consistency between the sticks that would one expect from a Champions League calibre goalkeeper, and an upgrade at that position surely couldn't have been prohibitively expensive? Would it not have made more sense to sign someone more experienced and reliable who could mentor the young Pole, as opposed to borrowing one not much older from another club? Maybe this is what happens when you leave all your business to deadline day - rationality is the day's biggest loser, or so it often seems.

A more pressing concern than the keeper conundrum is the striker situation however. At the moment our only recognised, healthy centre forward is Olivier Giroud. The Frenchman has excelled in his first few games this season and appears to be adapting well to English football - nonetheless, our lack of options should he pick up an injury is worrying. Podolski looks set to miss about three months of the season through a hamstring tear, while Walcott, who has always harboured aspirations of playing through the middle, has never show the consistency or versatility to lead anyone to believe that this is his natural position.

Wenger knew this better than anyone, which helps explain his decision to enquire as to the availability of Chelsea striker Demba Ba - a loan fee of 3 million was proposed by the Blues, while Arsenal, it was rumoured, weren't looking to exceed 1.5. These two figures are not so far apart that a deal could not have been struck however; the stumbling block, it seems, was that Chelsea, alarmed by the marquee signing of Özil, suddenly viewed Arsenal as genuine rivals once more. On the one hand it's upsetting that we missed out on a backup striker because Chelsea pulled out of a deal at the last minute, leaving the club no time to look for alternatives, but on the other, isn't it nice that we're on their radar again?

Elsewhere there was disappointment that we didn't go after any defensive upgrades. Frankly I think Arsenal's defensive problems are frequently and grossly overstated. The Gunners had the second best defensive record in the league last season, conceding nine fewer than the often lauded Spurs defence. The pairing of Koscielny and Mertersacker appears solid, with the former displaying the dynamism and ubiquity that make him such an important part of this team, while the latter, admittedly possessing the turning circle of a large family sized car, has the positional sense and experience to compensate for immobility (most of the time). The Arsenal defence is often joked about as though every game is like watching the Keystone Cops, but that's incredibly unfair (although André Santos wasn't doing them any favours last season; we wish you all the best André but I hope you'll forgive our relief at your departure). The league's second best back four should continue to gel, while the return of the versatile ankle-biter Mathieu Flamini should only serve to improve things.

As it happens the Arsenal defence picked up its third clean sheet of the season on the weekend against the combined might of 100 million pounds worth of summer transfer spending. Spurs dropped in for a friendly kickarbout on Sunday afternoon and they brought their expensive new toys over, fat lot of good it did them. The new Tottenham midfield must surely rank as one of the most physically imposing in the league - Capoue, Paulinho and Dembele are all built like brick shithouses, but it didn't do them much good when they were chasing shadows for most of the afternoon. 1-0 probably flattered Spurs, who were kept in the game by the excellent Lloris (why didn't we get him when we had the chance?) and the visitors only showed any spirit after Arsenal were forced to retreat back into their own half as the only fit players to bring off the bench were defenders (while the excellent Giroud stayed on despite carrying a knock, leaving him unable to hold the ball up anymore).

Tottenham have yet to score a goal from open play, and whilst they look defensively capable, it's hard at the moment to see where the creative spark is going to come from. They've 35 games yet to find it so let's not count them out just yet, but against Arsenal they were lacklustre to say the least. Meanwhile reports are emerging from Spain that Spurs chairman Daniel Levy tried to block Özil's transfer (www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2410909/Tottenham-chief-Daniel-Levy-tried-block-Mesut-Ozils-Arsenal.html). Pretty crass if true.

All in all a fairly satisfying transfer deadline day that's left me grinning like a Cheshire cat. Boring boring international break this weekend means we don't get to see Özil's debut for another week. I don't know about you but I'll be counting the minutes until then.