I usually avoid any kind of football topics that aren’t Arsenal related, but after seeing Jose Mourinho’s less than subtle attempt to have more air time to push through his own personal agenda through the medium of Sky Sports’ Goals on Sunday, I feel compelled to say something through my own soapbox platform, which is this here blog.

I’m presuming of course that the whole world recognised his whole purpose of going on that show was to perpetuate his own lines of malcontent, but the brazen way in which he tried to use Sky whilst also denouncing the treatment of his own team by the media, was rather rich I have to say. For somebody who uses all forms of media to try and carry his own propaganda so vehemently, you’d think he would be a little bit more accepting of how the British media companies work? Actually, scratch that, because he clearly does. After all, that’s why he probably patched a call directly to Sky Sports bigwigs on Saturday evening, to which both parties would have been more than happy. Jose gets to spout his rubbish on a well known show, Sky Sports get the big names on their sofa.

It all feels very dirty. Mourinho is essentially a slightly tanned ‘Arry Redknapp. Only he’s probably the next rung up the ladder because he’s done it abroad and won a few more trophies. He’s got as much class as a fake tanned, Essex based hairdresser with a brilliant white Bentley.

Anyway, I should probably stop there, because not only does that do a disservice to fake tanned, Essex-based hairdressers, but also the fact I’m even talking about the most horrendous football club in the history of the world in Chelski – and yes, I include even the Spuds in that – means that I’m giving up time away from the greatest club in the world.

All-in-all, for what we’re looking at for the remainder of our season, this weekend didn’t really go too badly, did it? We rode our luck but ultimately had the points secured on Saturday, whilst Tiny Totts, Southampton and Man United all dropped points. With Liverpool at home to Man City next weekend, if we can pick up another win against Everton on Sunday at lunchtime, I fancy we’ll be in poll position for third and certainly a heavy favourite for Champions League qualification in one form or another.

We’re hitting form at exactly the right time. People can say that so are Liverpool and Totteringham are too, but with my admittedly completely biased specs on, we’re the better of all of the teams in that Champions League race and I think we’re playing the better football too. Perhaps this last weekend wasn’t a perfect example of us at our sparkling best, but that being the case, we went 89 minutes without being massively troubled against a Crystal Palace side that Alan Pardew had said had played their best football since he arrived. Let’s not forget that Pardew has managed his team against both the Spuds and Liverpool at home.

So we have reasons to be cheerful today. We have a big game against Monaco on Wednesday, followed by big matches against Everton, QPR and Man United in the next two weeks. Four wins out of four and we’ll find ourselves looking up rather than down in all competitions.

I’m liking the form of Özil and Giroud in particular at the moment. It was yet another goal for Ollie on Saturday and as I said in a previous blog last week, I think he can hit 20 goals come the season end, a phenomenal achievement by the end of the season given his broken leg. Has the arrival of Welbeck and Alexis to challenge his role as a central striker worked magic in making him ultra competitive to keep his place? I think undoubtedly that must be the case. He’s a classic confidence player. He’s said so himself in not-so-many words, so it’s natural that when you give him your belief as Arsène has, as well as allow him to do what he does best as a target man, the result is goals. Goals then beget goals and you have yourself a self-fulfilling prophecy, because he’ll have more confidence, score more goals, get more confident, etc, etc. the trick will be for him to keep on playing and playing well.

As for Özil, he’s clearly used his time away from the pitch to great effect. I saw one moment on Saturday in which Mesut was up against a Palace player (Puncheon I think), inside our own box, where he used his strength to shepherd the ball out of play for a goal kick. A year ago he’d have been bundled over by the physicality of the opponent he was up against. Not so in Mesut Özil Arsenal version 2.0. He is stronger and a year wiser to this league. He still has superb vision and is showing signs of the form when he first signed for the club, but he’s also regaining his confidence, a prime example of that being the superb flick over the defenders head and perfectly weighted pass to set Alexis away for what should have been goal number three.

Arsène may still be tinkering and rotating his team to find the best blend at the moment, but he’s got a number of players who are making very public ‘well, you can’t drop me’ statements to him based on performances at the moment. Long may that continue.

It’s a happy Monday for us Gooners. Let’s embrace it.