Now that was your archetypal first game of the season win at home yesterday, right?

The excitement was there, the expectation was there, it was a beautifully sunny day in North London and The Arsenal were back. I made my way to the Highbury area with some hope and expectation of good times, but football is an unpredictable mistress; you never know when you might come-a-cropper and so whilst most people thought it would be an Arsenal win, to rule Wolves out completely would be a naive assumption.

Arteta named the first XI for the season and I think for 90% of the team it was as most of us had thought: Raya in goal, a back four of White, Saliba, Gabriel and Zinchenko, Partey anchoring the midfield (obviously focusing on ball progression above anything else), with Rice and Odegaard in front of him, although Rice naturally dropped back alongside the Ghanaian when we needed a little more cover (which wasn’t that often, to be fair). Up top Havertz played centrally and Saka was never not going to play wide right. But Martinelli’s inclusion raised a few eyebrows I think. The good thing about this Arsenal team is that we have so many options that it doesn’t surprise people too much though. Martinelli did well enough in the last couple of pre season matches so it was a close call between him and Trossard, but Leandro’s form at the end of last season had me thinking that he might get the nod.

Instead it was the Brazilian and clearly the thinking from Arteta was that he wanted somebody with pace who could run at their full back. The challenge was that Wolves knew they would be up against it and as a result they sat a little deeper, were compact enough to frustrate us in the first half and I thought it might be ‘one of those days’ until we got that first goal. Thankfully we didn’t have to worry about that for too long, because on 25 minutes up stepped Kai to nod home a very good header after a Bukayo Saka cross in to the box. Up until that point we’d seen a few pot-shots, but Jose Sa had seemed equal to them, but there was nothing he could go about the bullet header and it was good to see the German continue the good form of last season that had him bagging plenty in the run in as we fought for that 2024 Premier League crown.

And from then on I personally felt a little more comfortable. We dominated possession, we looked comfortable knocking the ball around, we had Wolves at arms-length. Sure, they fashioned a few chances and for one in particular David Raya needed a firm hand to keep out their new number nine signing, but overall in that first half it felt like we had this game locked down.

The second half was never going to be the same though. Gary O’Neill is no mug and he will have had a few more words to say to his team, which will most likely have been centred around how passive they were. But in the second half they came out and had a little more too them. There was a bit more ball in our half and Wolves – whilst they didn’t really create too many chances, were at least looking a little more ambitious. But even with a little more territory, you always felt that Arsenal could turn it up a gear and one more goal would be all we would need to close this game out.

We had to wait though. Because it was only on 74 minutes with Saka’s fine strike that we got that all-important second to make sure the last 15 minutes feel a littlwe more secure. It felt like a bit of a trademark Saka finish too; a cut inside so he could hit it with his left foot, but a shot to the near post that has the ‘keeper wrong-footed, which is exactly what Jose Sa felt as the ball hit the back of the net.

2-0, job done, three points, so that now we look at our ‘death run’ for the next six weeks with at least something on the board. Three years ago we kicked off the season with three really hard games after what was expected to be a relatively comfy one away to newly promoted Brentford. Defeat that day and subsequent defeats had us bottom of the league and the ‘banter’ coming out from the media and rival fans. But this time around we are a different beast and there was to be no ‘banter narrative’ ahead of what will surely be a season-defining next few weeks, so early in this campaign.

We’re up and running, we played some decent – if not mesmerising – football and as Arsenal fans I don’t think any of us are complaining.

Now the attention turns to Villa next weekend. I watched their game on the way home and then in the garden with my West Ham-supporting brother and nephew. They rode their luck at times against West Ham yesterday but I suspect they will try to do what they did to us last season and hit us hard and fast early. We need to be ready for it.

That’ll do me for today I think. Gonna be a hot one again today to it’ll be paddling pool and then some hope that Chelsea can give City a scare. I doubt it though.

Catch you wonderful humans tomorrow. If you fancy it we’re doing a Same Old Arsenal podcast at 9.30am this morning, so come and say hello in the comments.