Why Arsenal will beat Manchester United and why Kagawa doesn’t matter

Apart from anyone who doesn’t, everyone wants to know how good Arsenal are. The league system – where the accumulation of points via winning or drawing games dictates your position relative to the other teams you play against – is apparently not enough to placate any of us. We want to know more. Like, can they maintain their form? Or, can they beat the big teams?

You could, then, bill Arsenal’s trip to Manchester United on Sunday as a chance to find out – or get closer to – the answers to questions such as those posed above. Like a fact finding mission. Except that approach to this game is flawed in at least two senses. First, it pitches all football matches as learning experiences – when did all football become about ‘learning’ rather than enjoying? It’s no fun.

Second, the suggestion that the result of this game will in any way placate anyone belies the fact that no-one ever proves anything for more than a week in football – if that. No-one ever completely changes their mind and says ‘oh, I see, now that Arsenal have comprehensively outplayed Manchester United at Old Trafford I admit I was wrong to say they smell of horse manure.’ It doesn’t happen. Minor readjustments take place against the backdrop of the major prejudices but they’re lost as soon as any counter evidence becomes available, as it usually does. Everything reverts back to the mean.

Want proof? Wayne Rooney spoke about Arsenal’s tendency to fade away in “February or March” this week, something they haven’t done for three years. Learning indeed.

So, as no-one’s learning anything, to the game. Arsenal go into it top of the league by five points, eight clear of United, though it really does feel like it should be more. Arsenal are playing well enough to bypass a confident Liverpool team’s confidence entirely and knock them around for large portions of an arbitrary 90 minute period. They’re playing savvy enough to be able to go away to Borussia Dortmund and come back with three points, another clean sheet and piece of Jurgen Klopp’s hair, taken as a prize by Wenger.

United aren’t doing either of those things.

Having – perhaps too hastily, in hindsight – been billed as a vast improvement on Alex Ferguson’s 1999 treble-winning side before their midweek game in Sociedad after four wins in a row for the first time under David Moyes, they went and drew 0-0 to an average Spanish side.

All United have going for them is that they have Robin van Persie and Arsenal don’t. Any team with Van Persie in it can score a goal, even if they play, collectively, like [insert a kooky metaphor which sounds less and less clever every time you read it, beginning with the first time, where it also sounds stupid.] He’s good enough to win games on his own. It’s simply odd that Arsenal sold him to who they did.

But aside from that freakish talent, the Gunners will be right to believe they can beat United. They have Ramsey 2.0, the scorer of many ridiculous goals and a ridiculous amount goals. They have Ozil, the assist guy. And Giroud in form. And a defence that has been the third best in the league so far. If they perform, they’ll win, and they probably will perform, so they’ll probably win. Logic, yeah.

To end on, something United fans won’t want to hear: if Arsenal play how they have been, and your team also play how they have been, then it really won’t matter whether Shinji Kagawa gets to play as a number ten.