Seven reasons Arsenal have the depth to win a trophy

Arsene Wenger talks to his players during an Arsenal training session ahead of their Champions League Group F match against Napoli at London Colney on September 30, 2013 in St Albans, England. (Getty Images)

Watching Arsenal’s insanely good performance against Napoli on Tuesday filled me with a great sense of belief, even more than I already had.

I’ve spoken about the depth in the squad before and the quality I believe this team possesses but Tuesday night took what I previously believed and upped the ante.

There are seven reasons I believe Arsenal to have the required depth to win something this year and collectively they are known as the subs bench.

Arsenal have been proving all season, bar Aston Villa, that this squad is special and have the ability to beat top teams. Some would have you believe that Arsenal have not faced a decent side yet but that would be derogatory about Spurs, Napoli and Marseille.

The people who would have you believe that we haven’t faced a decent team yet are what I like to call the moaners, the doubters, the never happy crew and they are the same people who spent all summer bleating about how awesome Spurs are and how this is the year we will finally fall behind them because of weak management.

Spurs are a decent side and yes, to respond to their other argument, they have had to bed in a lot of players but look at where they are in the league, it’s not like they are struggling at the wrong end of the league. They are a top side and we beat them.

Marseille are a top side too and we beat them as well.

Napoli are an incredible side and we made them look very average. Not because they were off the pace or had players missing but because of our fight, desire, athleticism, talent and mentality. We played, we pushed, we passed and we battled. We showed passion, strength, technique and, most importantly, belief.

The great thing about Tuesday is not that we showed all of this but we showed it with a lot of senior and first-team players missing.

Our subs bench when all are fit could pick seven players from:

Luckasz Fabianski, Emiliano Viviano, Thomas Vermaelen, Nacho Monreal, Carl Jenkinson, Mikel Arteta, Jack Wilshere, Abou Diaby, Tomas Rosicky, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Lukas Podolski.

Sure they might not all be fit now but the crucial point is that they are all coming back to fitness around the time when most are predicting we will have our toughest run of opponents to date this season.

Not having them earlier in the season is completely irrelevant as we have picked up the points that matter and can even write off the Villa game as we are already top of the table. Of course it would be nice to have those three points but would we be where we are if we did? Maybe not.

Maybe the Villa result gave the players a wakeup call and a desire to not be in that position again that has seen this incredible form of late (although this form technically stretches back to early 2013). Maybe beating us at home gave Villa the belief to beat Manchester City. Maybe that horrible result has been a blessing in disguise. Maybe that result knocked us down and afforded us the opportunity to build ourselves up again.

There are seven reasons we could win something this year and we call it the subs bench and what a subs bench we could have.