Unai Emery had two free hits when he walked into the Arsenal job. His first two games of the season were Manchester City at home and Chelsea away.
Nobody expected anything from those two games – realistically speaking – considering that City were settled, successful and feared no team. And although Chelsea had a new coach of their own in Maurizio Sarri, Arsenal’s away form the season previous ensured expectations were low.
And so it proved, as Arsenal lost two from two. It gave a stark indication of Arsenal’s level in comparison to the rest of the top six and provided Emery with a chance to assess his players in the harshest possible light.
To be truthful, their away form is, at best, still hit and miss. The win at Huddersfield the other week was their first since November – when they beat Bournemouth – and performances against the top teams in their own back yards have been largely pitiful.
A draw against Manchester United in ordinary circumstances would mean a lot to Arsenal but it really was a game they should have won. It came right at the tail end of the Jose Mourinho regime and United’s upturn since then under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer demonstrates that they were really there for the taking that night.
Arsenal may as well not have shown up at Anfield for the loss to Liverpool, and the defeat to Manchester City at the Etihad wasn’t much better.
Taken as milestones to measure where Arsenal were under their new coach those matches threw up more questions than answers.
Some of the same old issues suffered under Arsene Wenger were apparent again under Emery. There was a brittleness, a softness, maybe something we’ve come to define as 'Arsenal-ness' about the way they played.
They didn’t compete well, they didn’t defend with any sense of urgency, they conceded dreadful goals and couldn’t capitalise on the good work they made themselves.
Questions were legitimately raised about where Arsenal were headed. They had an ideological coach who did not exactly have a fortune to spend on players last summer that could fit his ideology.
As such, he more or less had to make do with what he had. He ran – and continues to run – through formations at will, with no consideration placed on continuity of team shape or personnel.
While the squad might be good enough for a 22-game unbeaten run against assorted mediocrity, it would be sorely exposed once the pressure was on against a top team.
But there is a sense now that the wind might be changing. If there is no continuation in the selections or the shape, then Emery’s Arsenal is going to come to be defined by something else.
When you take away the team shape and strip out the players, what is left will be the definition of Emery’s Arsenal.
It will be a set of ideals and an expected standard that individuals must live up to. It will be a system that will increasingly depend less on the talent of the players within the squad – although you need enough quality to get you through the door in the first place – but on attitude, aptitude and focus.
So whether Arsenal play three at the back or drop Mesut Ozil, that will hardly matter. There will be a very new idea of Arsenal-ness – provided Emery gets to stick around – and that will form a large part of the new identity.
But first, results.
The big away games this season have been faced by Arsenal with a sense of trepidation. Anything less than a slapping would be seen as a bonus.
But the way the season has gone in the past few weeks has increased the sense that Arsenal should be looking at victory in Saturday's north London derby less like a bonus and more like a necessity.
Spurs are there for the taking. They have lost their last two matches in the league and the PR coming out of the club currently isn’t good. Mauricio Pochettino has conceded their title shot is over – however unlikely it may have been in the first place.
He has also stated that it might take five or 10 years for the club to win a trophy. That kind of talk makes sense from a long-term planning perspective and grounds expectation in reality, but it’s not what fans want to hear and might even have players questioning the club's ambition.
Moreover, Arsenal have a chance to move within a point of Spurs in the chase for the top four. Their three consecutive wins in the league combined with two losses on the trot for Spurs have altered the outlook of both teams dramatically.
Arsenal accrued their points against Huddersfield, Southampton and Bournemouth and so nine points might well have been the minimum expectation. But the fact is they got them.
They have put themselves into fight for the Champions League places and there will be no appetite for a club that shrugs and says “oh well” if they are defeated on Saturday.
The fans always believe that Arsenal are better than Spurs. There has always been an expectation – upended in recent seasons admittedly – that they would win the derbies and finish ahead of their rivals come the end of the season.
This is a chance for the coach and players to reawaken that confidence, that assuredness and give the fans the definitive proof that Arsenal are on their way back.
It will take a big effort; beating Spurs is not as easy as it used to be but there is no reason why Emery and Arsenal should not be looking at this game and thinking “Why not?”
He got his free hits against the rest of the top six away from home and the rebuilding exercise he has had to undertake – with a budget at the other end of the scale than the one he was working with at Paris St-Germain – gave both coach and players some wriggle room in legislating for the nature of the losses.
But it’s all on the line now. What a win and a positive run-in does for Emery in the long-run will be valuable. Talk is cheap. It’s time to prove that Emery’s Arsenal-ness has a purpose.