When this season started, or rather before the season started, Arsenal Football club was marked out as the team to loose their big four status.Less than two minutes into the first game, Fulham scores what is a reminder of last seasons ills, gifting teams the first goals. As the season continued Arsenal won a few games the critics where confounded, but was sure it wouldn’t last, wait till we play a big team they said, conveniently ignoring the fact that we had our best results last year against those teams. Suffice it to say two draws against LFC and ManU caused the bar to be moved again.

Let’s see how they handle losing a game.

Reasoning that Arsenals young bunch wouldn’t know how to handle losing, again forgetting that these are basically them same players who, lost a Champions league Finals, A Carling Cup Finals, and were out of all competitions by March last year.

Suffice it to say Arsenal’s next big test is tomorrow away to Aston Villa. An Aston Villa who is playing at home, full of confidence, on a 5 game winning streak, against an Arsenal side devoid of Hleb, Fabregas, and Van Persie. Playing a premiership game away from London for only the second time this season. Villa has shown that they can be hard to beat, in fact they are a mere 6 points behind us, this is not a bottom tier club. They’ve just spanked Blackburn who is very hard to beat and has already defeated chelsea.

Arsenal needs to be at the top of their game, cannot afford to underestimate Villa, and must put in a performance worthy of league leaders. Show that they can rebound well from defeat, show that they can win without Cesc, show that they have strength in depth. Then let’s see what will be the next test.