By the time you read this certain Arsenal players may have already posted self-congratulatory photos online. Or maybe they will have deigned to wait for more significant triumphs – and this match can only have increased confidence of achieving such conquests. Better times lie ahead for Arsène Wenger’s team.  How much better will depend partially on the extent to which the imminent signing of Gabriel Paulista – and perhaps of the defensive midfielder for whom Arsenal fans crave – helps solidify a side whose flimsiness was exposed by a side in the bottom half of the Championship, but there is no doubt that Arsenal are amassing a formidable attacking armoury for the second half of the season.  Already the third highest-scorers in the Premier League this term, Arsenal blasted out a warning here that their firepower is enhanced by the returns of Theo Walcott and Mesut Özil. With Tomas Rosicky twinkling anew, the team’s two most dangerous players so far this season – Alexis Sánchez and Santi Cazorla – resting on the bench, and Danny Welbeck and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain nearing full fitness, Wenger admits he has an unprecedented array of attacking options. “Never at this stage of the season,” Wenger replied afterwards when asked whether he had ever had more ample forward permutations. “Last year we lost many players in January, this year they are coming back.”  Walcott’s return proved especially welcome. The winger was just a slightly sad figure on the screen of Carl Jenkinson’s phone when Arsenal players cavorted around Wembley in May after the FA Cup final. Jenkinson’s reflex to make a video call from the pitch to his injured team-mate, who had watched the match from home as he convalesced from knee ligament damage, spoke volumes of the forward’s popularity in the squad but here Walcott used his first start in over a year to demonstrate his importance as a player.  Walcott and Özil are very different players but share a peculiar kinship insofar as both are among the Gunners who have most divided Arsenal fans in recent years. Both have at various times been seen, as much as the flimsy defence, as symbols of the latter part of Wenger’s reign, players with obvious qualities undermined by baffling, infuriating failings.  Walcott was the cheetah-legged, headless chicken of a winger about whom Chris Waddle observed back in 2010: “let’s be honest, he doesn’t have a football brain”. It seemed preposterous that a player plucked from the most intelligent footballing nursery in the country, Southampton, to further his education with the doyen of Premier League managerial sophisticates, could so frequently make the wrong decision on the pitch, but he did. However Walcott had exhibited proof of progression before damaging his knee – his movement had grown shrewder, his passing more deliberate and his finishing far less forgiving – and against Brighton it did not take long for the 25-year-old to re-assert his value to Arsenal.  His first touch did not bode well – he fell over as he tried to collect a pass from Calum Chambers – but his very next ones were sumptuous. Less than 90 seconds into the game Chambers burst down the right and served Walcott again and this time the forward, who had discreetly eluded Lewis Dunk as he drifted into the box, received the pass and fired expertly into the far corner of the net.  He oozed savviness throughout, once when catching Brighton out with a quickly-taken corner but mostly with his clever movement, often exchanging positions with Olivier Giroud as the fluidity of Arsenal’s attacking overwhelmed the home side in the first half. And he has not lost any of his speed, as he showed when cruising from his own box to the opposing one as he led a first-half counter-attack that ended with a rare mistimed pass.  On the other hand, Özil is a wonderfully sleek and wily creature but the deterioration in his form before his injury in October raised heckles that he is too weak-willed to survive in the Premier League jungle. The German has evidently spent much of his time away from the pitch buffing up in the gym but he still has a way to go before he convinces that he is a proper warrior. He took his goal beautifully in the 24th minute but six minutes later the flippant pass with which he gave the ball away to Danny Holla, followed by a laughably half-hearted attempt to regain it, suggested that he, unlike Cazorla for instance, has not yet developed into a player who can be trusted to exert a constant influence.  Wenger did not feel the need to introduce Cazorla but he did throw on Sánchez to show Özil the sort of dynamism to strive for. The Brighton manager. Chris Hughton, could only express his admiration for his counterpart’s options. “The difference between Arsenal now and a couple of years ago is that when they made changes then, it would probably have been to bring in young players – albeit quality ones – but now they have the depth of squad to bring on players of vast experience. They’ve certainly got a squad to cope with what they have to.”
Arsène Wenger can justifiably look forward to the coming months with optimism as two of his key players scored on their return to action against Brighton