Arsenal 1-0 Everton

And so it was (and in hindsight, so it was always going to be) that on Arsenal's 125th birthday party the score was one-nil to the Arsenal. That was a nice touch, eh?

To top it off, it wasn't just any old bog standard, common-or-garden winning goal, it was a veritable van Persie humdinger; a sumptuous volley right up there in execution with the one he scissored in all those years ago at the Valley.

So Friday rolls round again in a flash, apparently seven days after it last did. That doesn't feel quite possible.

Olympiacos on Tuesday started badly and never really picked up, but if you haven't yet filed that one away under ‘nothing to dwell too much on' then I shall politely recommend that you do.

Admission: Tuesday came and went and passed me by entirely. For me, it's a rarety for me not to follow a game in some way. I go to most home games, and watch or listen to most of the others. Those matches I can't go to, see or hear I will follow via Twitter etc, as many of us do. But on Tuesday, as the match kicked off, I was out meeting football-agnostic friends (they do exist, it seems) in a pub with pleasant steak and kidney pies but no telly, and although I briefly toyed with the time-honoured gadget switch-off so I could play the match as live when I got in, I knew my resolve wouldn't last and sure enough, it didn't.