Villa victory one more step on hard road

GEOGRAPHICALLY speaking, Saturday’s trip to Birmingham was the least daunting of the three we face, in a week which is set to test the indefatigability of even the most devout amongst the Gooner faithful.

After our weekend jaunt to the Midlands, on the face of it, you’d have to be stark raving bonkers to follow this with a 500-600 mile round trip trek to Tyneside on today, only to repeat the journey at the crack of dawn for Sunday’s lunchtime KO on Teeside. Especially when all three matches are live on the box!

But football is a compulsive addiction much like any other, whereby eventually free will goes out of the window and frequent indulgence becomes almost obligatory. We grow more euphoric with each subsequent game, as the Gunners scale increasingly-higher peaks of passing perfection. With each three-point haul prolonging our sojourn at the Premiership summit, we dare to believe.