The best thing we can really say about December is that it wasn’t November.

In fact, while we managed to get through the dreaded November with zero defeats, the same cannot be said for the last month of 2016.

It started off well enough – the 5-1 spanking of West Ham at the London Stadium followed by a 4-1 win against Basel in Switzerland. A 3-1 win over Stoke got us to mid-month with things looking rosy.

And then we went to Everton.

And Manchester.

Back to winning ways against West Brom on Boxing Day, it was certainly not a performance that had fans excited with the prospect of catching Chelsea who are nine points ahead of us at the time of writing (it could be 12 by the time we kick-off).

I missed a large portion of December thanks to surgery at the start of the month. Well, I didn’t so much miss it as it passed by in a huge drug-fuelled haze that made everything seem a lot better. It’s how I was able to remain perfectly calm after the Everton and City games while the rest of the Arsenal world seemed intent on burning itself to the ground.

Three weeks on and the drugs are almost done. Let’s hope the same can be said for Arsenal’s seemingly never-ending supply of stupid pills.

That we finish December, and 2016, in fourth place sums everything up, really.