You’d be forgiven if you watched all of Arsenal’s matches in August and concluded that the Gunners had no idea what they were doing defensively. Three sloppy goals against Leicester, getting sliced open with ease at Stoke and completely falling apart against Liverpool left Arsenal with eight goals conceded in three games.

In September, Arsenal did a lot better, only letting in three goals, all of which were in the Europa League. In particular, Arsenal kept a clean sheet against Chelsea, and considering Ospina was up to his usual tricks in the Europa League matches you can’t ask for too much more really.

Some would argue Wenger took a bit of a gamble playing Joe Willock, Ainsley Maitland-Niles and Reiss Nelson against BATE Borisov, with a bench of Matt Macey, Marcus McGuane, Charlie Gilmour, Eddie Nketiah, Vlad Dragomir, Josh Dasilva and Chuba Akpom.

But if it was a gamble, it paid off, as four teenagers and 20-year-old Maitland-Niles helped Arsenal to a 4-2 win in Belarus. It wasn’t as comfortable as maybe it should’ve been, but overall the Gunners looked very good for large parts of the game despite the changes.

I already mentioned that Chelsea game above, but it deserves another shout out, because the difference between the performance at Stamford Bridge and the way the team played at Anfield was just so massive.

When the Gunners go to the big grounds with more of a plan than just passing the opposition to death, they can get results, and were unlucky not to win against Chelsea in the end. The problem is they often don’t seem to do so.

Three players whom everyone was writing off at the start of the month began to show some of their best form in September. Ramsey and Bellerín were particularly impressive against Chelsea, but both have given fans many more reasons to be happy in all their recent matches.

Meanwhile, Jack Wilshere has been facing a poorer standard of opposition, but in my opinion he has easily been one of the best players on the pitch on every occasion.

If all three can do the same again in October, it’ll take the pressure off some of Arsenal’s other star players, and the whole team should do better.

We didn’t get to see much of them in August, as it was still early days for the pair then, which to be fair it still is now. However, in September both players started to come into their own. Lacazette got three goals in three games, winning the points against West Brom and securing the result against Bournemouth.

Kolašinac’s influence can’t be as easily measured in one or two stats (although he did also score and assist). But the Bosnian was fantastic, exciting going forward, strong defensively and playing on from potential leg-breakers.

More of the same from those two in October, please.