Cruising to Madrid and the Champions League quarterfinals off the back of a 7-1 win, where has this Arsenal been the last fortnight? Not playing PSV Eindhoven.

Before the rush to crown Ethan Nwaneri, to see signs of life from Martin Odegaard and to get carried away by the finishing composure of this team, just bear in mind there will be few if any opponents that Arsenal play between now and the end of the season that are quite as obliging as this one. Arsenal couldn’t score against West Ham because Graham Potter made reasonable adjustments to limit his opponent’s capabilities down the right flank. Nottingham Forest might have dropped a center back for the Gunners’ visit last week but theirs is a team defined by their out-of-possession work.

You wouldn’t say that about PSV. The writing was on the wall when Peter Bosz used his press conference yesterday to insist that, “I’m not going to change my playing style.” He might have claimed that his side would make adjustments. Beyond leaving even more space in central areas than they had through the league phase, it was not immediately apparent what those might be. The curious thing is this team had tried playing their normal game against Arsenal last season. It got them beaten by a four-goal margin.

Same again tonight. It is one thing to defend man-to-man against Go Ahead Eagles and Willem II — not necessarily an effective approach on recent evidence — another when every opposing player is bigger, stronger and quicker than you. Rarely has it been so easy for Odegaard or Declan Rice to breeze through midfield, no one even thinking to close them down until they hit the opposition penalty area.

With the ball, PSV’s insistence on setting pressing traps for themselves was impressive. A minute after Noa Lang had gotten them on the scoreboard — converting from the spot after a clumsy error by Thomas Partey — the hosts were trapped by their own corner flag on the right-hand side. It was all too easy for Rice to steal possession and drive a shot just wide.

It is not that PSV are a bad side per se. There were moments in attack where they really asked questions of David Raya’s ability to deal with crosses, where Gabriel had to defend with real muscularity. They could have had one or two more at the other end. They could have let in a fair few more too, the issues in their system only magnified by their failure to do the basics right. When Arsenal were attacking the left side of the box there was enough time for winger Lang and fullback Tyrell Malacia to switch positions so that the latter was defending the back post and Jurrien Timber. Neither moved.
Though there were questions of an offside in the build-up to the third, PSV had ample opportunities to defend with a bit more muscularity before Ryan Flamingo fell over rather than compete with Mikel Merino.

At least Arsenal took full advantage of PSV’s hospitality. Nwaneri in particular did not slow down for an instant once he was able to bend his cross into a dangerous area in the sixth minute. His poacher’s finish off a Myles Lewis-Skelly cutback was a reminder of why Mikel Arteta sees the center forward spot in the future of the 17-year-old, the third youngest scorer in Champions League history.

Odegaard took time to get going but when the space opened up for him in the second half, he exploited it to the fullest. A player who has sometimes taken too long this season to work the perfect shooting position for himself was willing to let fly when the margin was up to four, the ball bending enough that maybe Walter Benitez can feel some mitigation as to why he let in a shot that flew above him. By the end prime Odegaard was shining through, a gorgeous through ball with the outside of his boot slipping Riccardo Calafiori through for a striker’s finish.

And perhaps the greatest value of this result for Arsenal is that it offers everyone a chance to calm down, to not come up with mad solutions to intractable problems like putting Calafiori through the middle. Arteta can plan for a quarterfinal against Real Madrid or Atletico, by the time that rolls around in early April Gabriel Martinelli and Bukayo Saka might be back.

A chance to breathe, to plan ahead in the knowledge that there will be meaningful games into at least the penultimate month of the campaign. Not bad for what has occasionally felt like a season where everything that can go wrong has gone wrong in an increasingly cataclysmic fashion. Beyond that, what have we learned about Arsenal tonight? Only that they can still run up the goals when they play slower, technically inferior opposition who persevere with a system that does not remotely suit the needs of the occasion.