Published: 15 December, 2011
by ALLAN LEDWARD

ARSENAL boss Arsene Wenger believes this Sunday’s clash with Manchester City will indicate how far his side have come since their difficult start to the season.

The trip to Manchester will be the club’s first since the 8-2 loss to Manchester United at Old Trafford at the end of August.

Since that crushing defeat, Arsenal have turned their season around, becoming the first English club to reach this season’s Champions League knockout stage and enjoying a massive 5-3 Premier League win at Chelsea in October.

Saturday’s Robin van Persie-inspired win over Everton has now put the Gunners back in touch with the teams at the top of the Premier League.

But with two tough away games in four days coming up – a midweek away clash with Aston Villa follows hot on the heels of Sunday’s trip to Eastlands  – Wenger is not getting carried away. He said: “We started from so deep, that just to be here, nobody could have predicted that at the start of December we would be where we are now.

“We have to keep going because we are still very far away. We’ll try, we’ll try very hard. We have a big game on Sunday, that will be a big test for us.
“But we have a week to prepare and it will be a really good test to see where we are.”

Asked if, looking back to August, he had thought reaching the top four had been possible, Wenger said: “I hadn’t made that calculation at the time. The only thing you can do is focus on the next game and try to prepare the team well.

“When you look back to the start of the season, we looked much more solid.

“The spirit is there, the consistency is there – we will see how far we can go.”