It wasn’t terribly pretty or fluent, but Arsenal’s win on the opening day at Manchester United brought to mind what they say in golf – there are no pictures on scorecards and no greater irrelevance than the detail of how a ball found the hole.
For Mikel Arteta, there would be a degree of justification if he wished to see Sunday’s 1-0 victory in much the same way, though it wouldn’t necessarily be helpful.