Chelsea 3 Arsenal 5: Warning shot from Walcott as Gunners rip Blues

Arsenal suffered a wretched start to their season when they lost three of their opening four games – a run which led some sections of the Arsenal support to call for manager Arsene Wenger’s head.

The Frenchman has steered the club up the Barclays Premier League table in recent weeks, however, and the Gunners sit just three points off the Champions League places after winning eight of their last nine games.

The high point of their run came on Saturday when strikes from Walcott, Andre Santos and a hat-trick from Robin van Persie stunned Andre Villas-Boas’s team in West London.

With games against West Brom, Fulham, Norwich and Wigan ahead, Arsenal look set to continue their ascent, and the 22-year-old has warned the Gunners are now back to their irresistible best.

He said: “We are not looking too far ahead. We don’t want to say where we’re going to finish at the end of the season, but the way we’re playing at this moment in time we believe we can beat anyone.

“We’re enjoying our football, our run is great now and we’re just going to keep on continuing that... everyone is buzzing at the moment.

“We were disappointed to go 2-1 down just before half-time, but before that we were playing some great football.

“It seemed that every time we went forward it looked like we were going to score and it could have been 8-7. It was just one of those crazy games that I’ll never forget.”

After seeing Samir Nasri and Cesc Fabregas depart this summer, Wenger’s choice of replacements hardly filled Arsenal fans with optimism.

But just a few days after the Gunners boss launched an impassioned speech at the club’s AGM pleading with Gunners supporters to trust his transfer policy, newcomers Gervinho and Santos excelled at Stamford Bridge.

Walcott thinks the new arrivals have started to settle in properly, helping the club climb the table.

He said: “We have got some absolute characters in that dressing room and Andre Santos was absolutely brilliant. He looks like he has been in the Premier League for many years.

“We have the right balance between youth and experience now and we’ve got a lot players coming back from injury too.”

Walcott also paid tribute to van Persie, whose hat-trick took his Arsenal goal tally to 12 goals this season.

“Robin’s form is fantastic. It makes our job much easier when he plays like that,” Walcott said.

“I have been playing alongside him for many years. It’s nice to see a fit Robin. He is enjoying playing his football, he is enjoying scoring, he is enjoying getting other people involved.

“He is a great leader, a great captain. He is very passionate and on the pitch it showed. We never had a fit Robin throughout the whole season. Hopefully he can look after himself and we can have a run until the end of the year.”

Despite van Persie’s heroics, Walcott’s goal was arguably the best of the match.

With the score at 2-2, he picked himself up after slipping in a tackle and muscled his way past three Chelsea players before driving past Petr Cech.

“When you’re confident you think you can do anything,” Walcott said.

“I managed to lose my balance but get up quite quickly. If I hadn’t scored Aaron (Ramsey) would have killed me because he was free.

“It (scoring) is something I bring to the game and I also try to fulfil my defensive duties. But it’s not just me, it’s the whole team - they were all great.”

Chelsea manager Villas-Boas refused to panic about the threat of a second successive mid-season slump after watching his defence ripped apart by Arsenal.

The Blues conceded five goals at home for the first time in 22 years and along with the 1-0 loss at QPR eight days ago they have suffered back-to-back league defeats for the first time since they lost three out of four at almost the same point last season.

That prompted their worst run in the league for almost 15 years, something from which they ultimately never recovered as they finished the campaign empty-handed.

Avoiding a repeat could prove even more difficult this season as, unlike last term when Chelsea looked like running away with the title, they have always been playing catch-up under Villas-Boas thanks to the near-perfect form of Manchester City. But the man who was headhunted by Roman Abramovich following the sacking of Carlo Ancelotti had no fears about his side going into meltdown this time round.

“Last year, we were exactly in the opposite situation,” Villas-Boas said. “I think, to be fair, it was not on this date that things changed –it was late November.

“But the nature of the Premier League is exactly this, games that are so open like this between top teams and a Premier League that can dramatically change.

“Last year was the case on the wrong side for us and we have to continue to believe that this year, it will be on the good side for us.”

Last Tuesday, the Football Association launched an investigation into allegations Terry racially abused Anton Ferdinand at QPR.

Despite the claims, which the 30-year-old denies, Terry led his team out against the Gunners and put his team 2-1 up at half-time after van Persie had equalised Frank Lampard’s opener.

But the England skipper was humiliated five minutes before time when he slipped attempting to pick up a routine back pass from Florent Malouda, and van Persie raced through to beat Petr Cech to make it 4-3.

The Dutchman clinched his hat-trick in injury time to pile further woe on Terry and the West London club.