Didn’t see it? Now Wenger doesn’t even want to remember thriller at Chelsea

The Gunners’ renaissance hit a new peak on Saturday when they stunned Chelsea with a 5-3 victory at Stamford Bridge.

They have now won eight of their last nine games and are within three points of the Barclays Premier League top four after recovering from a dreadful start.

Wenger’s men will have all but secured qualification from Champions League Group F if they beat Marseille and Olympiacos fail to beat Borussia Dortmund in Germany.

However, despite Saturday’s dazzling win – which came in front of new majority shareholder Stan Kroenke – Wenger is reluctant to let his team get carried away and has called on his young squad to show they can produce that type of performance on a regular basis.

“We have now to forget about Chelsea, carry on, and prove that we can keep doing the job,” Wenger said.

“We want just to qualify. Our job is to forget about the last game, take the positives out of it, and focus on the next one just as we had to do when we lost 8-2 to Manchester United.”

The win at Stamford Bridge, which came thanks partly due to a stunning hat-trick from Robin van Persie, put Arsenal within seven points of second-placed Manchester United, leading some to suggest the Gunners can now start calling themselves serious title challengers again despite their poor start.

The Arsenal boss, perhaps mindful of how poorly his team played early on this season, played down those expectations, however, saying: “We need much more consistency in our results before we claim that (they are title contenders).

“We are closer to the Champions League places now. The next step is to come back closer to the top four of the league before we do that. It’s our deep desire (to challenge for the title), but we need some time to get back in a stronger position before we claim that.

“We are in October and we still have a lot of margin to improve.”

Wenger has been boosted by the return of key players from injury recently, most notably Thomas Vermaelen, who could make his first start in over two months tonight.

Aaron Ramsey scored a stoppage-time winner when Arsenal and Marseille met in the reverse fixture three weeks ago.

Chelsea look set to make a raft of changes for tonight’s fourth Group E game against Genk when a victory could be enough to seal their qualification for the knockout phase.

There will be no game time for Didier Drogba, who has undergone surgery during his three-game domestic suspension to remove screws from the arm he fractured at last year’s World Cup.

John Obi Mikel also did not travel, with manager Andre Villas-Boas opting to rest the midfielder.

Villas-Boas last night refused to confirm whether John Terry would start the game with Genk.

Terry travelled to Belgium but was rested for the game against the same opponents two weeks ago and the same could happen again amid the racism probe faced by the England captain.

Chelsea refused to allow questions about the inquiry at last night’s press conference ahead of their Champions League game, insisting they had already said everything they wanted to on the matter.

Branislav Ivanovic last night said Villas-Boas would have been within his rights to read the riot act to his players after Saturday.

Blues boss Villas-Boas denied delivering a “rant” to his squad during Sunday’s post-mortem of the Arsenal game but Ivanovic would not have complained had he done so.

The Serbian, who partnered Terry in the heart of Chelsea’s defence at the weekend, said the players had already watched a re-run of the match.

“We didn’t play like we should,” he said.

“It was a tough game and I think there were a lot of reasons for the manager to be angry, but not only the manager.

“The whole team were angry and we have to show a reaction, to show character, and change things in our side for us.”