Such are our standards these days that a draw at Arsenal was a disappointment, but the end result is that with over a third of the season gone, we sit in 3rd place only a point behind the Special One and his salivated over Spurs team.
The downside of Wednesday night's trip to the Emirates was that we once again dropped two points from a winning position and failed to put Arsenal to the sword after they had gone down to 10 men with half an hour still to play.
But it was still a good point, Arsenal were always going to be a tough nut to crack, only a few weeks ago they were only 4 points behind us, now they are still 10 adrift and we are in 3rd place, this was a poor result for us, but that is more about how far we have come anything else.
We started the game well and took a well deserved lead when Che Adams did great work to win the ball and put a slide rule pass through for Theo Walcott to finish with aplomb, but we couldn't turn domination into a second goal and that would make it difficult in the second half.
We knew that Arsenal would come out at the break fired up and they did, initially we looked like coping ok, but we went to sleep on 52 minutes, we allowed Aubameyang to ride far too many tackles and stood off him to allow him to curl the ball into the corner leaving McCarthy with no chance.
The blunt truth is we went to sleep and it would not be the last time that would happen in the game.
Just after the hour mark and the home side were down to 10 men, the reality though was that this didn't help us, they battened down the hatches got everyone behind the ball and the game would follow a similar pattern for the last half an hour, they defended in numbers and we tried our best to break them down, we almost did on a couple of occasions, the best chance of which was Nathan Redmond hitting the bar, but they were well organised and we didn't trouble the keeper half as much as we should have.
They nearly snatched it in injury time when we went to sleep again and let Holding have a free header which rebounded off the bar, that would have been a travesty, but it should serve as a reminder of why we are the side who have given away the most points from winning positions this season, we lose concentration too often at key moments.
That leaves us with a feeling of if only, points dropped in this game and indeed when we through away a 2-0 lead against Manchester United have cost us dearly, if we had stayed switched on just in these two games we would now sit top of the league, of course we can't turn back the clock but we can learn from our mistakes and last night showed that we are still a work in progress and still a player or two short of genuinely being able to stay the distance.
The good news is that we dominated last night without playing well, Danny Ings was off the pace for a lot of the game and at times he was far from alone, we are still architects of our own downfall too often, but then again that can be said about virtually every side this season.
But we can't complain about our League position, we will finish the first third of the season in 3rd place, the pundits salivate over Tottenham Hotspur & Mourinho, but we are only a point behind them, they talk of Leicester and their title challenge yet we are level pegging with them.
That's the way we need to keep it, let the pundits rave about about the other teams and we can quietly get on with our job.
But all the hard work of the last 13 games is no good if we don't keep it up, it is about maintaining that 4.5 points every 3 game average, over the last 3 games we have got 7 points, over the last 6 we have achieved 11 points so we are ahead of the game, but defeat to Manchester City on Saturday will make the last 3 games only 4 points and the last 6 only 8, that highlights how tight it is in the top 10 and how quickly things can change from being ahead of the game to playing catch up.
We start this weekend's fixtures in 3rd place, but we could end them as low as 8th, we need to just keep on grinding out the results and see where it takes us.
Some people would usually say that Xmas is the time to look at the table and that period sorts out the men from the boys, that is usually the case, but this season started a month late, we are 4 games behind schedule, when we have played Leicester on the weekend of 16th January that is the time we should be able to tell what we are contending for in the second half of the season.
We have given ourselves a great chance so far, let's not blow it and let's not get too carried away, as I say we are still a work in progress.