Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger believes the goal-power oozing from his team is helping them to bridge the chasm in quality that was evident when his Gunners lined up against the Premier League's elite teams last season.
Wenger's side struggled horribly against the teams occupying the top four positions in the Premier League last term, with the Arsenal boss conceding it was an area that needed to be improved if they were to have any chance of challenging for the title this campaign.
While ambitions to push for the biggest prize in the English game fell by the wayside some time ago, recent away victories against Manchester City, Manchester United [in the FA Cup quarterfinal] and Saturday's 4-1 defeat of Liverpool at their Emirates Stadium suggested Arsenal's difficulties against big name rivals may have been addressed to a degree, with Wenger keen to support that perception.
"There is something happening," Wenger suggested after his side's seventh straight Premier League victory. "You can see that. You can't cheat on that. You smell that we can score goals. If you look at the number of goals we've scored now [62 from 31 league games] and that's quite good with seven games to go.
"I'm a competitor and what that means is you have to go as high and as far as you can. If somebody was better than us, then well done, but we have to have given our best until the end and that's what I would like to do."
Wenger added that it has been a long time since he has had a front pairing as potent as Olivier Giroud and Alexis Sanchez, harking back to the era which saw his more recent Premier League title win in 2004.
"[Robert] Pires and [thierry] Henry, or maybe [Dennis] Bergkamp and Henry," he said. "That's a long time ago. But they're not bad names."
Arsenal moved into second place in the Premier League after their comprehensive dismantling of Liverpool's top-4 hopes on Saturday, with Wenger arguing that a run of injuries to key players in the first half of this season was more damaging to his side's ambitions than many of his critics appreciated.
"I think you also have to give credit to players who get less, such as [Francis] Coquelin," said the Gunners boss. "In the first half [against Liverpool], he broke up many attacks in a convincing way.
"Olivier Giroud has also surprised a lot of people. It shows that we missed him when he was out for four months. Laurent Koscielny was out for four months too. [Mesut] Ozil the same and basically they were all out together. You can see that that makes a difference to have them all back."
Wenger insisted that a belated push for the Premier League title is an unrealistic ambition given Chelsea's healthy lead at the top of the table, but a push for second place is very much in his sights.
"Let's give everything to do it and see what happens," he added. "It's too early [to talk about finishing second] with seven games to go but we're in a good position, with four at home and only three away.
"We're on a good run so I would say that it will be down to how we can maintain that focus and level of urgency between now and the end of the season.
"I'm old enough to know that things are never as comfortable as they look, but what is true is that it's in our hands. How well we deal with the situation now will be important."