There will be plenty of debate and discussion this Saturday evening, in living rooms, on phone-ins and in 140-character bursts about whether Arsenal can genuinely challenge for the Premier League this season.
There will be those optimists who will point to this rampant performance as evidence that everything is finally falling into place and Arsene Wenger’s fourth great team will beat all-challengers over the next 10 months.
And there will be an equal number of Gunners who will simply refuse to let themselves get carried away on the back of one, albeit outstanding, pre-season result.
Time will tell, but there can be no doubt that Arsenal are a very exciting proposition once more. Here, with six goals from six different goalscorers, they turned what should have been a well-matched encounter with Lyon into a training ground game of attack-vs-defence.
With a breath-taking burst of four goals in nine dizzying first-half minutes – from Olivier Giroud, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Alex Iwobi and Aaron Ramsey – they had Lyon in retreat.
Mesut Ozil, who had set-up two of those four goals, claimed one of his own after the break, by which time Arsenal could be pretty much certain they will be lifting the Emirates Cup on Sunday afternoon.
By the time Santi Cazorla hit a free-kick underneath a leaping Lyon wall for 6-0 with five minutes left, the Ligue 1 side had given up.
Given that an additional point is awarded for each goal scored, a clever ploy from the organisers to pep up often-anodyne pre-season fixtures, Arsenal would be hard-pressed not to win this trophy for the fourth time.
The carnage began on 29 minutes. Arsenal had enjoyed a few chances – notably when Giroud looped a header over the crossbar – but there was no indication of what was to follow.
Indeed, the Emirates crowd had started a Mexican wave about 25 minutes in, apparently unimpressed by the standard of entertainment. Soon they would all be on their feet with arms aloft.
Mesut Ozil’s free-kick from wide right soared into the penalty box and Lyon’s defence showed little interest in dealing with it, allowing Giroud to wriggle loose and loop a header beyond Anthony Lopes.
Replays showed it actually went in off his left shoulder but the French hotshot did well to break clear considering his shirt was practically being ripped from his back by the overpowered Corentin Tolisso.
Giroud was the architect for the second, collecting the ball in central midfield and glancing up to see Oxlade-Chamberlain haring away to his right. After a momentary pause, the ball was with the England flyer, who simply blew away the Lyon defence. His low finish to the far post was a study in perfect placement.
The crowd had barely re-taken their seats before Iwobi added the third. The Lagos-born academy star, who is the nephew of Nigerian legend Jay-Jay Okocha, had looked sharp from the outset and thoroughly deserved his goal, a rising left-footed finish after Ramsey rolled him in.
Iwobi was denied his second goal on Arsenal’s next forward thrust when flagged offside as he met Ozil’s free-kick, but the gold-shirted Gunners were soon celebrating again.
Ozil marauded through the shell-shocked Lyon defence down the left and played a straightforward ball into Ramsey, who knocked it home off the post.
The start of the second-half didn’t exactly suggest a miraculous comeback. Ramsey set Oxlade-Chamberlain into a country acre of space but he opted this time to drift inside and allowed Mehdi Zeffane to block.
Lyon hadn’t attacked since an early chance when their in-demand striker Alexandre Lacazette flicked a ball through to Clinton N’Jie, whose fierce shot was blocked by goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez, who was preferred to new boy Petr Cech.