I support a one-man team. All you need to know about Arsenal, which has won five Premier League matches in a row, and has dragged itself all the way from 19th after three matches up to seventh, level on points with Chelsea and Liverpool above them, is defined by the winning goal Robin van Persie scored in Saturday’s match at Norwich. Aaron Ramsey won the ball in midfield and was tripped, ending up on his stomach. Alex Song, who had an otherwise desultory, wasteful match, hurdled the prone Ramsey and advanced rapidly. He had Gervinho, streaking alone on the left, and van Persie, between two defenders on the right. He twitched, almost passing the ball to Gervinho, the lively Ivoirian who had already missed three sitters in the match, then changed his tune, rotated his body to pick out van Persie, who touched once, ran into space, and on his second touch lifted the ball over John Ruddy with his right foot, his weaker one, and just inside the near post.

It was the 31st goal van Persie has scored in 30 Premier League matches in 2011, and put him in some heady company: he joined Alan Shearer and Thierry Henry as the only two players to accomplish the feat in the Premier League era. Arsenal still has seven league matches in the calendar year for van Persie to improve upon his total.

I guess it makes sense to compare van Persie’s feat with that of Henry, his club predecessor (though not, as rumored, his on-loan strike partner). Henry accomplished the feat with a far better team, surrounded by stars such as Dennis Bergkamp, Freddie Ljungberg, Patrick Vieira and the like. Van Persie, now that Cesc Fàbregas and Samir Nasri have had their demands for departure acceeded to, is truly a one-man show. He takes the left-footed inswinging corners, he takes almost all free kicks in scoring range and, of course, he is the penalty taker. But he’s even more than that.

Van Persie’s best position is as deep-lying center forward (the so-called false 9). He is the best assist man on a team with almost no one else capable of scoring. In 12 league matches, he has a league-best 13 goals. The team as a whole has scored a healthy 25 goals (while conceding a most unhealthy 22), so the rest of Arsenal’s players have scored a total of 12 goals, and it has taken nine players to amass them. None has more than two.

Since Henry’s departure, Arsenal has gone from yearly title contender to a fringe Champions League entrant (having had to participate in the playoff round in two of the last three seasons). In the past few years, Arsenal has been a team in which pretty much one player shines at a time. Two seasons ago, Fàbregas emerged as a complete player, and one who scored, even in open play. After his injury in a Champions League quarterfinal loss to Barcelona two seasons ago, he was then eclipsed by Nasri, who went from talented underachiever to the man who carried the team to a close second in December, while van Persie recuperated from a bad ankle injury picked up on international duty. But once the calendar turned to 2011, the team belonged to van Persie. Nasri went off the boil, and Fàbregas only scored from the penalty spot. Andrey Arshavin, who so memorably announced his arrival at Arsenal with a four-goal outburst at Liverpool in 2009, seemed to forget how to put the ball into the net.

Is van Persie the best striker in the world? No, there’s still the matter of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo in Spain, and Mario Gomez is in scintillating form, and surrounded by excellent support, at Bayern Munich. But if one is being honest, van Persie belongs in the conversation.

And it is absolutely beyond question that as far as the talents of his teammates, and their ability to get him the ball, van Persie does more with less than any of the other world-class strikers named here. No Xavi, Özil or Ribéry for support for van Persie. In fact, it’s astonishing that van Persie is not routinely double-marked or manhandled. He does have a history of fragility.

Now that Arsenal are squarely back in the competition for next year’s Champions League, and are a point from qualifying for this season’s knockout round, I worry that they are one knock away from mediocrity. But until that knock comes, I am going to enjoy the ride.

Paul Landaw was an exchange student in Ireland in 1978-79, when Arsenal was known as “the Irish team” because it featured three Republic of Ireland and three Northern Ireland internationals, and, amazingly, no Frenchmen. He comments frequently on the Goal blog from his home in Bellerose Terrace, Queens, where on a quiet weekday you can hear the trumpeter’s call to the post at Belmont Park.