As the last few seconds of this game played out, as Arsenal knocked the ball around without inhibition and Newcastle chased them without conviction, a strange and discomfiting sensation seemed to descend on the Emirates Stadium. You might call it, for want of a better word, satisfaction. Not happiness, as such: Arsenal don’t really do happiness. But the soft and sleepy contentment of a game well won, an afternoon without qualms or catastrophic injuries or late drama or existential angst: this was the unfamiliar part.

You could legitimately point out that things have gotten pretty rough for Arsenal fans when the yardstick of a successful afternoon is one not spent screaming. But as ever in these faltering early days of the Mikel Arteta era, you have to take your little triumphs where you can find them.

This was certainly one: a victory secured with class and brass, gilded by two late strikes from Mesut Özil and Alexandre Lacazette that elevated this from functional win to rout. A victory with caveats too, to be sure: how Bernd Leno managed to emerge with a clean sheet is a question that will flummox the statisticians of the future. Indeed, for all their dominance Arsenal occasionally did their level best to make Newcastle look like a functional attacking side. Had Steve Bruce’s team been a little more clinical, particularly in the first 20 minutes when terms were still being negotiated, it might have been a different game entirely. By the time they threatened again, around an hour in, Arsenal were already 2-0 up through Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Nicolas Pépé, and largely safe.

Pépé was a treat to watch. It was his precise cross that set up Aubameyang’s opening goal, and his own strike three minutes later was fitting reward for a pleasingly decisive performance: sharp, unpredictable, productive. There are plenty of Arsenal fans who had already written him off after a disappointing half-season: in and out of the side, weighed down by his £72m price tag and the pressure of adapting to a new league and a dysfunctional team. But there’s a proper player in there, and Arteta seems to recognise as much.

“We just need consistency from him,” Arteta said. “The way he applied himself defensively as well, he was doing things he didn’t do in the past. He made the difference today.”

As for Newcastle, there will be a few eyebrows raised at their late collapse, one in which their hard-won reputation for shape and solidity seemed to evaporate before our eyes. After a strong first half, they looked paralysed by caution in the second: consumed not by what they could get but by what they could get away with. The new wing-backs Valentino Lazaro and Danny Rose began well but looked dangerously exposed as the game went on. Bruce has staked his job and Newcastle’s survival on their ability to make things tough for the opposition. This, a meek and tired capitulation after a break of 12 days, did not bode well.

And yet it was Newcastle who began this game by far the stronger: parrying Arsenal’s thrusts with ease, passing through the press, making the most of their infrequent spells of possession. With Miguel Almirón barracking his way up the right wing and Allan Saint-Maximin weaving his sorcery on the left, the early chances fell to the visitors. Lazaro had a shot blocked in the fifth minute. Sean Longstaff’s volley following an immaculately worked set-piece was almost deflected past a scrambling Leno. Joelinton stabbed just wide from six yards.

Joelinton reacts after missing a chance. Photograph: Charlotte Wilson/Offside/Offside via Getty Images

But Arsenal finished the first half well, portending their clinical three‑minute burst near the start of the second. Eddie Nketiah, unexpectedly given the job of leading the line, began to find little pockets of space. On 53 minutes, Newcastle allowed Pépé plenty of time to pick a cross. Aubameyang placed his header well, sending it back across Martin Dubravka.

Suitably relaxed, Arsenal loosened their ties and played a few shots. Pépé struck next, finishing from close range after an outrageous bit of skill from Bukayo Saka on the left. And though Newcastle briefly threatened to make the game interesting – Ciaran Clark missing from unmissable range, Saint-Maximin clattering the post – it was Arsenal who provided the final flourish. In the 90th minute, Lacazette squared for Özil. Perhaps through force of habit, Özil’s shot was more of a pass, a delicate lay-off that Dubravka could have trapped with his foot. Instead it bobbled out of his grasp and into the net.

Lacazette brought the curtain down, smashing home Pépé’s cross after a lovely through ball from Joe Willock. Four-nil, and if there was any lingering surprise at full-time, it was not merely that Arsenal could still win at all, but that they could win like this. This was, if you can believe it, their first home win against a team ranked lower than them since October. And so it may only have been three points. But in the final reckoning, this may well be the game when Arsenal started to feel like a big club again.