Robin Van Persie could not be happier. Well, almost. After a broken metatarsal he is back playing football, back in supreme form and finding the August rush of matches, tiring to others, “fantastic”. His football club, he is fervently certain, can surprise England by becoming champions again. Best of all, at the end of yesterday’s game, there was a reunion with the love of his life. Shaqueel, Van Persie’s son, is 10 months old. “I haven’t seen him for a week because I was gone with the national team and then Arsenal,” he beams. “I can play with him again.”

His sky is nearly cloudless. Nearly. During a laugh-laden hour in Van Persie’s intelligent company, one thing makes smiles disappear. For this strong-minded son of two artists, it is a matter involving aesthetics, honesty and respect. He has to speak out. “I can get quite mad about it,” he says.

He is talking about what he feels was rough treatment at the hands, or rather boots, of Blackburn at Ewood Park last Sunday. In a 1-1 draw that was spiteful even by the standards of recent games between the sides, Ryan Nelsen was sent off and seven players were booked, three from Blackburn, four from Arsenal including Van Persie. Cesc Fabregas claimed that an opponent trod on his neck while he lay prone after a challenge. Arsène Wenger’s assertion that Blackburn had shown a “desire for violence” and been “overphysical” was rubbished by Mark Hughes and later ridiculed by Alan Hansen, providing analysis on the BBC.

Van Persie, accused in a counterclaim by Hughes of committing the worst foul of the game, on Stephen Warnock, is still seething. “It [Blackburn’s tactics] is nothing to do with football. It’s about getting us out of our way of playing football. And if you do those things, you can expect a reaction. I’m watching Match of the Day, which I think is a fantastic programme . . . and I don’t think it’s honest to laugh at the boss and say, ‘Oh yeah, Arsenal are always the same, they always complain’. That’s not honest,” he says.

“We’re not being complainers, because they [Blackburn] did it. If you cross the border against us, we will react, no? I think the boss has the right to tell the cameras about it, to say something to the people back home. It’s not honest to say, ‘Arsenal is always moaning’.”

Get stuck in against Arsenal: they can’t cope with the physical stuff. It is an idea repeated so often as to have become a cliche. What deepens Van Persie’s resentment is his contention that not only is this truism false, but it also came straight from the television studios. “Two or three people said it on TV and suddenly everyone’s thinking, ‘That’s the way to beat Arsenal’,” he says. “It’s not. Personally I will never give in to it.

“Fabregas, he’s small, but he goes into battle. It’s the same for [Mathieu] Flamini. Same for Gilberto [Silva]. If you look at us, I think this idea is based on nothing more than air.”

Back to Blackburn. Under Hughes they have become Arsenal’s bogey team but also their bogeymen, stretching back to an FA Cup semi-final in 2005 in which Van Persie was the victim of what seemed a deliberate forearm smash by Andy Todd. The Dutchman hit back with two gorgeous goals then, and he is not going to be supine now. “In our first week of games Fulham played hard against us, but fair. Sparta Prague played hard and sometimes unfair. Blackburn, most of the time, didn’t play hard, they just kicked.

“I want to say one thing about that. However you play, you have to always respect each other. Blackburn didn’t do that. I’m angry about it, still, because I think football’s a man’s sport. You have to be tough, yes, but you have to play fairly.

“If you play hard against us, no problem, no problem at all. But any team will get upset if you cross the border against them, and not accidentally, just for fun. If someone’s stamping into your neck, you have to react, because if you don’t defend yourself, you are weak and it will happen again.”

There is a verbal element to Blackburn’s approach that he also dislikes, and, although there is no naming of names, more than a whiff of Robert James Savage is left by what he says next. “One thing I’m thinking is, ‘I will never give up’,” Van Persie asserts. “I will never give up to certain people who don’t respect football. Because if you’re playing a game and you’re speaking for 85 minutes, you don’t have respect for the game. It’s just a joke. Every action you make, moaning. Talking to the ref. I say play the game. Football is a beautiful game. Play it properly.”

He is just 24, yet Van Persie was the third-oldest of the outfield players with whom Arsenal finished the Blackburn match and he has just been involved in launching a club appeal on behalf of TreeHouse, an autism charity founded by the author Nick Hornby.

His abilities, showcased by strikes in Arsenal’s first two Premier League games and the sweetest goal in preseason against Inter Milan, also set him apart. From being an errant prodigy, chastised by Wenger for indiscipline, he has become Arsenal’s figurehead in the postThierry Henry era, but he has not, as some would have it, “grown up” all of a sudden. For two years his disciplinary record has been admirable, and he was Arsenal’s top scorer last season despite missing the rest of the campaign after breaking his foot (in the act of scoring) against Manchester United in January.

“I don’t see myself as a talent any more. I have to produce,” he says. “That stage, when I was a young player allowed to make mistakes, has been gone for a long time. Now people are saying: ‘Thierry’s gone, you have to do this and that’, but it will only block you if you try to change. This is a team sport and it’s about staying close to your own character. I’m not Thierry.

“In football it happens that big players leave. It’s not the case that because of Thierry’s departure I have to take more responsibility. If I want to develop, I have to take more responsibility anyway, in every training session, every game, every week, every month.

“Of course when Thierry played he got the most attention, because he was fantastic and it’s normal that people are looking and saying, ‘Who’s going to score this season? Ah, Robin’. But everyone has to take responsibility and I’m just part of it. I spoke to a younger guy in our team. I’m not going to say his name, but I think he had the wrong idea of what the Premier League is. I think you have to experience the Premier League to know how difficult it can be.”

Some believe Henry was so bright a star that teammates could get dazzled; they believe that Arsenal’s young players might benefit from the removal of his overbearing presence. “I’ve heard that point of view, but, for me, not at all,” Van Persie says. “Of course sometimes Thierry could react a bit disappointed. Because he was a player – and it’s the same with all great ones – who cannot understand why A, B, C doesn’t happen. “[Marco] van Basten was similar. Those players who are unique, are so good, that if you hit a fantastic pass, for them it’s a normal pass, and if you have a bad pass, they don’t understand. I don’t have a problem with that. I learnt a lot from Thierry and I was always happy to play and train with guys like him, Dennis [Bergkamp], Sol Campbell. Real men. Top professionals.

“What I liked most about Thierry was his desire. He was playing 60, 70 matches a year and every time he was there, being the best, being decisive for his team, again and again and again. Now I’m playing every game for Arsenal and Holland, I know how hard that is. You have to play a mental game with yourself. You’re tired, that’s a fact, but how tired are you? Are you going to stop and finish the game? Or are you going to say ‘Yes, I’m tired, but I’m not going to give up’. That’s what Thierry did for so many years.”

Shorn of Henry, many people have trouble seeing Arsenal as genuine contenders both for the Premier League title and in the Champions League (which, 2-0 up from the away leg of their qualifier, they should reach barring calamity in Wednesday’s home leg versus Sparta Prague). “I understand the reasons of the press and the fans,” Van Persie says. “Thierry left. Bang. No chance. They’re thinking, ‘Last year Arsenal didn’t do it with Thierry, so now they’re not going to do it without him’. But I’m here every day. I see what those people don’t see.

“My belief is great and it is deep. In football lots of things have to come together and one of those things is if you want to run for each other, if it’s not your day but you still want to sacrifice yourself for your teammate. That’s what I see in this team. It’s either there or not there and it’s something you can’t buy.

“Some press and fans think that because Liverpool, Man U and Chelsea are spending money they are the contenders for the title. I think in a different way. It’s not only about that. Nobody is predicting we can win the league, and maybe that puts us in a good position. We can surprise people and in our games so far we have already shown we can play consistent. We’re young, but many of us, like myself and Cesc, have already played 100 times for Arsenal.”

Nobody is going to keep Van Persie down, not the doubters, not the pundits and certainly not the bogeymen of Blackburn.