ARSENE Wenger claims Arsenal will win the title if they start this season the way they did last year, when they won six of their first seven games, but they will have to play a lot better than this to finish ahead of Manchester United and Chelsea.

Wenger’s team led the table last Christmas, and he says: “I feel we were well equipped for a challenge last time, and we were very close to doing it. If we can have as good a start as we did last year, then I believe we will win it this time.”

Yet when the curtain went up yesterday, the performance fell flat. West Brom were there for the taking and might have been 4-0 down before their return to the Premier League was 20 minutes old, but the Gunners’ shooting was of the blunderbuss variety, so much so that Emmanuel Adebayor, of double-your-money notoriety, was booed when he missed the target for the umpteenth time late on.

Albion might have been overwhelmed in the first half but they dug deep and put up a creditable showing in the second.

For the home crowd, it was a curate’s egg of an afternoon, good and bad in parts. There was much to admire in the midfield intelligence, enterprise and quick feet of Samir Nasri, the £11m summer recruit from Marseilles, whose match-win-ner was the fastest goal on debut by an Arsenal player in Premier League history.

O n t h e d e b i t s i d e , Adebayor and Nicklas Bendtner looked as if they wouldn’t have scored had they still been playing this morning. Wenger took comfort from the fact that it is far too early to be making meaningful judgments, that his team had a tough match against FC Twente in Champions League qualifying last Wednesday, and that improvement is all but inevitable when the new players are fully integrated and Cesc Fabregas is fit again.

West Brom are the only team in the top division without shirt sponsors, and it is not only cynics who would suggest you could safely put yours on them going back down again. That certainly looked to be the way of it when Nasri scored after just three minutes and 42 seconds, sidefooting home Denilson’s cut-back from the byline on the left. Theo Walcott would have made it 2-0 in the sixth minute but for Carl Hoefkens’ headed clearance, William Gallas was desperately close from distance after 10 and Bacary Sagna had a 25-yarder deflected wide in the 18th.

Albion, comfortably the best team in the Championship last season, seemed destined to be so again in 12 months’ time. To their credit, they displayed a collective spirit that should serve them well in what will be a difficult winter, and even threatened to equalise before the interval, when South Korea’s Do-Heon Kim, who was a constructive influence, stretched Manuel Almunia to his fingertips with a menacing shot from 18 yards.

Arsenal remained dominant, with Nasri ploughing a productive furrow on the left. He replicates the distributive excellence of Fabregas, who is expected to be absent for another fortnight with hamstring trouble, but Wenger, more than any of his peers, will tell you that you can’t have too many good footballers.

Adebayor was twice off target with near-identical shots and he was not the only one. Walcott’s passing was hit and miss and Bendtner’s touch on one occasion bordered on the elephantine.

Wenger admitted that when it remained 1-0 deep into the second half he feared the worst. “I almost felt we deserved to be punished”, he said. They nearly were. Almunia saved with his legs from Ishmael Miller and Paul Robinson, following in, would have scored but for Johan Djourou’s goalline clearance.

Arsenal sent on Robin Van Persie and he threatened to score twice in the last 10 minutes, but West Brom defended well. Their manager, Tony Mowbray, said: “I don’t take any solace from losing 1-0, but I thought we were competitive. We’ve earned the right to be in the Premier League and we’ve got to make sure we stay here. The transfer window has two weeks to go, we’ll add some strength and be a better unit for it. I hope to bring in another four players.”

Wenger said: “We’ve only just started the season and no, I’m not worried we weren’t sharp enough to finish them off. We expected them to crumble but they never did.”

Of Arsenal’s title prospects, he added: “We got 83 points last time, which would win you the league anywhere else in the world, and we believe we can do better. We finished only four points behind Man United and should have won a trophy for the most unlucky team because of the bad injuries we had.” ARSENAL:Almunia 6, Sagna 6, Nasri 8, Gallas 7, Walcott 6 (Toure 72min), Denilson 6, Djourou 7, Clichy 6, Adebayor 5, Bendtner 6 (Van Persie 69min), Eboue 6 WEST BROM:Carson 6, Hoefkens 6, Robinson 7, Cech 5 (MacDonald 67min) , Barnett 6, Greening 7, Miller 5 (Bednar 73min), Brunt 5 (Beattie 80min), Do-Heon 7, Meite 6, Morrison 6