They are up, they are down, they are out of it, they are up for it, they are strong, they are weak. One could get motion sickness sitting in an armchair just reading about Arsenal.

So is it us? Or is it them? The Fink Tank has been trying to unwrap the riddle inside the mystery enveloped in an enigma that is the Gunners.

Let’s start with their chances of winning the Barclays Premier League. At the beginning of the season they had a 13 per cent chance. Now it is 22 per cent. It has, in other words, improved but not out of all recognition.

Without Liverpool in the running, there is more chance of winning the title for the other three sides in the “big four” to share. Yet the figures show that Arsenal were always pretty serious contenders with a proper chance of winning the league and shouldn’t have been written off.

They were also overwhelmingly likely all along to be in a Champions League slot.

The computer model run by Dr Henry Stott, Dr Ian Graham and Dr Mark Latham provides an estimate of the extent to which Arsenal have outperformed expectations during this season’s campaign.

Birmingham City have scored a massive 12.4 points more than we expected them to by this stage.

Aston Villa are 9.5 points above expectations, Manchester City 9 points, and Stoke City 8.4 points. Then come Arsenal, but only on 2.8 points. An important part of the story is told by looking for Liverpool in this list. They come near the bottom, having scored 8.2 points less than we had them down for by this week.

It isn’t hard to divine the source of Arsenal’s strength. They are an attacking side. They are solidly in second place for attack, rating 94 per cent as good as the best attacking side (Chelsea). But in defence? They are fourth and rate only 81 per cent as good as the best defensive side (who are, again, Chelsea).

The same pattern is repeated when one examines Arsenal’s record for converting shots on target into goals, a crucial measure. They are better at this now than at any point in the past four seasons. Sadly, however, they are worse than in the past four seasons at allowing shots on target against them to become goals against them. Over the past two seasons their overall strength has been fairly constant, but clearly much better than in the two seasons before that.

There is a common idea that Arsenal do badly against the other big boys — that they are flat-track bullies.

Wrong. A myth. The table shows that, over the past four seasons, they have very lightly (very) outperformed expectations against these other sides, expectations built by looking at their overall strength. Even this season, when much has been made of their failures, they are virtually bang on expectations.

What then, of Arsenal’s squad? Using the Fink Tank Castrol rankings, based on copious data, they certainly look competitive. Their midfield players look stronger than those of Manchester United, but perhaps not as good as Chelsea’s. Their defence doesn’t look too bad but Manuel Almunia is clearly not as good as Petr Cech and Edwin van der Sar.

Arsenal’s best player at the moment is Andrey Arshavin (fourth best in the Premier League), followed by Abou Diaby (tenth), Cesc Fàbregas (eleventh), Robin van Persie (twelfth) and Thomas Vermaelen (28th). They are followed in this order by William Gallas, Denilson, Alexandre Song, Samir Nasri and Emmanuel Eboué, who are all sources of strength. It is a source of weakness that after Van Persie, Arsenal’s best forward is Nicklas Bendtner, who ranks 145th in the Premier League.