It is exactly a year since Mikel Arteta insisted in an interview that his Arsenal team deserved at least two Premier League titles for the points totals they had accrued and everyone outside Arsenal fell about laughing because football has a way of deciding who deserves titles: we call them “seasons”.
In fact, it was a message to his players: you have proven that you are good enough, now prove that you are good enough over a defined period that will enable us to make history and enable everybody else to stop going on about me doing that weird lightbulb thing in the documentary.
Arteta had a point, albeit badly expressed. How you play is important and all you can control. But how everybody plays is just as important. Keep taking 84 or more points in a league season, as Arsenal have done twice, and you’ll win the thing eventually. That is their model. While others dip and soar, peak and then fall away, Arsenal will steady their way to a title.
Together, those things make the case for a title already decided bar several months of shouting: like, have you seen the Premier League? Everyone beats everyone and Arsenal mostly beat everyone. You don’t need to be the best team ever, only the best team now.
The squad is deeper than ever before. A list of players who had failed to start 25 per cent or more of Arsenal’s league games before Thursday: Bukayo Saka, William Saliba, Gabriel, Martin Odegaard, Leandro Trossard, Eberechi Eze.
More impressive still are those with one or no league start at all: Myles Lewis-Skelly, Ethan Nwaneri, Gabriel Jesus, Kai Havertz, Christian Norgaard, Max Dowman. The difference between the two benches on Thursday was astonishing, given Liverpool were so further ahead of Arsenal a year ago.
The only reason to doubt Arsenal is that they have not done this before. They have not won a league title for two decades. Their manager has never won one. Only three players in the squad have won one of the top five European leagues and none of the three (Kepa Arrizabalaga, Piero Hincapie and Jesus) are first-team starters when everyone is fit.
Arsenal should be untouchable (Photo: Getty)If Manchester City or Liverpool (or even Chelsea) had this lead, there would be no talk of likely bottling but Arsenal have collected that tag and are destined to drag it along behind them until May. Or maybe April, if things carry on like this.
The tag itself is deeply unfair. Arsenal certainly squandered a lead in the spring of 2023, but is that really relevant now? The next season they took 49 points from a possible 54 after the turn of the year. Last year it was a slow start that cost Arteta and Arsenal, not finish.
Present evidence rings louder than past behaviour. Arsenal are in demon-exorcising mode. Before Thursday, they had played 12 fixtures season that they dropped points in in 2024-25. They took 31 from a possible 36 points in those matches; ten wins and a draw. If that doesn’t make a team feel untouchable, nothing will.
But watching Arsenal at the Emirates, you can tell that they haven’t won a title in too long. The desperation hangs so heavy in the air that it makes an indent on the playing surface. It swirls into a vortex that seems to engulf players.
The atmosphere in the final knockings of Thursday’s imperfect 0-0, was extraordinary. A slow passing move with five minutes of normal time left that ended in a Liverpool throw-in almost provoked spit-flecked anger. A teenage substitute, Lewis-Skelly, misplaced a pass 10 minutes after coming on and the place reacted like he’d dropped Steve Morrow.
When Arsenal passed too slowly for the liking of the masses, they groaned and griped and harrumphed. In front of me, one guy screamed crossly: “What the f**k are you doing?”. It made you want to get a loudspeaker and ask them if they had seen the league table.
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On the touchline on Thursday, Arteta used his outstretched hands to plead for calm from those behind him rather than the players on the pitch, conducting a different choir. He probably has to accept his own role in this mania, given his own extravagant demonstration.
But Arteta is also absolutely right. This is now the longest home straight Arsenal have faced in 20 years. They are the deserved favourites because they are the best team in the country and their supporters can absolutely play a role in making this magical transformation – leaders to winners – easier. And if they can, they have to.
That, then, is the real doubt here. Not the ability, the nous, the chutzpah or the resilience and certainly not the bloody set pieces. But the acceptance that this will not be four-month run of winning every game and nor does it need to be.
It’s time to go all Rudyard Kipling on this thing: triumph, disaster and draws at home to defending champions. Otherwise the hardest demon to exorcise will be their own desperation.
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