Premier League title contenders: Why this is Arsenal’s year
We’re taking a look at each of the teams we’ve decided will definitely be in a thrilling four-way title battle in 25/26. Here come Arsenal.
You know, we often spend the summer imagining that next season is actually going to be the one that delivers a proper four-way Premier League title fight. Does it happen? No, it never does. I mean, we somehow delude ourselves into thinking it might… but it might happen in 2025/26.
Here’s our four-part series looking at the potential champions. Today it’s the turn of Arsenal.
The bridesmaids. The xG champions. The Arsenal. We know they can finish second, and how, but can they take that final step and end what is now a more than 20-year wait for the top prize?
We’re saying yes, they definitely can. We’re just a bit less sure they definitely will. Which is only logical, really.
But simply put, all the ingredients are now there. This really does feel like the season when the excuses have to run out. It won’t be of course. Either Arsenal will win the league, in which case all is fine, or they won’t and new excuses will be invented. It is quite simply never their fault. Which really is jolly unlucky.
The elite top-tier excuses all do seem to melt away this year, though. They have – or will have, when the fannying about finally ends – a top-tier striker. They have, with Martin Zubimendi through the door, a midfield that comfortably holds up against any in the league, and they already had a goalkeeper and defence to do that.
The squad depth has been significantly boosted. Noni Madueke might seem a slightly leftfield signing for the right-wing, but the response it provoked was very odd nonetheless. Even if Madueke’s biggest accomplishment at Arsenal is to give them and us all a slightly less knackered Bukayo Saka by the end of next season then it will not have been for nought.
There is definitely a different feel around each of Arsenal’s three consecutive second-place finishes. The first, and really the one they probably should have won from the position they got to, was wildly unexpected. The ultimate failure to get over the line felt very much like success deferred rather than denied.
It was the start of something. The process was now entirely trusted. It came with a definite sense of “Well, if not now then soon”. Coming up short for a second season was frustrating, but also gave proof of concept and entirely wiped out any fear or suggestion the previous season might have been some kind of rogue one-off fluke.
And for the more desperate and conspiracy-addled of the Arsenal support it could all be blamed on Son Heung-min missing a chance, if one were so inclined. Much easier on the old noggin than tricky self-reflection or introspection.
The point is that at the end of 23/24 the overall vibe still felt positive, the direction of travel and momentum still with Arsenal. If nothing else they seemed to have at the very least left everyone else behind, to be left worried only about Man City.
Last season was, obviously, different. In every way apart from finishing position.
Losing out to City was one thing. It was annoying and enraging, but it could also be shrugged off as Modern Football, against which such romantic little old dreamers as Arsenal had little hope of success. This 138-year-old diner still serves football the old-fashioned way.
But losing out – and emphatically – to Liverpool? Far harder to rationalise. Far harder to dismiss as Everything That’s Wrong With The Game. The neutral support Arsenal had enjoyed in the previous two seasons dissipated, and the regression was undeniable.
Yes, injuries were a mitigation, but could only excuse so much. Arsenal in the end never really mustered a meaningful challenge on Liverpool’s supremacy, and the fact nobody else did either is cold comfort.
It was a season of bubbling tension and niggle in the red half of North London, one in which patience began to fray at the sight of a team sauntering so easily to the title in their first season under a new manager.
It all leaves things building to something of a head as we enter 2025/26. “If not now, then soon” has given way to “If not now, then when?”.
Yet we still find ourselves strongly gripped by the idea that this season is their best chance yet. We still don’t know when and if City’s regeneration will take hold. They are entering a new era with a new team and while the threat of them simply winning the title by 12 points is ever-present it’s also far easier at this pre-season all-things-possible stage to envisage no challenge at all from City than it has been for very nearly a decade.
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Liverpool too have doubts that weren’t there last season. The likelihood is that they’ve gone about things in a truly ingenious fashion. Fashioning a title-challenging squad before the ordeal of a managerial change and only after a year of huge success having to make serious changes to the squad itself.
But all change constitutes risk. Even under a new manager Liverpool were able to make a fast start last season with familiarity the watchword. Arne Slot got almost everything right, but most obviously in having the self-awareness to realise that he was in the unusual position for a new manager of not really needing to change anything much at all.
That option isn’t available this season. Strip away the inherent Arsenal volatility and anxiety and tendency to lurch violently from dizzying high to crushing low, and the objective levels of unpredictability and uncertainty appear greater elsewhere.
Arsenal are the team with the luxury this summer of slotting the last couple of pieces into the puzzle. They look much the safest bet to start the season knowing exactly what they want to do and how they want to go about it.
They should have everything they need to get this done. If the question really is “If not now, when?” then the best response is to take away the very premise. Make it now.