Arsenal are now favourites and best placed to win the Premier League. There, we said it.
They have emerged in such good shape from a fiendishly difficult set of games to start the Premier League season that it’s hard to draw any other conclusion after the weekend’s pivotal swing in the Gunners’ favour despite them still sitting two points behind defending champions Liverpool.
It may seem slightly previous and even an over-reaction given Liverpool were flawless until Saturday and had everyone queuing up to hand them the title already on the back of a series of Hallmark of Champions victories. But we are quite certain it’s now right. And not so we can call them bottle jobs if they don’t do it. Honest.
Having ticked Old Trafford, Anfield and St James’ Park off their itinerary as well as Man City at home, Arsenal’s path – inevitably – looks slightly easier from here.
Between now and the November international break, Arsenal’s Premier League games are against West Ham, Fulham, Crystal Palace, Burnley and Sunderland.
Now there are a couple of overachievers in there and we’re surely all very excited about the crunch title clash with Palace next month, but given Liverpool’s games over the same period are against Chelsea, Manchester United, Brentford, Aston Villa and Man City, it seems entirely plausible – probable, even – that Arsenal are top of the league by that point. As long as Mikel Arteta is now going to keep that handbrake off.
Arsenal being top of the league in November is nothing new, of course. That’s the problem for Arsenal. But there’s compelling reason to think they’ve already addressed a problem that has haunted them so often since the Invincibles secured the club’s 13th and still last league title over 20 years ago.
Because while nobody can entirely rule out a traditional January season-ending collapse in the classic Arsenal style, it is now a prediction based more on historical precedent than any reasonable assessment of the current state of play.
Arsenal are now formidably well equipped to avoid any of the usual calamities that befall them when they get into the kind of position they really ought to know find themselves in a couple of months from now.
They have built a truly formidable squad, with breadth and depth that nobody else can match. We’ve already looked at this in our ranking of the biggest clubs’ current second XIs, where Arsenal’s bench quality is shown in its most dramatically impressive light.
Arsenal, uniquely, are in a position to name two entirely separate XIs in which no obvious point of significant weakness is exposed, no square-peg player is forced into a round-peg hole. Where there is not one player who has to be picked about whom you’d have serious reservations.
We’d go so far as to say Arsenal’s second XI would finish pretty handily in the top six of the Premier League if they played 38 games together.
And that represents a remarkable achievement. Now we’re not about to paint the fabulously wealthy Gunners as plucky little Davids downing Goliaths here. They’ve spent vast sums of money and there’s no point pretending otherwise.
But look around you. Never has it been more painfully obvious in more painfully obvious places that simply spending vast sums of money is all that needs to be done.
The fact is Arsenal have outdone everyone on the squad-building front over the last 12 months – even Liverpool, who neglected their defence until the very last moment and thus haven’t covered all bases as adroitly as the Gunners. And they’ve done it in a way that anyone else in the Big Six could have done.
They’ve spent lots, but not conspicuously more than so many clubs who have such vastly inferior overall squads to show for it.
And yes, Arsenal were operating from a position of some strength given the largely blemish-free nature of their first XI. But that in itself is only more impressive; you can’t downplay a club’s squad-building success on the basis it follows other success. That is literally the whole point.
It’s easy and often great fun to mock Arsenal and their faith in Process and Phases, but we’re seeing it play out now as they approach their final form. Piece by piece, brick by brick, they’ve built the Premier League’s best squad.
And for all that they have had a very decent first XI for a good few years now, the pace of the transformation of the squad in general should not be overlooked.
A year ago, Arsenal were making characteristically hard work of a home game against Leicester. It was all a bit Liverpool 25/26 in many ways: a 2-0 lead blown before snatching back the victory deep into added time.
But what’s really striking about Arsenal a year ago and Arsenal now is how the starting XI is so familiar, yet the subs’ bench looks like one from a different universe altogether. Ten of the starting XI that day are still key members of Arsenal’s squad; Thomas Partey is the only exception.
Yet their subs’ bench is a world away from New Arsenal. Raheem Sterling is there. Neto is there. Jakub Kiwior. Jorginho. Maldini Kacurri and Joshua Nichols. Gabriel Jesus. And, fair enough, Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly.
The Arsenal bench at St James’ Park had William Saliba. And Ben White, and Martin Odegaard, and Christian Norgaard and Gabriel Martinelli and Mikel Merino. And also still Myles Lewis-Skelly. They have fashioned a squad that can be without Noni Madueke, Piero Hincapie, Gabriel Jesus and Kai Havertz yet not miss a beat.
Arsenal have quietly been building a squad that nobody else can match, and having negotiated the toughest start to the season of anyone, are now in a position to really make some noise.
