Have Arsenal just lost a fourth Premier League title in ten years?
On Sunday like many other Gooner’s around the World my heart sunk after a SHAMBOLIC 2-0 defeat to Aston Villa, in a do or die game which would’ve sent us top and put the Premiership title pursuit in our hands.
The question is have Arsenal just chucked away the title again for the fourth time in ten seasons which I will delve into further down in the opinion piece?
Even though there are still six games to go till the end of the season and only 2 points off Manchester City at the top, Arsenal (2nd) have a trickier run of games left with Spurs, Chelsea, Manchester United to tick off, and let’s not forget Everton who will be fighting relegation come the last tossup in May. On the contrary, City has only got to play one of the top five teams in the league in Spurs too.
Liverpool on the other hand have to face Spurs, Aston Villa and West Ham United who are all chasing Champions League and Europa League football, a potentially tricky run in too but not as much as Arsenal!
Many are concerned that we have just thrown away the Premier League trophy into Manchester City’s backyard who haven’t even beaten us all season, alongside Liverpool to add to that equation in third on level points!
Mikel Arteta’s men who were eight points clear last year after 29 games completely lost it in the final stages of the 2022/23 season.
Six years earlier (2015/16) in one of Arsene Wenger’s final seasons when all of the top sides struggled to perform with Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool not even in the line-up and Tottenham punching above their weight struggling we lost out. We lost out by ten points despite being the only team all campaign to dismantle the Foxes both times.
In 2013/14 Wenger was holding Arsenal at the top of the League well into February before being knocked off the thrown after being thrashed 5-1 by Liverpool who later lost the title to Manchester City on the final day of the season. Ironically Arteta scored a penalty in that Anfield Annihilation.
Now after ten humiliating years later if Arsenal lose any of their final games or drop silly points maybe we will hold our heads up and face the fact the title wasn’t meant to be, but we’ve already thrown in the towel on three previous occasions this past decade when in control of the title race, so when will “same old Arsenal” learn their lesson? Only time will tell!!!
Liam Harding
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We can blame Arsenal all we want but personally am so impressed with the way most of our players have performed and I also know we have weaknesses in some positions which needs urgent fixing.
I hope our players don’t give up now.Let them keep doing what they have been doing and finish this season in the best possible way they can.
We’ll likely know by the end of the month, upcoming fixtures:
Bayern
Wolves
Chelsea
Spurs
Bayern game still has a big bearing on our EPL performances….not a great run of fixtures. We always bleat on about this new mentality but when this get tough it seems to creep out the back door.
We can drop zero points against Wolves/Chels/Spuds….let’s see this mentality we’ve been told about! We were 4 points better off this time last year for reference
I’m not sure I would call it ‘thrown away’. Last season yes, but this season the team has been more consistent and generally looked more assured. What the Invincibles did is set an unrealistic target for every other Arsenal team that has come after them.
Having said that, this team has lost 5 games now this season compared to the 3 lost by Liverpool and Man City. It’s hard to win a league title if you lose 5 matches. What makes it more frustrating is that our results and performances against Liverpool and MC have improved this season.
I think Arteta commited the cardinal sin of changing a winning team. Quite what his justification is for switching things is his to ponder but it ultimately cost the team another defeat. Havertz did about as well as he can do in the deeper role and looked very dangerous in the first half but he has been so solid up front it’s hard to understand the thinking for dropping him further back and playing Jesus up there instead.
Gabriel Jesus is a fabulous footballer but he is at best a right winger. Obviously he is not going to get the position at Arsenal unless Saka is injured but he simply cannot be allowed to play as the main striker anymore. It’s hard to find fault with his effort, but it isn’t effort that’s lacking, he simply isn’t where he needs to be to score goals most of the time.
Ben, IMO the truth is that MA was concerned with the BM second leg and foolishly changed the shape to give us a so called “better chance in Munich”, as some would be rested.
That was a mistake and, as I have said for weeks past, it was never at all realistic to expect us to go all the way in BOTH comps.
Events wil show that we would have been far better off in our chase for the far more important Prem, IF we had not got past Porto.
What is NOW urgently required, in my REALISTS view, is that we exit the CL tomorrow, but City get through against RM.
I expect BOTH to happen – and we NEED BOTH to happen – and that will mean our title quest is still REAL.
On JESUS, I disgree that he is a fabulous player as fabulous players carry an end product, and HE does not.
No more than a decent player, though a hard worker.
We need far better than both he and Zinny and I HOPE AND BELIEVE BOTH WILL BE GONE, AT LATEST, BY SUMMER 2025.
Hopefully, both leave this summer!
Unusually, Jon, I find nothing to disagree with in your comment. I suspect we will lose to Bayern Munich anyway, so you should get your wish in that regard. As for the league, we are now relying on City to make a mistake. Not unheard of, but unlikely.
I like Gabriel Jesus as a player and as a winger but he is never going to replace Saka on the RW and Martinelli is better than him on the left, so that doesn’t leave much for him at Arsenal. He’d probably be a better LB than Zinchenko… 🤣
I really don’t know why a lot of us are panicking.
6 to go and whilst I can’t see city losing I can see them dropping points
Let’s wait until it is mathematically impossible to win it
Mid April and we are still fighting on two fronts.
All of us would have taken that at the start of the season
Onwards and upwards
Everyone said that 12 months ago lol
They did Dan but we are in a far better position then 12 months ago
City are conceding even though they have an insane record of winning and there run in isn’t as clear cut as everyone one wants to believe
AB08, All city do, something we dont. They relish pressure. Thats the ONLY difference. We have bettered them and Liverpool on points versus. But when the games become vital, we fail. Thats also why our cup form is so poor. Must win games put pressure on our style, that is not robust. There is no other explanation.
Yes, let’s blame the Invicibles for not having won a title in 20 years. We lost the title this year because we couldn’t get the job done against,Aston Villa, Fulham and westham. Don’t know what happened there besides the fact that we are still three players short of being a Champion team.
We’ve not lost this year’s title yet.
There’s actually more to it than just listing the fixtures. For instance while Arsenal are playing Bayern, Wolves and Chelsea. Spurs won’t be playing anybody. Then they play Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool in the the space of a week. So its not unreasonable to suggest they will have a lot more in the tank when playing Arsenal than Liverpool. There’s an argument that City keep winning not because they are better but because they are more consistent. The same Villa team that beat Arsenal lost 4-0 on their own ground to Spurs, the same Spurs who were hammered by Newcastle (who’ve been struggling most of the season) over the weekend. City just drop fewer points in games they should win than everyone else.
jod, as YOU at least recognise, fixture pile ups and too many games in too few days close together, give unpredictable results.
That pressure will intensify esp on City, PROVIDED THAT we lose in BM tomorrow but they beat RM. IF, as ai believe, BOTH events come true, we STILL have a very serious chance for thr far more important Prem.
With hindsight, we would have been better off if we had NOT got past Porto. That would have meant no games against BM and probably a different outcome to the Villa game.
I consider myself a realist and always have been.
First of all we haven’t thrown away anything yet. If we must look for where it went wrong, it was the back-to-back defeats by Fulham and West Ham.
Let’s go back 2 weeks ago, and we were exactly 2 points behind Liverpool were we not? Well Pool drew United and lost to Palace so now they’re behind us.
City is now 2 points ahead of us, exactly like Pool was very recently.
We still have superior GD. If, and that’s a big IF, we can win all of our remaining matches, even one draw by City will be enough for us.
City still plays Brighton, Spurs, Fulham away. We have tougher matches left but all are winnable.
All we can do is support the team until the finish and hope the boys play with everything they got.
Well, it’s not all that bad. We just need to win ALL our remaining games with huge goal margins. Imagine it going to the wire and City drawing on the final day then us winning the title coz of GD😁
I somehow wish we were not in UCL🥺
We PROBABLY still WONT be in the CL late tomorrow evening. That will be a great boon to our far more important title challenge.
We need to pray City beat RM though, as they ought.
Only complete non realists EVER THOUGHT we could win both comps . Never on the cards!
If both those events come true, our title challenge is STILL a serious one!
REALITY.
Nothing is lost yet!!! I’m happy Wolves crashed out of the FA cup, which has got them available for the PL this weekend. Hopefully, as expected we get our title charge back on track with a win at their ground. Enough of all the emotional movie rollercoster ride, Just do it!
We have certainly come a long way, if winning 10 out of the last 12 games, drawing one and loosing one means throwing something away.
i’m not sure what this blame game is all about
no team is immune from pressure – look at Liverpool, the self-proclaimed “mentality monsters” season has completely imploded over the last few weeks;
– lost 1 nil at home to Palace in the PL (3 points dropped)
– lost 3 nil at home to Atalanta
– drew 2-2 away to Man U (2 points dropped)
– knocked out of FA Cup 4-3 by Man U
Liverpool have been in the mix in PL and Europe for 5 or 6 years and still they have this patch which is otherwise inexplicable but pressure
also add Rangers, Ipswich, Leeds, Leicester all dropping vital points fighting for the top of their respective competitions on the weekend
Arsenal had a 45 minute lapse on the weekend that cost 3 points
I guess what I am saying is pressure and mentality is not just an Arsenal thing but a widespread thing
just unfortunate Man C seem to be alone immune from it
I think it was the nature of the defeat – if it had been Man City, or Liverpool I would’ve thought oh well it can happen, but we haven’t lost to either of them this season and to lose to AV, who despite what people say, just aren’t in City’s or Liverpools league in such a lack lustre way was incredibly frustrating. I want to see them battered and vinegared next time we meet, we don’t need Ego Martinez to disrespect the club that gave him his break to go fist pumping on arsenal turf, and put as many shots as we can past him next time, to puncture that inflated ego.
oh I agree, that second 45 minutes was awful
where was the energy, where was the spark and desperation with PL title on the line
instead it seemed Villa who upped their game, and after they scored the outcome felt inevitable
how does that happen? i don’t have the answer
how do we prevent it happening again? i don’t have the answer
why did Arteta change our formation and system that was working so well
why did we start Jesus and Trossard, one maybe, but not both
that might explain why the first 45 minutes good display was not converted to the scoresheet
but still does not answer why the second 45 minutes was so poor
his changes have been working, they didn’t against Villa. It happens…
Martinez was incredibly gracious in his post match comments about the manager, the team, the supporters and everything to do with Arsenal – did you see that?
He was really excited to win a big game against his former club who happened to be sitting above them – the win gives them a cushion for CL next year – of course he was excited.
I am guessing that we are also in the camp that feel Odegard should be shot for celebrating a win with the cameraman (personally I thought that was really awesome and spontanious)?
One other thing I noticed, and noticed it in the Brighton game as well, we don’t seem to be as frenetic in the penalty box during set pieces as we have been, scoring goals. The AV player were actually holding us down during corners, and stopping us from moving, whereas we simply wouldn’t have allowed that when we were playing well.
we would expect teams, and especially Emery, to have noticed our set-piece form and arrive with solution, and Villa did
like, Brighton, they seemed happy for corners on Saka’s side, but deny Rice
Saka corners tend to have less pace and whip and easier to defend and harder to score
but Arteta should foresee teams will have a plan for our set piece and come with a counter plan
The manager always shoots himself on the front foot every season. If its not poor selection ,it is a problem with a certain player then he wont win or achieve a target we feel he should.
It is NOT accurate to claim, as the writer does, that we were seriously in thetitle humnt till the end or near end in either 13/14 or in 15/16.
We fell well short well before the last few games in BOTH those seasons.
Until last year sand this year, the previous time we were SERIOUSLY in th title hunt was in07/08, theyear we lost to MAN UTD, by five points, after having lead the Prem by five points in early MARCH
You MAY remember, I DO ANYWAY, that we drew 2-2 at Birmingham and GALLAS as captain has his childish sulk by sitting down on the pitch after the game.
Only TWICE since then, both under our current excellent manager, have we SERIOUSLY COMPETED FOR THETITLE.
The above is the REAL truth, and NOT what this article incorrectly claims!!
Thrown away? This is all a bit over the top. We lost for the first time in EPL in 2024 to a team that is fourth and likely to play CL. Does it suck yes, should we have taken our chances in the first half – like a lot of games maybe yes.
I can hardly imagine the hand-wringing and end-of-world feelings if things don’t go well tomorrow. Lets grab the torches and pitchforks and get to Arteta’s house, then we should hit the rest of the management and take a road trip to the US to get the owners. Group B can take care of the players…
And lets be honest with ourselves – this is year two of serious title chances as Jon said above. We are well into the CL for the first time in ages and we are two points off the top of the EPL, yet the sky is falling and we are doomed?
And lets give Villa some credit for their second half performance, we make it sound like this was a done deal against a relegation team.