Claude Puel says he doesn’t know if Arsenal can be considered title contenders at this stage, emphasising that there’s still a long way to go.

Speaking ahead of Arsenal’s match against Leicester on Monday night, Puel answered questions on his opponent’s title chances. The Gunners sit in fifth place before the match. However, they could rise as high as third, just two points behind the league leaders, with a win.

Nonetheless, Puel thinks it’s still too early to even talk about Arsenal as contenders to lift the trophy at the end of the season.

“We will see,” Puel began. “He (Emery) started with some difficulties and lost [the] first two games but after they have worked and played well to win games in the cup, Europa League and Premier League.

“They have nine wins at this moment which is incredible. They are confident in their play. They are more direct and clinical at the moment, with a clinical player like [Alexandre] Lacazette for example.

“They can have good confidence for the future, but for the title, I don’t know. It is just the beginning of the season and the Premier League has a lot of possibilities.”

Overall, it’s not an unfair assessment. Arsenal did have difficulties in the early games, even if they should’ve got a result against Chelsea. Then they started getting results without really impressing with the performances, until the recent games against the likes of Fulham.

Now, it’s about consistency. Emery’s Arsenal have proven that they can go on a run, but we don’t know how they’ll react when things start to get tough again. The occasional blip is fine, as long as it doesn’t derail all the progress they’ve made. We’ll see how things go over the next month.