After just nine league games, with less than a quarter of the Premier League season gone, Arsenal hysteria in the media has set in.
The same pundits who spent August telling us this was Liverpool’s year again are now declaring the title “Arsenal’s to lose.” Yawn.
Only a few weeks ago, Martin Samuel, a man paid more than £400,000 a year by The Times to inform the public about football, was asking, “Why the surrender from Liverpool’s rivals?”
Fast forward one month, Liverpool have gone from five points ahead of Arsenal to seven behind, and Samuel is writing about how Arsenal now need to win a league title to be considered great, which is fair, I guess.
The narrative has shifted, but the analysis has not improved.
The current media mood was captured perfectly by Wayne Rooney, who used his podcast to say the pressure is all on Arsenal. “Arteta’s been very close and they’ve tallied up a good amount of points in a couple of those seasons, which in other years might have won them the league,” he said.
“They’re really expected to win a league. They grind out results, they’re physical, they’ve got good attacking players, so if one isn’t doing it, the next one will. They’re solid at the back. The pressure is now can you be top of the league? Can you stay there? I think they can. They’ve had those experiences, which has got them close.
“They’re ready for it. There’s no excuse, the players they’ve brought in. You’d probably see a change of manager if they don’t win it now.”
Really?
Arsenal would sack Mikel Arteta, a rookie manager who has taken more points than any other Premier League side over the past three-and-a-bit seasons, rebuilt the entire culture of the club, guided Arsenal to a Champions League semi-final, and turned the Emirates into one of the toughest grounds in Europe?
The manager Martin Zubimendi rejected Real Madrid and Liverpool to play for? The man William Saliba said no to Real Madrid to continue working under? The man who built every element of this team you think is so good it has ‘no excuses’?
Do these people hear themselves?
Rooney’s comments are a lovely example of the wilful nonsense that defines so much football commentary around Arsenal.
“There’s no excuse, the players they’ve brought in,” he said. But if that logic applied equally, then Liverpool, who spent €145m on Alexander Isak, €125m on Florian Wirtz, and €95m for Hugo Ekitike, in addition to €118m on others, should be under identical pressure. Ditto Manchester City, who have spent £450m over the past two seasons and £709.5m over three.
Instead, Liverpool are having a “transition season” as pundits scramble for excuses and City are just, well, City. Their level of scrutiny has never really been where it should be.
Let’s be clear: Arsenal are favourites for both the Premier League and the Champions League because they’ve earned that status. They have what it takes to win one – or both – of them. But, after just nine games in the league and three in Europe, it’s absurd to declare any title theirs to lose, which was the dominant Arsenal narrative on many football podcasts after this weekend.
Arsenal are four points clear of Bournemouth, five ahead of Tottenham, six ahead of Manchester City and United, and seven clear of Liverpool. A 12-point swing in a month has already shown how quickly narratives collapse.
Four games can change everything, as we’ve just seen.
The obsession with Arsenal “bottling” the league has become its own sub-genre of punditry.
Out of the supposed three “bottles” in recent years, Arsenal probably only genuinely faltered once and even then they finished within five of City, nine ahead of third place, with Arteta barely out of his managerial nappy.
Liverpool were 5th that year, 17 points behind Arsenal after pushing City to within a point the season before. Did they bottle it? I don’t remember that story.
The following year, if Spurs had any pride, the Premier League would have gone to their north London rivals. Missing out on a title by two points on the last day to one of the most expensive teams ever assembled is bottling it? Really?
Last season, an inspired Mohamed Salah and a relentless Arsenal injury crisis combined to hand Liverpool the advantage. There was no collapse, only good luck vs very bad luck. City actually did collapse in the league, but nobody said they’d bottled it.
Despite all this, much of the press still looks for reasons to undermine Arsenal. It’s not hard to see why. Plenty of those in the media box hold affections for clubs that historically hate Arsenal, a bias that filters through their coverage. It has always been thus.
Arsenal failing makes them happier than Arsenal doing well. We all know it.
This season is different, and they know that, too.
Arsenal’s control, intensity and depth are unlike anything seen at the club in two decades.
It is a season to genuinely believe again, to enjoy the possibility of something extraordinary and long-overdue happening.
Belief is part of football’s joy.
But expectation is something else. Arsenal might be the best team in the league, perhaps even in Europe, but football has never been as simple as that.
Quality, injuries, luck, and fine margins decide titles, not podcasts, pundits or press narratives, no matter how hard they try.
We can all hope Arsenal will win it. We can even think they might.
But expecting them to? Wise up.