In the week Arsenal became champions, a notice circulating online in Botswana appeared to give their supporters a public holiday. It carried the national coat of arms and a stamp from the office of the president, and it said President Duma Boko was rewarding fans for their “passion, loyalty and unwavering support” with the Wednesday off. The government posted it on X with the word fake written across it in red: “No, there is no holiday for Arsenal fans.”
The forgery was dated the Sunday, two days before the title was actually confirmed, when Manchester City’s 1-1 draw at Bournemouth ended Arsenal’s 22-year wait. Five months on, the question for supporters across southern Africa is whether the champions can keep what they won. On Wednesday 28 October they’re second, level with City on 21 points after eight games, and they’ve been out of the League Cup since Tuesday night.
Arsenal haven’t successfully defended a league title since 1935
Retaining a title is the part of this job the club has the least practice at. Opta’s preview, published two days before the opener, pointed out that Arsenal last did it in 1935, when they became only the second side in English football to win three league championships in a row. Every title they’ve won since has been followed by a season in which another club finished top.
The Premier League era makes the point more sharply. Before Pep Guardiola’s first title at City, the trophy had changed hands for eight seasons running, and only Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho had overseen a successful defence. Guardiola then made it look routine, defending the crown four times between 2017-18 and 2023-24.
None of those three is in the league now, and Opta counted this as the first season since 1992 without any of the managers who defined its modern era. City began it under a new manager, Enzo Maresca, while Mikel Arteta, in the job since December 2019, is now the longest-serving head coach in the division. The club kept faith with him through three runner-up finishes in a row, behind City in 2023 and 2024 and Liverpool in 2025, and that continuity is a real edge when many of their title rivals are starting again.
It isn’t a guarantee, though. The defence that let in only 27 league goals last season, eight fewer than anyone else, began this one without William Saliba, who’d gone into a rehabilitation programme for a back injury. Jurrien Timber was missing too, after groin surgery, and Opta judged that neither of the players covering for them was a like-for-like replacement.
Seven wins from eight have Arsenal level with City, not clear of them
Johannesburg ran an hour ahead of London in August, so the 20:00 kick-off on Friday 21 August, the first of the league’s 2026-27 season, came at 21:00 South African time. Arsenal were at home to Coventry City in Friday prime time on the opening weekend, and the 3-0 win was the first of four in a row in the league.
The one bad afternoon came at Brighton in the fifth game, a 3-0 defeat. They answered it with three more wins, the latest 2-0 against Everton last Saturday, and BBC Sport’s table has them on 21 points, the same as Manchester City, with Brighton third on 16 and Liverpool fourth on 15. Goal difference splits the top two, plus 11 for City against plus eight.
Those numbers carry a warning as well as a reassurance. Arsenal have conceded five league goals in eight games, but they’ve scored 13 against 20 for the leaders. Opta flagged before the season that 71 league goals was a low total for champions, and it described an attack that could become reliant on Saka. He went off with a quadriceps injury in last week’s 2-2 draw with Bayern in Munich.
Daily Cannon, citing the BBC, has reported that the club fears he’ll miss at least six weeks. Europe has gone well otherwise: a 1-0 win at Napoli, a 3-0 home win over Lille and the point in Munich leave them with seven from three Champions League games. Martin Zubimendi broke his nose against Everton, yet he was in the starting line-up at Fleetwood three days later.
The season’s first weekend doubles as an advertising date in South Africa
That Friday had a commercial meaning in South Africa too, and one launch shows it plainly. On the same day, Virgin Bet started ‘A Good Bet’, which G3 Newswire described as its first major brand campaign since expanding into the country. Bizcommunity called it the company’s first brand campaign outside the UK, made by the agency Joe Public with Darling Productions behind the camera.
Bizcommunity’s report says the campaign “rolls out with the start of the sporting season, providing a key moment to build brand visibility.” It adds that television “will play a major role in reaching audiences at scale”, with sport providing “a strong contextual environment”. G3 lists television, out-of-home, digital, social and cinema, running alongside sports programming and football sponsorships.
The business behind it is Virgin Bet SA, a South African sportsbook. Its own site credits the Mpumalanga Economic Regulator with licensing and regulating it, and the licence carries the number 9-2-1-09938. Gail Odgers, the company’s general manager in South Africa, described the first phase as groundwork: “Right now, it’s about establishing the brand, building familiarity and giving people a clear sense of what we stand for.”
So a new brand looking for familiarity picked the weekend the football came back, and put television at the centre of it. For a South African television audience, the English season’s return is when Friday and weekend evenings fill with live football again, and the campaign’s launch date matched the first of those evenings.
The South African Responsible Gambling Foundation’s counselling number, 0800 006 008, costs nothing to call, and its counsellors can refer callers on to treatment. Nobody under 18 may gamble in South Africa.
Britain’s clock change has put Johannesburg two hours ahead for the English winter
Britain moved its clocks back an hour at 2am on Sunday 25 October, and they won’t go forward again until Sunday 28 March 2027. South Africa doesn’t change its clocks, so until then it sits two hours ahead of London rather than one. The next home league game, against Hull on Saturday 7 November, starts at 15:00 in London and 17:00 South African time.
The change bites hardest at night. The last two Champions League games, at home to Lille and away in Munich, kicked off at 21:00 South African time. The trip to Slavia Prague on Wednesday 4 November starts at 22:00 in Johannesburg, and UEFA lists the same kick-off for each of the four league-phase games after it, which take the campaign into the new year.
The fixture list has moved as well as the clock. The schedule the Premier League published before the season gave the opener a kick-off time and most other games only a Saturday date. Liverpool away, first listed for a Saturday, is now on Sunday 1 November at 16:30, or 18:30 in South Africa, and the home game with City has moved back a day to Sunday 29 November at the same time.
For anyone who planned around English football on South African television at the start of the season, advertisers included, the map has shifted. The Friday opener began at 21:00. A 20:00 London kick-off now starts at 22:00, as the cup tie at Fleetwood did on Tuesday, and it stays that way until the spring.
Fleetwood’s shootout made Anfield and City the measure of this defence
Arteta saw the risk coming. Before the trip to Fleetwood Town of League Two, he told reporters that “our reputation, our pride, everything is in play,” and Daily Cannon’s report of that press conference also carried his warning: “We all have one [upset] at some stage.” The same site noted that Arsenal had never played at Highbury Stadium, the Fleetwood ground, before.
A drone over the ground held up play for eight minutes early on, and the home side then took the lead after 21 minutes in front of a crowd of 5,002. Viktor Gyokeres equalised four minutes after half-time. Then came the kind of night the league scoring had hinted at: 26 shots and one goal, by BBC Sport’s count. Arsenal finished with ten men after a late red card for Max Dowman, and Fleetwood’s goalkeeper, Jay Lynch, made two saves at the death.
In the shootout Lynch stopped the visitors’ fourth kick, and Fleetwood scored all five of theirs to win it 5-3. It was one of the biggest upsets in the competition’s history, according to BBC Sport’s report, with the League Two side 84 places below the champions in the pyramid. Arteta told Sky Sports it was “a really sad day for us” and said, “We have a massive responsibility to carry this badge in the best possible way.”
There’s a counterweight. With the League Cup gone, the only midweek games before Christmas are three Champions League nights and a league trip to Brentford, and a squad without Saka could use the rest. The cup was never the measure of a title defence. The next four weeks are.
The club’s own directory lists two official supporters’ clubs in South Africa, Arsenal South Africa and Arsenal Cape Town, and the first says on its website that the former Arsenal player George Eastham started it in the early 1990s. For its members, the game at Anfield on Sunday starts at 18:30, against a Liverpool side six points behind.
After that come Slavia Prague, Hull, a trip to Newcastle and the visit of Dortmund, with Saka likely to miss most or all of it. Then City arrive at the Emirates. If the champions are still level with them by then, or ahead, Fleetwood will look like a cup exit. If they’re behind, it’ll look like a warning nobody heeded.