When does a Premier League title wobble become cause for the panic button to be pressed? From an Arsenal perspective, it is when Manchester City start to appear in the rearview mirror, and that anxious moment has now arrived for Mikel Arteta and his players.
The Gunners are two points clear of Pep Guardiola’s City at the top of the table, with in-form Aston Villa one point further back in third place following their dramatic 2-1 win against Arsenal on Saturday.
With bottom-club Wolves due to visit the Emirates on Saturday, Arsenal would expect to open a five-point lead over City ahead of their difficult trip to fourth-placed Crystal Palace a day later, but this title race is not about testing the resolve of Guardiola’s team, it is about whether Arsenal can hold their nerve with City breathing down their necks.
Arsenal have plenty of ghosts to exorcise if they are to win their first title since Arsene Wenger’s 2003-04 “Invincibles” became the only team in Premier League history to go through a league campaign without suffering a defeat.
Only Liverpool and Manchester United (both 20) have won more league titles than Arsenal’s 13, but the Gunners have never gone so long between titles as their current wait, which will be 22 years by the end of this season. Arteta has also won just one major trophy — the 2019-20 FA Cup — in six years as Arsenal manager, so the 43-year-old is overdue when it comes to proving he has that crucial quality of being able to successfully guide a team through the stresses and strains of a title race.
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Those silverware droughts for both Arsenal and Arteta will provide psychological hurdles between now and May, but the biggest challenge facing the Gunners is that being posed by City.
When Arsenal sat atop the Premier League with a six-point lead after 12 games last month, it was one of those key pointers towards the likely winners of the title because no team have previously failed to win it after being six points clear at the same stage of the season.
But on the flipside, on the last three occasions that Arsenal have been top after 12 games (albeit with a smaller lead), they have failed to win the title. And guess which team finished top on each occasion?
Yes, you’re right: Manchester City.
Since moving six points clear with a 4-1 home win against Tottenham Hotspur on Nov. 23, Arsenal have collected just four points from a possible nine, with a 1-1 draw at Chelsea and the weekend’s loss at Villa coming either side of a routine 2-0 win against Brentford at the Emirates.
And in typical fashion, despite their frailties and inconsistencies this season, City have capitalized on Arsenal’s mini-wobble by recording three successive wins against Leeds United, Fulham and Sunderland. In the space of three games, City have reduced a seven-point gap to just two. And they are beginning to turn the screw just when Arsenal are hitting an injury crisis with key defenders William Saliba, Gabriel Magalhães and Cristhian Mosquera all ruled out.
To make matters worse for Arsenal, City striker Erling Haaland is running clear in the race for the Premier League’s Golden Boot award, with 15 goals in 15 games, and Guardiola will have money to spend again in January. Furthermore, no other coach possesses the experience of Guardiola when it comes to guiding a team to glory in the second half of the season.
Arteta has assembled Arsenal’s strongest squad since Wenger’s “Invincibles” and they have been the best and most consistent team in the Premier League this season. They are still the title favorites and deservedly so, but they held the same status in 2022-23 and 2023-24 and each time, City reined them in to finish the season as champions. So why should this season be any different? Are there any clues which point to Arsenal finally going the distance?
Apart from the strength of their squad, which is certainly being tested defensively right now, there is no one stat which says that this will be Arsenal’s year, but there are some concerning ones.
For a start, they have failed to defeat any of their title rivals so far this season, losing at Liverpool and Villa, and being held to draws by City and Chelsea.
They have no player like Haaland in their side who can be relied upon to win tight games. While Haaland is scoring at the rate of a goal a game, no Arsenal player has scored more than four league goals — four players (Eberechi Eze, Leandro Trossard, Bukayo Saka, Viktor Gyökeres) share their top-scorer spot with four apiece.
And while Arsenal boast the best defensive record in the league, conceding just nine goals, a third of those have been conceded in the last two away games. Injuries in defense are already beginning to have an effect.
City are certainly not perfect and are nowhere near as convincing as some of Guardiola’s greatest teams — the fact they conceded four goals in a 5-4 win at Fulham last week underscores that reality — but they have the mindset and the proven record of turning up when the pressure is on in the second half of the season.
Arsenal can hold onto the fact that none of their current title challengers are the complete package this season and the Gunners may end up being the best by virtue of their strengths outweighing their weaknesses. But what they can’t escape is the knowledge that City have repeatedly answered the questions that continue to trouble them. And that could come back to haunt them.
