It’s been another good season for Arsenal so far, but the question is, can it turn into an all-time-great campaign? Having finished second in the league in the past two seasons, there was hope before the season that Arsenal might finally go one further and finally get their hands on the Premier League trophy for the first time since 2004.
Manchester City’s problems increased those chances. Unfortunately for Arsenal, Arne Slot’s Liverpool emerged out of nowhere and have occupied the top position for much of the campaign. Still, there’s still a chance that Arsenal will win the league this year. Let’s take a look at what needs to happen for that to be the case.
Winning Key Games
Arsenal are going to win plenty of games between now and the end of the season. To be in with a chance of winning the league, they’ll need to realistically win all of the games they’re expected to win and several that they’re not necessarily expected to win.
Looking at the remaining fixtures, it’s clear that the game at Manchester United at Old Trafford, the home game against Chelsea, and, most importantly of all, the away game at Liverpool in May are all “must-win”. And that’s on top of all the other games. They’ll have to be essentially perfect, while also hoping that Liverpool are slightly less than perfect at some point.
Liverpool Need to Stumble
Before the season started, Arsenal would have thought that Manchester City would, again, be the team to beat if they were going to lift the Premier League title. No one thought that Liverpool would emerge seemingly out of nowhere to become favourites to win the league, especially after Jurgen Klopp’s departure.
There’s no doubt that Liverpool are looking formidable. Salah, in particular, is having a golden season. While football xg isn’t an exact science, Salah’s supremely high xg, which is bettered only by Erling Haaland, sounds about right. The man simply can’t stop creating goal-scoring chances. Or at least, he can’t right now. Salah’s form must, surely, dip at some point during the season, even if it’s only for a few games. If that happens, and Liverpool fail to win a few in a row, then Arsenal’s chances will look much rosier.
Returning Players
You can argue that Arsenal should have spent in the January transfer window in order to bolster their claims to the title. But in any case, there’s no denying that Arteta’s team have been hampered by injuries. They’ve had injury issues all season, and are currently without Saka, Jesus, Martinelli, and Havertz, all key players who have an impact. If Arsenal are going to hit peak form during the business end of the season, then they’ll need those players to come back and hit the ground running.
Playing With Belief
There’s another issue that Arsenal will need to overcome in order to win the league: a lack of belief that they can really do it. At the moment, they’re playing like Liverpool did under Klopp before they finally won the title: good, but not quite good enough. Klopp found a way to get his Liverpool team over the line, and Arteta will have to do the same. At the moment, they don’t quite play like a team that truly believe that they’ll win the league.
Expect Twists and Turns
At the moment, Liverpool are looking good, and virtually everyone believes that they’ll end the season as Premier League winners. But this Liverpool team aren’t as domineering as Manchester City have been during the past few years, so things are far from a foregone conclusion. We should expect plenty of twists and turns, and in this unpredictable season, you never know what might happen.
