So it turns out those who had already handed the title to Arsenal were right after all.
It’s absurd, of course, to start handing out the title in November but a feature of modern football is how obsessed it becomes so early with title races. It’s perhaps a legacy of the Pep Guardiola-Jürgen Klopp rivalry’s peak, when being champion meant amassing more than 95 points. It made sense then to scan the track far ahead for any potential hurdles because there were so few. But less than a third of the way through this season, Manchester City, who remain probably the biggest danger to Arsenal, have already dropped as many points as they did in the entirety of 2017-18, their 100-point campaign.
It’s perhaps also because Arsenal’s yearning for a title is so great, having failed to win one since 2004. In that, they were perhaps unfortunate that their first serious post-Arsène Wenger title challenge came in 2022-23 when perceptions were distorted by the winter World Cup. When the league resumed they were seven points clear at the top of the table and it felt like a run-in, even though there was still more than half a season to play. That contributed to an emotionally fraught atmosphere that seemed in part to lie behind the weird collapses against Liverpool and West Ham in games they had been dominating, and the loss of their lead.
The longer the run-in, which in football is almost entirely a psychological state, the more it favours the pursuer. The biggest threat to Arsenal this season, perhaps, is that awareness of the prize and how close it may be induces a needless and debilitating anxiety. Yet the fact remains that this was an extremely good weekend for them. It’s not just that Arsenal won the north London derby with such ease, it’s that Manchester City and Liverpool slipped up again and look incapable of applying the sort of pressure that might unnerve Mikel Arteta’s side.
The late concession of an equaliser at Sunderland two weeks ago had brought the first check on Arsenal’s optimism, particularly when it was followed by City’s demolition of Liverpool. Given how good Arsenal had been, how inconsistent City had seemed, the fact that the gap was only four points seemed a rebuke to the narrative that had been building that Arsenal might be starting to run away with it. After City’s defeat at Newcastle, that gap is back up to seven points, which feels far more representative. Arsenal have been much better than City. Approaching a third of the way through the season they have been much better than everybody.
With Bayern to come on Wednesday in the Champions League and then Chelsea next Sunday, this could have been a challenging week. The draw at Sunderland had ended their run of 10 straight wins. Gabriel, one of their most important players, was out with an adductor injury (and will probably be for at least the next couple of weeks). Had they somehow lost to a Spurs side who have been much better away than at home under Thomas Frank, they could conceivably have lost the lead in the Premier League to Chelsea next Sunday, while playing a team they have lost to 5-1 three times since they last beat them in between.
As it was, Sunday’s 4-1 win over their rivals was a crushing statement of purpose. Spurs may argue with some legitimacy that Eberechi Eze’s first goal should have been ruled out for offside (the regulation on what it is to be interfering with a goalkeeper is another than has only been confused by attempts to define it more precisely) but equally this was a game in which they were very fortunate to get away with a three-goal defeat: Arsenal hammered them.
After a season dominated by talk of Arsenal’s set-piece excellence, this was a game won by their brilliance in open play, first by Mikel Merino’s deft pass to Leandro Trossard, and then by Eze’s blend of power, grace and trickery. If the absence of Gabriel was noticed, it was only perhaps in the fact that they didn’t score from a set play; Piero Hincapié fitted in perfectly alongside William Saliba in central defence. Spurs, it’s true, presented very little threat, but the match confirmed the notion that Arsenal have put together, by some distance, the deepest and most coherent squad in the Premier League.
Can anything stop them? Of course. There are still 26 games to play. Misfortune can happen, doubts can set in. Football history is littered with unlikely dei ex machina from scandal to injury to dodgy lasagne. But nothing that’s been seen in the Premier League this season so far can stop them. Liverpool, surely, are gone now, too far adrift and too scrambled in their own minds. Perhaps Chelsea or City could put together a run that might make this a contest, but Arsenal look remorseless. They don’t let in goals and they can score from open play or set pieces. This was a weekend to dampen the doubts.
This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition.
