Arsenal and Manchester City are once again battling for the Premier League title in England and, with only weeks of the season remaining, the gap between them remains extremely small.
Whether Arsenal or City go on to win the league, one thing about Arsenal already feels clear: There has been growth, but not dominance.
Arsenal are more consistent than they were a few years ago. They are harder to beat, more confident and more composed during the “no-pressure” parts of the season.
They look so dominant when the pressure is off, but when the moments that matter arrive, they still fail to fully take control. As an Arsenal fan, that is what makes this team so frustrating to watch.
For the second time since the 2022/23 season – when they led the Premier League for much of the campaign before being pipped by Manchester City in the run-in – Arsenal have made the title race harder for themselves than it needed to be.
At the start of the campaign, Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta made a number of significant and, for some, controversial changes. He dropped Myles Lewis-Skelly, who had been outstanding last season, and brought Riccardo Calafiori back into the starting lineup after injury.
Whatever people thought of those decisions, they appeared to immediately make Arsenal impossible to break down. That defensive strength was clear from the opening day, when Arsenal beat Manchester United 1-0 at Old Trafford thanks to an early Calafiori goal. In the following weeks, they conceded fewer than one goal per game.
But in their third game of the season, they lost to Liverpool 1-0 at Anfield, with a late Dominik Szoboszlai free-kick deciding the match.
The obvious question after that game was: Why did Arsenal not go for the kill?
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