At the time of writing, the final whistle has just rung out at the Emirates stadium to signal the end of the Gunners game with Unai Emery’s Aston Villa. A game in which Mikel Arteta’s men squandered a 2 goal lead and 2 valuable points in their pursuit of Premier League leaders Liverpool.
Earlier in the day a late double salvo from Darwin Nunez sealed all three points for Arne Slot’s men away to Brentford, a result which put them 7 points ahead of Arsenal with both teams having played the same number of games.
(Arsenal threw away a 2 goal lead over Aston Villa and perhaps their title hopes with it.)
The significance of both of these results was played out in the live betting odds. At one point in the day Arsenal were as low as 3/1 to win the Premier League title. By the time the final whistle went this evening, they had drifted to 5/1 with Liverpool moving up to 2/7.
Generally we like to avoid making predictions as they have a nasty habit of coming back to bite you in the long run. Considering what we have seen today from both sides in the title race however, the headline of this article feels somewhat off.
To address that, we’re going to tell you below why Arsenal won’t win the Premier League title this season…
Mikel Arteta
The Spaniard has done an amazing job in North London. If you disagree with that you’re either one of the belligerent generation of football fans brought up on ‘Twitter bantz’, or someone with an incredibly short memory.
When Arteta arrived at Arsenal in 2019, the club was a shambles and things didn’t look like changing anytime soon. In just a couple of seasons Arteta had shipped out all of the disruptive high earners from the squad and inserted the Gunners into an unlikely title bid against Pep Guardiola’s high-flying Manchester City.
Ultimately the team would fall short in their pursuit of the Premier League trophy back in 2022/23, before repeating the feat the following season. The two common themes that derailed those title bids were periods of sloppy results precipitated by an overreliance on emotional football and, a lack of a recognised goal scorer.
Unfortunately for Arsenal and Arteta, none of those issues have been rectified. All too often the emotions of the manager transmute to the players who, like they did today, buckle under pressure, giving into their emotions when cooler heads are needed.
Then of course, there is the goal scorer issue, one which has consistently hamstrung Arteta’s sides since his arrival in 2019.
(Mikel Arteta’s emotional management style was helpful in transforming Arsenal from also-rans into title contenders, but in recent years a cooler head from the manager would have been more beneficial to the team.)
Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus Don’t Win Teams Titles
Both of Arsenal’s strikers made their way to the club after being deemed surplus to requirements by their previous employers. Both of which were teams with aspirations on the biggest trophies in England and Europe.
Jesus was the injury prone backup striker at the Etihad who seemingly never fulfilled his potential and Havertz was the jittery forward at Stamford Bridge who made a habit of spurning gilt-edged chances – unless of course that chance came in a Champions League final, bizarrely.
Again, unfortunately for Arsenal, both have lived up to their billing at the Emirates. Most recently Gabriel Jesus’ fine run of form was curtailed by yet another injury. And whilst Kai Havertz did find the back of the net against Aston Villa today, it does come off the back of a fortnight in which the German has been even more profligate in front of goal than usual.
(Unfortunately there was no shortage of clips to pick from to illustrate our point.)
To highlight that further, Havertz had underperformed his xG every season since moving to Chelsea from Bayer Leverkusen in 2020. At the halfway point of this campaign, he has around 3 goals less than his stats suggest he should and is on course to have the biggest xG underperformance of his career.
Needless to say, a goal return like that is not what Arsenal need from the man they have leading the line.
In Summary
Mikel Arteta’s shortcomings as a manager and the shortcomings of both Gabriel Jesus and Kai Havertz are alone enough to suggest that Arsenal will end the season with nothing to show for their efforts.
Add into that the fact that Bukayo Saka is unlikely to feature until March and the picture becomes increasingly bleaker for Arsenal fans. The only way in which we will be left looking foolish in May is if the Gunners spend some serious money in the transfer window bringing in an established goal scorer who hits the ground running and Liverpool significantly drop off.
Whilst one of those things might happen, the chances of both occurring together are, in our opinion, incredibly slim.
