To win the English Premier League is hard. To defend the title is harder. In the EPL era, only three managers have managed it. Two of them, Alex Ferguson and Pep Guardiola, are the greatest to have stood on the touchline in these parts. The third, José Mourinho, marked the league’s biggest paradigm shift: its leap into the inexhaustible vaults of petrodollars.
The shadows that chase and spread over Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta are both inspiring and terrifying. He is a season’s triumph from soaring into that rarefied space; he is a nudge away from rolling off the title-defence cliff. He doesn’t like the act being called “defending the title.” “I prefer to call it attacking the title,” he said before the Community Shield fixture against Manchester City.
The peculiar shape of this season should cast his side as frontrunners. All their traditional rivals are in flux, in various stages of forging a nucleus that might challenge for titles in future, rejigging in search of a winning formula. Arsenal have strengthened their squad and possess arguably the most formidable midfield in the league. The window remains open for ten more days, and they could yet make another major signing.
Arteta is also the only current manager who has felt what it is to hold the trophy aloft. He and his players know how hard that journey was, the heartbreaks that hardened them, the setbacks that refined them. “When you get a taste of how nice it is, you want to do it again,” Martin Ødegaard said after thrashing Manchester City to win the Community Shield.
The version of Arsenal that turned up in Cardiff that night was frightening: crushingly authoritative, thrillingly watchable, a world away from the defensive trudges of the past two seasons. But to be intoxicated by that canter would be a folly Arteta will work hard to avoid. The league guarantees nothing. Plenty of former champions could testify to that. Since Ferguson’s retirement, only Guardiola has retained the crown, and the detail behind that fact is where the difficulty lies.
Every recent champion bar City has endured a baffling reckoning while trying to defend their title. Arne Slot’s Liverpool sank without a trace last season, finishing 24 points behind their winning tally, despite a $500 million war chest. The year before, Guardiola’s own side, champions four years running, ended 20 points adrift of their previous total. Chelsea and Leicester City have their own versions of the same story.
Managers and pundits have gone looking for answers. “A lack of desire,” Slot said bluntly, after his side finished 17 points off the pace. “You look into your players’ eyes and it’s a bit like looking at a lover. Either you see passion and a willingness to be seduced, or you watch as the passion ebbs away,” he explained.
Others with less squad depth have pointed to fatigue, injuries, pre-season scheduling. Jürgen Klopp, during Liverpool’s 2020-21 collapse, when the Reds finished 30 points behind their title-winning haul the year before, put it this way: “Could anybody know how the last season of 63 games could influence this season?… Would I do anything different? I wouldn’t go in the first week of pre-season to Asia.”
Arteta’s Arsenal played exactly 63 games last season too. Several of his key players are notoriously injury-prone: Bukayo Saka, Ødegaard, Ben White, Kai Havertz. William Saliba, one half of the league’s meanest centre-back pairing, is nursing a long-term injury. Arsenal missed out on their preferred target, Morgan Rogers, and lost the race for Vinicius Junior, leaving their forward line less thoroughly covered than their midfield and defence. There remains a chance they land Julián Álvarez, whom Atlético Madrid would rather send to north London than to Barcelona.
Álvarez, or someone fitting his profile, could be the missing piece. Goalscoring was a genuine concern last season: Arsenal’s tally of 71 goals was the lowest for a title-winning Premier League team since Leicester City in 2015-16, and only 42 of those came from open play. Their most reliable scorer was Viktor Gyökeres, with 15, a consistent rather than prolific return. They have variety across the pitch, but every dynasty in this league has had a forward good for 20-plus goals a season.
Or Arsenal will hope their midfield compensates for what the forward line lacks. Declan Rice, Bruno Guimarães, Eberechi Eze, Martín Zubimendi, Mikel Merino and Myles Lewis-Skelly can be shaped into almost any system required. Rice is an all-action presence; Zubimendi blends silk with steel; Guimarães offers bite behind his passing range; Eze is deceptive and disciplined; Merino is the Swiss Army knife; Lewis-Skelly brings the verve.
The foundations look strong. Everyone else is still building theirs. Arsenal look like the clear favourites to keep the title in their own hands. But the league offers no guarantees. The last time Arsenal managed back-to-back titles was nearly a century ago, under Herbert Chapman and George Allison. Not bad company for Arteta to be keeping.