Eberechi Eze’s hat-trick and Manchester City’s loss to Newcastle means Arsenal are in control of their own destiny
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.
