As the lights go out on Arsenal’s title challenge what’s most concerning about a third failure in as many years is that the club appear to be going backwards.
There’s an arc forming - and Arteta’s project looks to be on the downward curve, his sixth year in charge on course to end in Arsenal’s lowest points total since they finished fifth in 2021/22.
Jurgen Klopp left Liverpool after eight-and-a-half years citing exhaustion. By the end of next season Arteta will overtake Rafael Benitez and become the seventh-longest serving manager in Premier League history.
Very few who go on for that long end on a high, nor do they revive their club’s fortunes once the descent has begun.
It all looks rather ominous.
Arteta has only won one trophy as Arsenal manager and that was five years ago, and while injuries have badly disrupted their title bid this year the problems were stacking up before Bukayo Saka’s injury: dependence on one star player; a lack of backup up front; a midfield that needs Martin Odegaard in form to work; and an over-reliance on set-pieces.
Arsenal’s squad just doesn’t look like one ready to make the final step and lift the title.
Leandro Trossard, Kai Havertz, Gabriel Martinelli, Mikel Merino, Gabriel Jesus, Ben White: there’s a long list of Arsenal players who are a fraction below the standard set by Liverpool and Man City over the last decade.
In fact, consider the squad as a whole and it becomes apparent that Arteta has hugely overachieved already. Falling short of last year’s 89 points isn’t failure. It was remarkable Arsenal got there in the first place with a squad built with less money than City’s or Liverpool’s.
Yet the challenge for Arteta is to somehow reverse the trajectory and get Arsenal even higher than before.
For that, he will need plenty of money, and here’s where there’s better news: reports suggest the club are prepared to back him with another £200 million+ summer spend.
The bulk of that will need to go on Alexander Isak or a number nine of equivalent pedigree, while the remainder is likely to be spent on meeting Martin Zubimendi’s £52 million release clause.
It is plausible that two big-money signings can fix everything and take Arsenal to 90+ points, especially if we consider that Man City are unlikely to shoot straight back to their absolute best and that Slot should regress slightly towards the mean after this year’s runaway success.
But it’s just as likely that Arsenal will simply fail to meet those implausibly high standards again; that the seventh year of Arteta will feel like a slog; and that a couple of injuries will be all it takes to reveal a soft underbelly.
It is extremely rare for Premier League managers to last this long, to get a tune out of a squad for more than half a decade. It’s even rarer that one re-lifts their team after the long sigh of deflation that follows years of near misses.
To win the title with Arsenal was always going to require something extraordinary, and the fact that Arteta has twice come close should not normalise how impressive his tenure has been, nor should it downplay the difficulty of what’s to come.
His task now is perhaps harder than it’s ever been.
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