The Premier League’s capacity for infinite renewal depends almost entirely on our collective amnesia.
We never seem to learn anything about how football actually works, which we must assume is a wilful ignorance deployed to keep us engaged in something that is essentially repetitive to the point of mundane.
The mood inside the Emirates on Saturday wasn’t just confident but intensely relaxed. Eberechi Eze’s pre-match unveiling produced a buzz that Arsenal seemed to then carry into a 5-0 victory over Leeds United marked mostly for its lack of drama.
It was just a nice sunny day at the football, the sort of calm Arsenal win that evoked Manchester United at their Sir Alex Ferguson peak rather than the anxiety and hysterics that erupted form those pressurised Arsenal games in the first half of last season.
That’s great, but it just isn’t based in reality.
Eze’s status seems to have reached mythical proportions over the summer and although he is a very good player, Eze is not the messianic playmaker he’s morphed into during a high-profile transfer saga.
That amnesia pales in comparison to events on the pitch and memories of 2024/25. Arsenal have won their first two Premier League games of the season, a sign of things to come we are told. Except Arsenal also won their first two league matches of the season before this one. And the season before that. And the season before that.
It wasn’t until October last year that tempers frayed, soft tissue injuries piled up, and red cards created the narrative of an Arsenal community too anxious to cope with the pressure of expectation.
All of that is still to come, then. Or to put it more kindly, the test of Arsenal progress is still to come.
The paradox for Arsenal, given their recent history of caving under pressure, is that the closer they come to the title the greater the pressure and therefore the further they move away from it. The better the squad depth the more success is expected, potentially cancelling out the benefits of having a capable stand-in for Bukayo Saka or Martin Odegaard.
Injuries are one thing Arsenal fans don’t forget, and by far the most interesting and significant thing that happened against Leeds was the injuries to their star players and the collective reaction, or lack thereof, in the stands.
Here is where the paradox can be broken, and again it comes down to intangibles. If Arsenal players and supporters believe that the additional squad depth means they won’t miss Saka or Odegaard then they will make it true. It’s a psychological issue as much as a tactical or technical one. Judging by the total absence of panic on Saturday the stadium will be calmer and more rational over the next few weeks.
In theory, at least. How Arsenal manage this period will define their season. Here is the first inflexion point, the first test of whether Noni Madueke and Eze can indeed take the burden off Saka and Odegaard. Significant dropped points is all it will take for the optimism to vanish and the old fear, self-fulfilling, to creep back in.
Ride it out and we can say with confidence thing have changed, although as the campaign develops an even greater pressure will come, as it did in 2024/25 and 2023/24. Already this summer there has been slightly ridiculous talk of it being ‘now or never’ for Arteta. Again, that will only become true if enough people believe it, otherwise there is no reason Arsenal can’t maintain this level for years to come under the current manager.
And yet you can feel it in the air, a ‘no more excuses’ chat hovering over everything Arsenal do. To a certain extent this is simply the natural pressure of any would-be title winner, a privilege that comes with the territory. But with Arsenal you just never know when momentum and emotions might shift.
So far, things could hardly have gone any better, yet we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact we are only two games in and, right now, Arsenal haven’t done anything new. The club feels refreshed. But the season hasn’t really started.
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