The last time Arsenal won the Premier League, I wasn’t alive yet. I would have loved to experience the “invincible” season, where, in 2003/4, Arsenal won the Premier League without losing a single match. However, since that season, Arsenal — one of the biggest clubs in England — has failed to return to this same pinnacle, sliding into mediocrity for the past 15 or so years. Now, Arsenal finds themselves very near the top again, but they just can’t seem to convert when it matters.
Growing up, I used to dread Arsenal games. At first, it wasn’t too terrible and although Arsenal became a team associated with the third place curse, I wasn’t altogether too upset at Arsenal finishing the majority of their seasons in the 10 years following 2003/4 in third or fourth place. After all, we had just built a new stadium, were financially restricted and still managed to stay consistent.
However, as I grew older, people stopped referring to Arsenal as a team plagued by this third place curse and instead saw them as a “banter club,” which was, in all honesty, completely justified. As Arsenal began to slump, finishing fifth and sixth, we parted ways with longtime manager Arsène Wenger — the only manager I had ever known — in 2018, something we thought was for the better. We couldn’t have been more wrong.
As a lifetime supporter, I can admit Arsenal fans didn’t know what we had with Wenger until he was gone. Though we weren’t perfect, Wenger had done an excellent job in keeping us steady, which was something most fans did not realize until the 2019/20 season.
As this fateful season began, our always-limited financial budget and fickle ownership investment was suddenly exposed. The following years were brutal and included turbulent Unai Emery and Freddie Ljungberg tenures. The promise for a run at the FA Cup trophy we had under Wegner was gone. We were solidly mid-table, consigned to catching back-to-back eighth place finishes.
As I said, I used to dread Arsenal games. During this time, the professional nature of the club I was accustomed to had completely vanished and I was constantly ridiculed by my friends in school for supporting a club that seemingly had no direction. Social media was worse, as a constant flood of hate towards the Gunners filled my feed.
The highlight of these years was Arsenal Fan TV (AFTV). Their hilarious videos denouncing the players, criticizing the manager and just ranting about anything Arsenal-related helped all fans like me make it through these hilarious years as professional critics labeled Arsenal as a “social experiment.”
Returning to the present day, Arsenal is actually good again! But one problem remains: They can’t win, or at least not when it matters most.
Last Wednesday, on April 17, Arsenal exited the Champions League on the back of a bleak and uninspiring 1-0 loss to Bayern Munich. Just three days prior, after sitting first in the Premier League, they succumbed 2-0 to Aston Villa in a home performance nothing short of a humiliating disaster. As an avid Arsenal fan and longtime supporter, I sense a frustrating and concerning trend about Arsenal’s performance in big competitions, something I’m not sure I have an answer for.
In the 2022/23 season, Arsenal held a new — and largely undesirable — record. After holding first place in the Premier League for 248 calendar days, they lost the title. This is, of course, the most for a team that failed to win the title in English top-flight history. In fact, during this season, Arsenal recorded their best start in history, winning 17 of their first 20 games, as well as holding an eight-point lead against eventual winners Manchester City at one point in the season.
However, despite this fantastic start and dominance throughout the majority of the season, Arsenal managed to somehow lose the league, winning only four of their last 10 games. This subsequent loss of form allowed for a much more mature and disciplined Manchester City team, led by renowned coach Pep Guardiola, to steal the title with 89 points (to Arsenal’s 84).
While this was altogether frustrating and confusing as a fan, I wasn’t too concerned and was sure that Arsenal would win some major trophy the following year. However, as I start to see the same trends occurring, I’m going to present a plausible explanation for Arsenal’s loss of form at particular moments.
The issue that I will highlight is the fact Arsenal is inexperienced, both in the players as well as managerially. While Mikel Arteta is a fantastic manager — the first of which I am confident in since Wenger — he is still very young, only a few years removed from being an Arsenal player himself. After all, he is a Pep Guardiola product; he was Guardiola’s assistant for many years at Manchester City.
I’m no sports psychologist, but I can recognize a trend: Arsenal wins — often with massive margins — in the games that don’t matter, but stumbles and struggles to obtain results in the ones that do. This stems from both the players and Arteta himself. To highlight this point, I’ve focused on three particular fixtures: the final games of the 2021/22 and 2022/23 seasons, as well as the 2020/21 FA Cup Final.
Bad performance in big games started before the 2022 season, with Arsenal losing to Tottenham and Everton in the 2021 season and missing out on a Champions League position that was by any measure guaranteed. However, during the next game — where Arsenal had effectively no chance to improve their position as the season was technically over — they had their best performance of the season, beating Everton 5-1. A similar situation occurred a year later, with Arsenal thumping Wolverhampton Wanderers 5-0, after they had mathematically been eliminated from winning the Premier League.
The last game I’m going to talk about is the game where Arsenal won its last major trophy — excluding the Community Shield this season — the 2020 FA Cup Final. In this game, a woeful Arsenal team overcame a slightly better (but debatably just as bad) Chelsea 2-1. However, what made this game different is that Arsenal won in an almost no-pressure situation. Though it was a cup final, no one expected this Arsenal team to be in the final, much less win the game. However, in the absence of pressure or expectations, Arsenal prevailed, with Pierre Emerick Aubameyang’s penalty and a cheeky chip over Chelsea goalkeeper Willy Caballero being enough to secure the victory.
If you ask me, I’d say that Arsenal lacks maturity. As of now, the players don’t possess the unbeatable mentality that top teams Manchester City, Real Madrid and even a struggling Bayern Munich display. Nor does Arteta exhibit the same unbreakable and ice-cold image of Pep Guardiola. Because of this Arsenal might continue to struggle until they are consistently exposed to these situations and can figure out how to deal with the pressure. As frustrating as it is for us fans, there may not be any analytical or statistical explanation. It might simply involve us being patient for the time being.
However, with all of this being said — as well as the fact that Arsenal didn’t win anything last year and probably won’t this year — I’m optimistic and excited for the future. Before 2022/23, Arsenal suffered six years of mediocrity, failing to qualify for the Champions League, parting ways with long-time manager Arsene Wegner and subsequently sacking his successor, Unai Emery. Though the reactions from AFTV were hilarious and unforgettable, I’d really rather not return to a time when David Luiz was a consistent starter. Now, I’m confident with our lineup, our results (for the most part) and our new transfer targets; although things might not be going perfectly, I can be assured that there is a vision at Arsenal, a vision that is being carried out by Arteta and his youthful squad.
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