The season for Arsenal, then. Has it been worthwhile? It seems this question is trickier to respond to for the Gunners than for almost anyone else in the league.
We must still recognize the chance that Mikel Arteta and his strikerless team might simplify matters by claiming the Champions League, but operating on the balance of probabilities indicating this is unlikely, we are still faced with that same question.
Has this season for Arsenal been any good? To paraphrase Tim Lovejoy (not that one): a brief answer is 'yes' with a 'condition'; a detailed answer is 'no' with a 'however'.
We sincerely regret to inform you that you will be getting the lengthy response.
This must be regarded as a letdown season for Arsenal, even if, as appears highly probable, it ends with yet another second-place result.
The distinction lies in the expectations and starting positions, and to be frank, which other teams have moved in various directions concerning this stagnating Arsenal.
Arsenal has secured second place in both of the last two seasons, and it is evident that these have, overall, been successful campaigns. Securing second place in the 22/23 season was a significant accomplishment for a team that finished the 21/22 season by squandering fourth position to Antonio Conte’s Spurs.
Certainly, they collapsed on the final stretch of the title race, but they had reintroduced Arsenal into a discussion that they had been missing for far too long.
Last season, although it was ultimately disappointing to finish as runners-up to Man City once more, still showcased clear, observable progress. Arsenal was unable to catch up to City in the final stretch, but they managed to keep pace with them. There was no bottling involved, and no level of frantic dialogue or narrative crafting could do it that way.
Arsenal fell short once more, yet the trajectory of the graph continued to rise. The feeling persisted that Arsenal were progressing towards their goal, with some at this point even proposing that reaching this goal in the near future was now unavoidable.
We can only infer that those individuals are not football enthusiasts and therefore lack the persistent voice in their minds that, even during happy moments, warns them that everything might soon go terribly wrong.
Certainly, it wasn't guaranteed that Arsenal would clinch the league with Arteta, and now no one is still pretending that this is true.
They certainly could still clinch the league one day, but there is also now a genuine chance that 2023/24 was the high point for this team and that the opportunity for winning the title has gone.
There are grounds for optimism. For one reason, City are nearly the only club in recent Barclays history that has successfully maintained three consecutive seasons of title contention. It is incredibly taxing on both the body and mind – for players and the manager – to accomplish this. Jurgen Klopp never accomplished it, so we shouldn’t be surprised that Arteta didn’t either.
What Klopp’s teams could accomplish was to compete once more after a barren season, and that will be the task for Arteta and company in the upcoming Premier League season. It is a time that continues to be full of possibilities. There are various reasons to believe Liverpool may not perform as well as they have this year, with no guarantees at all concerning City, Newcastle, Chelsea, or Villa. United and Spurs will undoubtedly be less miserable than this season, almost by definition, yet they are likely too distant to immediately pose any significant challenge at the top.
The upcoming year could indeed turn out to be Arsenal’s year. We informed you this was ‘no’ accompanied by a ‘but’.
But what if it isn't? What if this is the year? The year when City stumbled, when Chelsea attempted and failed once more to combine top-tier spending with top-tier football, and when Liverpool entered year one of a new initiative with a new coach.
We’ve mentioned this previously, but it genuinely seems that the manner in which Liverpool has taken the rug from under Arsenal this season makes it considerably tougher to accept.
At a basic level, the justifications and reasons – many of which are legitimate – that Arsenal fans used to comfort themselves about losing to City are completely undermined when it is Liverpool with a new manager who have outperformed Arsenal.
There is no safety net of 115 charges here.
And it is also inescapable that Arsenal's style of play has turned less appealing, more mundane, and most concerning, more cynical this season. Injuries have significantly impacted the situation, especially with Martin Odegaard absent in the season's initial phase, while Bukayo Saka is demonstrating precisely why Arteta could never imagine being without him.
It appears that Saka wasn’t merely the factor that improved Odegaard and the rest; he was also the reason Arsenal became enjoyable to watch. It’s widely recognized that Arsenal performs better with Saka – this applies to nearly every football team globally – yet the degree to which their enjoyment in playing seems to depend on his presence is still concerning. Not all adversaries will be PSV.
It's not accurate to claim that second place is the first loser. However, it isn't always untrue, either.
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