Arsenal have the title, the squad and the calm to start something bigger than one trophy. If they retain the Premier League this season, this stops being a great team having a great year and becomes an era.
Ten games in, Arsenal sit top on 27 points, five clear going into the international break. They have won nine, lost one, conceded five and kept seven clean sheets. Those are champions’ numbers, and they belong to a side that already are the champions.
That is the point. Winning a first Premier League title brings anxiety: can you, will you, are you good enough? Winning a second brings proof. Nobody calls a second one a fluke.
Has the imposter syndrome finally gone?
Watch how this team handles a frustrating afternoon now. Against Hull City last weekend, Arsenal had most of the ball for most of the game and Hull spent long spells camped in their own half. It stayed goalless deep into the second half, until Martin Odegaard followed up after Noni Madueke’s 72nd-minute shot was saved, as we covered in our piece on Odegaard’s return to form against Hull.
In previous seasons, that kind of game turned the Emirates nervy around the hour mark. You could feel it in the stands, on the bench and on the pitch. That anxiety isn’t there anymore. Arsenal won’t always find a way, but there is a quiet confidence, in the dressing room and among supporters, that they usually will.
This season they have shown every version of themselves. They have played brilliant, entertaining football. They have ground out the dull wins too, and the Hull game was their sixth single-goal victory of the campaign. They have come from behind, and the substitutes have changed games. There is a calm arrogance and a predictability about them now, and predictable teams pile up points.
What does a dynasty actually mean for Arsenal?
Let’s be careful with the word. Nobody should expect the Sir Alex Ferguson years at Manchester United or Manchester City’s run of titles. Dominance doesn’t have to mean 20 trophies on the spin.
For Arsenal, a dynasty looks more like this: a window of three or four years where they are the team everybody has to beat, where Premier League titles keep coming and the FA Cup and League Cup get picked up along the way. That window is open now. The Carabao Cup has already gone this season, after the shootout defeat at Fleetwood, but the bigger prizes are all still there.
Football runs in cycles. United had theirs, City had theirs and Liverpool had theirs before this one. Arsenal spent years as a laughing stock, and the club that was drifting in 2019 is unrecognisable now. Every part of the project lines up: the defence is elite, the squad has depth and the age profile hits the sweet spot of short, medium and long term.
Is the league really weak?
That’s the line you will hear. People said the same when City were at their peak, and when Liverpool won their titles they were called boring. It’s sour grapes. Arsenal can’t be held responsible for the state of their rivals, and if anything the division is as competitive as it has ever been: Brighton are flying, and they are the only side to have beaten the Gunners in the league so far.
The complaints about Arsenal, that they don’t score enough or that they are boring champions, are the kind of problems Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and certainly Spurs would love to have right now.
Why a three-peat is harder than it looks
Here’s the honest bit. Retaining the title this season looks very possible. Winning it a third time in a row looks much harder, and it won’t happen with the forward line as it is.
Rivals will get their houses in order. City will be back, United will be back one day, Liverpool and Chelsea will rebuild, and Brighton could yet have a Leicester-style season. To stay ahead of all of that, Arsenal will need to add genuine stars in attack.
That is why January matters less than you might think. A new forward this winter would help, and we have made the case that a left winger should come before a striker. But blowing up a squad that is five points clear in mid-season isn’t the plan. The summer of 2027 is when the big move has to come.
What Arsenal need in summer 2027
Two things. A left winger who is head and shoulders above everybody else, the kind of signing every rival is jealous of. And a striker who doesn’t stop at 20 league goals but gets 25 or 30. Do that after retaining the title and a third straight crown stops sounding like a dream.
The missing 20 per cent in the Champions League
Europe is where the doubts are. Collectively, this team is outstanding. They defend for their lives, they create chances and they do not fear anybody, home or away. The final against PSG in Budapest in May proved it: it was one of the great defensive displays by an Arsenal side on a European stage, and it still ended in a penalty shootout defeat. David Raya has admitted that the pain of that PSG final will never fully leave the squad.
But look at the attack that night. Noni Madueke was Arsenal’s most dangerous forward, and with respect to him, that shouldn’t be the case in a Champions League final. Too little happened around him, and too few attackers grabbed the night.
Arsenal have that air of inevitability at the back and in midfield, with William Saliba, Gabriel and Declan Rice. They don’t have it up front. The late stages of the Champions League demand perfection defensively and individuals who take responsibility in the big moments. Real Madrid have that aura. Liverpool came back from three goals down to win it, United had 1999 and 2008, and Chelsea beat Bayern in their own backyard. The footballing gods have never done Arsenal any favours like that, so they will have to earn it.
This group has enough to win the Premier League. To win the Champions League, they need roughly 20 per cent more: something we haven’t seen from them yet. To achieve something the club has never achieved, they have to become something they haven’t been.
Verdict: Arsenal can retain the Premier League title, and must think bigger
No Arsenal side has retained the league title since the 1930s. This one can do it, and we think it will. If it does, the summer of 2027 is the moment to sign the stars who turn a back-to-back champion into a Champions League winner.
None of it lasts forever. One day there will be no Saliba, no Gabriel, no Rice and no manager as sought-after as Mikel Arteta, and Arsenal fans will look back on these years the way they look back on Arsene Wenger’s. Time can’t be saved, only spent well. So spend it creating memories.
