On yesterday afternoon’s Same Old Arsenal podcast James gave me a sobering stat that he’d read:

No team has ever won a Premier League whilst being more than six points behind at this stage of the season.

I read that again this morning – United in 2002/3, City in 2013/14, the City in 2020/21 were the biggest ever points gaps recorded – but that was six points.

So if Arsenal are going to win the league then they are going to have to break the history books.

That’s why I think title chances are gone. History is against us, we are seven points off Liverpool, five off City and whilst it still feels so early in the season and it feels a little hyperbolic to say that the title challenge is over after ten games, the reality is that there’s a reason teams haven’t overcome points hauls like this: because they’re bloody hard to claw back on.

Now, perhaps the very hard start to the season, the ridiculous red cards and the injuries are meaning that we have been put in an unusual situation that we can recover from, but as it stands and after that troubling performance on Saturday that was not the first of its kind this season, it doesn’t feel like we’re about to go on a mega run of wins to me. Our margins for error are already practically gone; we have eroded any advantage and now essentially need to be perfect, which is why I am thinking that we’re not winning the league this season. Sadly.

As a fan you’re naturally predisposed to trying to find patterns, something to hang your hopes on, so I also started to think “yeah, but what about the reverse fixtures last year? How did we get on? I’ve used a golfing analogy to describe below the corresponding fixtures…

Well, we won at home to Wolves (par), we lost away to Villa (birdie), we beat Brighton at home (bogey), we beat the Scum away (par), we drew with City away (par), we beat all three newly promoted teams at home so that covers Southampton and Leicester (two pars), we beat Bournemouth away (double bogey) and we lost to Newcastle (par). So for the same fixtures last year we are two points worse off. Doesn’t sound like much, but that two points would have us on 20 points and five off Liverpool, which again feels like we’re about on track. That game away at Bournemouth and that draw at home to Brighton feels like they have been quite costly indeed. It feels as though we are going to need to be basically perfect between now and Christmas for all of this title talk to feel remotely possible. It just doesn’t right now.

They say that the table starts to take shape after ten matches, but we’re at that point now and we’re sitting in fifth behind Chelsea on goal difference, who we play next weekend. Lose to them and it really is all over I think. I had a look at the last three seasons and what the table looked like and what our points tally was. In 2023/24 we’d won seven and drawn three, were on 24 points. Man City had 24 the same as us. Newcastle had a similar points tally to what we’ve got this season on 17 points and they finished with 60 points. In 2022/23 we were on 27 points with City on 23 points. Chelsea had a similar points tally of 19 and they finished the season on 44 points, so they had a bit of a shocker after the first ten games. I don’t think that’ll happen to us, mind. Then, in 2021/22 Chelsea were top on 25 points, we were on a similar number on 17 and the eventual winners – City – had 20 points. They finished on 93, Chelsea finished on 74, we finished on 69 points.

So there’s never really been a time in which a team on 17 – 19 points at this stage has ever got close to the title in recent years and it’s starting to feel like that for us. Which is why I’m a little melancholy today and it could get a lot worse unless we pull a rabbit out of a hat next Sunday. I watched bits of the United v Chelsea game and it didn’t look like a game of too high quality, but you would imagine that Chelsea will be much better on their own turf against us next weekend. But Mikel is going to need to find some kind of better solution to get a result, because it’s feeling right now as if we’re teetering on the brink.

I apologise for the morose and downbeat nature of today’s blog. I can’t help how I’m feeling when it feels like the season feels like it’s stuttering to a halt before its even got going. The tough fixture list has us perhaps feeling like there’s a crumb of hope in the mitigation of the tough away matches we’ve had, but that’s about all I have at the moment. I guess we just have to hope that the next couple of months can bring some signs of a spark back in to this Arsenal team.

I think I’ll leave it there for today. It’s downbeat enough as it is! Have a good one and I’ll be back tomorrow as we start to look ahead to Inter away.

Catch you all then.