Scroll back a year and some of the parallels are hard to ignore. At this point in 2023, Arsenal were four games into a winning run that eventually extended to seven and they had discovered how to cut loose. Across that spell they scored 23 times and it briefly felt, as spring bloomed, that a newly clinical side was showing its true colours.
The nosedive that followed has been well documented. So what, if anything, has changed? “I think the maturity,” said Jorginho, who has emerged from the shadows to stand tall in Arsenal’s latest imperious run, after the rout of Sheffield United. “We are way more mature [in] how we compete and how we manage the games. I think that’s it.”
But there is something else. Arsenal’s current run, again across seven games, has brought 31 goals with the concession of just three. They are not just beating opponents comfortably. They are swatting them out of sight. While detractors will make a case that they have plucked a basketful of low-hanging fruit since mid-January, the fact remains that nobody else is winning games by similar margins and with this consistency. They are the first side in England to have won three consecutive away matches by five goals or more. These are figures nobody can explain away and they are the kind usually synonymous with a remorseless march towards the title.
Not so fast. “We have been in this position before and I think it is just ‘stay humble’,” said Declan Rice, whose uptick in attacking contributions continued with a smartly taken fifth goal at Bramall Lane. Rice was watching from afar as a West Ham player when Arsenal, rocked by William Saliba’s injury, snatched three draws from the jaws of victory last April and failed to recover thereafter. Mikel Arteta had built a sparkling young side that performed irresistibly for much of the campaign but there remained a brittleness that made setbacks difficult to surmount.
It is worth noting, as Arsenal plunge into the mire of a three-team title race whose final 11 games will leave scant room to blink, that their dominant form has survived a number of key absentees. Gabriel Jesus, who returned on Monday night after a month out, has been responsible for only one of their recent hatful; Thomas Partey came back from a longer-term injury at the same time; Oleksandr Zinchenko, so important to Arsenal’s fluidity when fit, has been sidelined since 4 February. All of their hard work since August has had to be done without Jurriën Timber.
Yet nobody would have noticed. The emergency left-back Jakub Kiwior has been among those to step up and make light of squad depth concerns. Arsenal now enter a tougher, defining spell knowing they can turn the screw even when numbers are low. They have learned to be clinical. Before this season there was a sense that, once ahead in a game, they were prone to sitting in too cautiously and inviting problems. Arteta rarely made any secret of his frustration in those cases: he preached aggression but there were times when his team appeared tentative. Perhaps being hunters, a status not afforded them last time around, has untethered a killer instinct.
In recent weeks they have struck a perfect balance between conserving energy and exploiting opportunities ruthlessly. Life is much easier when you can kill games early, and Arteta’s exhortations to go for the jugular have been heeded against vastly inferior opponents such as Burnley, the Blades and a woeful West Ham. Relatively conservative second halves against Crystal Palace and Newcastle, which still brought five goals between them because Arsenal pounced when given an inch, offered lower-key but important proof that they have learned to pace themselves.
Arsenal’s visit to the Etihad Stadium on 31 March will be laden with significance although, given the rest of their run-in hardly looks unkind, it may not be defining with a further nine games left. The Premier League would certainly profit from a vanishingly rare three-way tussle at the top given, in most other aspects, this has been a poor and undistinguished campaign for a division that claims to be the world’s best.
The farce around mid-season points deductions at the bottom rolls on and is a stain on its governance; the inability of the bottom two to compete has been stark, even if Burnley in particular might have helped themselves by adding some of the old blood and thunder to their quixotic footballing ideals; mid-table remains, beyond the extraordinary case of Chelsea, a morass of interchangeable also-rans clawing against a ceiling.
Fortunately for the league’s promoters, eyes instinctively drift towards the summit. Neutrals would be well served in willing all three contenders on, even the ominously lurking City. A lurch back into predictability would give 2023-24 little to commend itself but there is little sign Arsenal, older and wiser, will wither this time.
“It’s been a hell of a comeback since the Christmas period,” Rice said, referring to the consecutive defeats against West Ham and Fulham that preceded a seemingly transformative break in Dubai. It will be a much greater one if Arsenal, 12 months older with their momentum and confidence snowballing, consign the woes of last season to distant memory and end their two-decade wait for national supremacy.
