Having seen their team run Manchester City mightily close in the race for the Premier League title last season, Arsenal fans had high hopes of silverware being delivered this season.
Sadly, the Gunners faithful haven’t found what they were looking for, as Mikel Arteta’s men failed to get close to runaway league winners Liverpool.
We recently saw Arsenal’s hopes of continental glory fade too, with the Gunners coming up short in Paris, crashing out of the Champions League at the semi-final stage, having already been knocked out of both domestic cups earlier in the campaign.
Another season has virtually come and gone, yet tangible success continues to elude Mikel Arteta – so where do Arsenal need to go from here?
Hard to beat, but haven’t quite kicked on
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Under Arteta, the Gunners have certainly rid themselves of the soft underbelly shown during the later stages of both Arsene Wenger’s reign and the year or so under Unai Emery.
Last season, Arsenal conceded fewer goals than any other Premier League team, shipping just 29 goals in 38 games, which let’s be real, is impressive.
The current campaign is yet to fully close out, but as things stand, the Gunners are once again top dogs in terms of goals conceded.
In the last two Premier League seasons, using Arteta’s keep-things-tight approach, the men from Emirates Stadium have kept a total of 30 clean sheets. That’s a shutout in 39% of their league games, which is title winning material indeed.
And it’s not as if Arteta’s men are all about just keeping teams out, oh no. Last season, only Liverpool scored more league goals than Arsenal, while at the time of writing, the Gunners are the fourth-highest scorers this term, with Manchester City scoring only one more goal and Newcastle scoring only two more goals.
I guess the problem is, for all his team are incredibly tough to face, the Spaniard hasn’t really turned defensive strength into regular success, with the Gunners failing to kick on after that 2020 FA Cup success at the end of Arteta’s first campaign.
Given the lack of silverware, people will soon be asking what Arteta can do to get his team to shift from being title challengers to title winners.
Maybe there’s not too much more to be done?
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Of course, it’s typical for everything to be overly scrutinised and if a team such as Arsenal goes a few seasons without delivering tangible success under a manager, we rush to conclude that said manager has got it wrong, but I’m really not sure that Arteta has got much wrong.
The Gunners have only lost five league games this season, losing none of their ten games against the big six, winning five of those, while they reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Champions League, knocking out Real Madrid in the process, before going down to a very, very promising Paris Saint-Germain side.
You only have to look at the other top-flight team in North London to know that things could be much worse.
Here are some stats that suggest the Gunners aren’t too far away from winning trophies:
* No team has kept more Premier League clean sheets in the last two seasons.
* No Premier League team has conceded fewer goals in the last two seasons.
* In the last two seasons, no Premier League team has won more points away from home.
* No premier League team has a better goal difference since the start of the 2023/24 campaign.
* Only Liverpool have lost fewer games than Arsenal since the start of the 2023/24 season.
Sure, you could argue that compared to last season, they’ve gone into their shell a bit too much this season, opting to keep things tight rather than really going for it in games, but at the end of the day, this is clearly a top side. The squad is strong, and Arteta clearly knows how to get his team to compete, so don’t be too quick to write the Gunners off.
Will Mikel Arteta add to the Arsenal trophy cabinet next season? Time will soon tell, but if like me, you feel that they’re very close to delivering in that sense and you fancy the Spaniard to deliver the goods and you want to bet to that effect, you should do so after checking out the [best online betting platforms](https://first.com/) at FIRST.
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