Why are Arsenal being described as the worst or most boring likely winners of the Premier League ever?
You hear and read it all the time; they’re only top of the Premier League table because everyone else is so rubbish, apparently. But that’s probably true every season. Everyone is de facto worse than the leaders. It is true that the competition is fractured this year but that’s not Arsenal’s problem.
It seems to me there is something more existential at play – a nebulous feeling that they are representing something objectionable and unlovely about modern football. They’ve gone half a decade spending heavily, achieving little, so it almost seems inevitable that at some point it would pay off, just as it did with Manchester City. But crucially City (who also suffered from similar criticism) played, at their best, scintillating, hair-raisingly great football. Arsenal don’t. More than that, to the neutral at least and some of their own fans, they’re often seen as regularly a bit boring.
Against Manchester United it’s true, they were rather feeble and lacked the sort of gravitas expected of leaders. Scoring from set-pieces is as valid as any way to score, obviously. But corner, scramble, toe poke into the net, it all seems very lower league, not worthy of league leaders maybe. Great for fans but it rarely stirs the football blood. And importantly, much less entertaining than EA Sports FC 26, against which much is judged.
Then people take against some of the players as over-priced inadequates. They have benefited from more own goals than anyone, which somehow underlines the lack of thrills they offer. Then there’s the manager. It doesn’t help to have someone at the helm who is thought of so negatively. Perceived to have been given an easy ride by a fawning media and feted for years with a billion quid without winning anything, as well as being pilloried for having a Lego head and looking like a Captain Scarlet puppet, this infects the overall vibe. All that hyperactivity just seems so unnecessary and echoes a competitive dad on the touchline of the school pitch.
He’s brilliantly portrayed by David Squires as a kind of mutant hammerhead shark. But it does seem quite unfair. Yes, he does look like an alien who has assumed a male form but hasn’t got his human quite right, but he can’t really help that, can he? Who can help the way they look?
Admittedly the grey school slacks and shorty coat don’t help with being seen as a cool man-of-the-people, nor does the grotesque-waste-of-money steak eating and the fawning to a taking-the-pish, ludicrous chef whose fame relies, incredibly, on throwing salt from a great height. But this is just football’s insane economics over-rewarding people for doing not much and it happens everywhere.
I suppose there’s so much entertainment elsewhere this year and Arsenal probably suffer in comparison. For example Chelsea v West Ham on Saturday and a shockingly rejuvenated Manchester United v Fulham on Sunday were both great, even Spurs v City was much more dramatic and far more entertaining than any Arsenal league game I’ve seen.
TV tries to sell an Arsenal game as a big thing but it rarely lives up to the hype. The variable outcomes are making it much more interesting this season, so Arsenal’s predictability might seem rather bloodless. Efficiency over flair. They areunbeaten against teams in the bottom half of the table.
Arsenal are better than any of those teams but so what? Football is about fun and enjoyment not sterile success. The sensible high-achiever is never the cool kid. Of course fans won’t care, nor should they. It always seems odd to me that a portion of any fanbase craves ‘respect’ from fellow fans. I don’t know why. Do you respect Middlesbrough? No. Why should you and why should I, a Boro fan for 55 years, care if you do or don’t?
Ideas get set early. All that attitude and the guff Arteta has talked about over the years has helped establish him in the minds of some as a bit of a w*nker and he’s done nothing to shake that. The same thing is happening now with Liam Rosenior, who looks and sounds like an insurance company middle-manager turned inspirational coach on an away day in a Holiday Inn conference room, dripping with lingo and earnest intensity. It’s decreased the respect for the excellent results.
Obviously the top team always attracts negativity, but it does seem extra strong this year, almost to the point of people saying Arsenal don’t deserve to be champions. That seems silly. The league is less a meritocracy now, more a financial outcome. Money more than magic. If 50% of the points were awarded for style, Arsenal would be mid-table but they’re not, are they. They’re the most efficient and if that bores everyone, tough, what did you expect? Arsenal are nothing if not ultra-modern. Maybe that’s at the root of the grumbling.
Some will feel the game has become wedded to a purely transactional, venal, cold and unsporting economic spirit but that’s not something unique at the Emirates. It might all seem desperately unromantic but it has done for some time now. Arsenal are just the latest beneficiaries of a ridiculous economic orthodoxy. It’s normal. So if you dislike Arsenal, you’re really disliking football at the highest level in 2026. It’s understandable and valid but whatcha gonna do? Hate Arsenal? It’s not their fault; your bile is misdirected.
Those grey school uniform slacks though….