Arsenal have been one of the high flyers in the Premier League in recent seasons. Under the tutelage of Mikel Arteta, the Gunners have finished in back-to-back second-place positions and will be looking to go a step further this coming 2024/25 season.
Arteta’s men have grown in the past few years and made significant progress since the Spaniard came on board and are now looking towards claiming one of the biggest trophies available. To that effect, Arsenal tickets will also see a surge in demand for the 2024/25 season.
The North London club have been close in recent seasons but they have not been able to turn the competitive effort into a trophy and that is the situation of things at the moment. Most of the efforts have been thwarted by the brilliance of Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City.
To rate the chances of Arsenal in the coming season, we attempt to analyze the Gunners as we look forward to the start of the 2024/25 Premier League campaign.
Arsenal under Mikel Arteta in the Premier League
Arsenal have 13 league titles to their name but the last title win came in the 2003/04 season. The Gunners have been working hard to get their hands on the top-flight title since then, but despite being close, they have not been able to achieve that.
Despite a lack of title wins, Arsenal remained in the top four until the 2016/17 season when they finished 5th on the log. Meanwhile, they have also finished league runner-ups four times since 2004.
The Gunners have been under the guidance of Mikel Arteta since 2019. The former club captain has overseen a complete rebuild of the team since then and to a large extent he has done a great job of bringing the club back into the title conversations.
Before his appointment, Arteta presented a well-detailed five-phase plan to the Kroenkes explaining his vision and plans for the club and how to take it forward. Without any doubt, the club is not yet near the end of that plan, but a small minority of fans have already been calling for Arteta to be sacked due to the lack of major trophies.
While the trophies have not come, Arteta has taken Arsenal from mid-table and settling for European spots to being genuine title contenders in five years. If not for the previous elevated status of Arsenal, that would be seen as an immense achievement.
It is also worth noting that Arteta is still early on in his managerial career and is having to compete with Manchester City, one of the most dominant teams in football history, managed by arguably the greatest manager of all time – Guardiola. To have pushed City to the final day of the 2023/24 season is already a great achievement in itself.
Arteta, 42, still has a lot of years in front of him and he is in charge of a young Arsenal squad. Due to this, neither the manager nor the players are fully experienced to compete with sides like City. As a result, both Arteta and his players will mature and improve alongside one another on their way to completing their footballing journeys.
In addition, a large undertone of Arteta’s reign as Arsenal head coach is the new-age rivalry with Man City. Arteta, who came from Man City as their assistant manager and now he has the aim of taking away their domination of English football.
Arsenal’s chance in the Premier League
Following his side’s failure to win the Premier League last season, Arteta said he cannot get over it, claiming his side should have won the Premier League title.
“I don’t want to get over it,” Arteta began.
“I am really satisfied with the way the team is performing, the way the players are evolving, what the team transmits, the momentum we have as a football club. In all departments, not only on the men’s side but the women’s side, what we are doing with the academy, the prospects that we have there. But we need that pain and that hunger to achieve what we want to achieve because the competition is unbelievable and we are going to need everybody feeling that way to achieve it,” he added.
In the same interview, Arteta went ahead to talk about his side’s hunger and how he could sense it among the group at the Emirates.
“I could feel it straight away. We had a gathering together after the final whistle against Everton [on the final day of last season] and that was the only thing they were talking about: What are we going to do next season? They are looking at us and saying, ‘OK, what is next? What are you going to do next? How are you going to again turn the wheel and find something else, that extra motivation, other tactics and something amongst the group that is going to elevate everybody’s level?’ The club is sharing that vision and we are trying to achieve that.
In the 2023/24 campaign, Arsenal were the best team in many statistical categories; the Gunners went toe-to-toe with City in many others and they even took four points off them. Arsenal’s defensive unit conceded just 29 goals in the Premier League. That’s five fewer goals than Man City (34) who had the next-best defence. Arsenal also chalked up 18 clean sheets in the process, five more than the next-highest sides (Everton and City on 13).
Many have praised Arsenal’s defensive record, so it can be easy to ignore how prolific they’ve been in attack. They scored 91 goals, which is a club Premier League record.
Arsenal also did well against the so-called ‘Big Six’. Their 1-0 away win over Manchester United in their penultimate game of the season completed an entire season without losing in the league to any of their big-six rivals. They did the double over United and took four points off City, Liverpool, Tottenham, and Chelsea. It means Arsenal picked up 22 points in their 10 games against the big six (W6 D4) – an incredible seven more than any of their rivals in the big-six mini-league.
Arteta is fully aware of the challenge ahead and a lot of work must be done if they are to usurp Manchester City as the new Premier League champions.
Despite all of the above including a finish with 89 points and +62 goal difference, the Gunners could not win the Premier League and Arteta thinks they need to do more, saying; “I told you anything less than 90, I didn’t believe it would deliver that. Let’s start with 114 and see what we get.”
Arsenal did not do much in the transfer window and is not expected to go big other than the permanent signing of David Raya and Riccardo Calafiori – another defender to shore up that impressive defense.
As Arteta argued, the Gunners will need to be near perfect if they want to win the Premier League and must prevent shocking results like the ones against the likes of Fulham, and Aston Villa at the Emirates to achieve that dream.