Arsenal and the 95-point era
Man City haven't slipped, Arsenal have caught them
I’ll have something on Ben White’s passing up on Arseblog tomorrow so look out for that, and I’ve got plenty of Arsenal content coming — some for free, more for paid subscribers —right here during the international break.
For now, I’ll leave you with this …
How lovely of Theo Walcott (one goal, one assist) and Ainsley Maitland-Niles (one penalty *ahem* won) to win Southampton a point against Tottenham and send Antonio Conte over the edge and deliver the sort of press conference that any Arsenal fan would love to deliver as Tottenham manager. Having reminded the world how much bigger and less pathetic he is than his employee, while they’re paying him £13m-a-year to make them bigger and less pathetic, Conte barely stopped short of ringing Jack Wilshere and asking him what he thinks of Tottenham.
Arsenal followed all that fun up by beating Crystal Palace on Sunday and now there’s just ten games to go. Five at home, five away. Six in April, four in May. Five against teams in the bottom half, five against teams in the top half. And, as much as I can, I am going to just try to enjoy this international break. I’ll obviously be thinking about the title race the entire time but, thanks to Sunday’s result, I can do it with a smile on my face.
As difficult as it is, I am trying to just spend as much time as possible enjoying how good this team is and how much fun it is to watch them play. I am cherishing every moment the result isn’t on the line. Because this Arsenal team is historically good and we have to make the most of it.
And I really do mean the are historically good. Across the course of the Premier League era, it has required more and more points to win the title. It is harder now, in 2023, than ever. It requires more quality and more consistency than ever.
From the league’s inauguration up to (and including) the 1998-99 season, the title winners only averaged 2.08 points per game. Over a 38-game season (the first few campaigns were 42 matches long) that works out at 79 points to win the league on average.
Then the top teams pulled away. With the money starting to gather at one end of the league and the same sides finishing in the top few places every season to secure their hegemony with the swelling pot of Champions League gold, the gap between the best and the rest became bigger than ever. In the 17 seasons from 1999-2000 to 2016-17, 79 points would not have been enough to win the title once. Even 85 points would have only won the title three times, one of those being the season Leicester won it.
The sides crowned champions suddenly averaged 2.31 ppg over this period. Or 87.8 per 38-game season.
The extra 0.28 points per game does not sound enormous at first but it’s almost an extra nine points per season. It was a big jump. Arsène Wenger’s greatest Arsenal team(s) and José Mourinho’s Chelsea shifted the goalposts, Manchester United managed to keep up thanks to Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney, and then Man City’s billions entered the equation as well.
And then the Pep era happened.
He didn’t win the title in his first season in England — Antonio Conte’s Chelsea, included in the era above, claimed the title with 93 points— but City and Guardiola clicked in year two. Of the five seasons since Conte and Chelsea won the title, Pep has won four and Jürgen Klopp led Liverpool to the other. And the champions across that time have won an astonishing 2.51 ppg (95.4 points per season) on average. Remove the season played behind closed doors and that number becomes an almost impossible 2.57 ppg (97.7 points per season and it is so far from being a one-off.
That is where the bar has been set for title winners and that is a level Arsenal (2.46 ppg so far this season) are more or less playing at. The 2022-23 campaign is not a story of Manchester City dropping off, it is one of Arsenal catching up.
And the league table heading into this international break proves it. Only four teams have ever had more than Arsenal’s 22 wins at this stage. Even the Invincibles were not one of them. Only six teams have ever had more than 69 points at this stage. The Invincibles were one of them and would be a point ahead of Mikel Arteta’s side right now. That’s right, the Invincibles would be just one point ahead of this team and with fewer wins.
Even in this jaw-dropping era of top teams dominating, Man City (2017-18) and Liverpool (2019-20) have had more than 69 points from their opening 28 games just once apiece. In just one season (2019/20) have Liverpool had more points after 2018 games and, likewise, City have only had more points once. This is not a story of those clubs dropping off, this is a story of Arsenal matching the standard these clubs have set.
It’s nervous and tense but it’s thrilling and I am genuinely enjoying it every step of the way. As much as I can.
It’s pretty surreal to experience, especially given I felt that we were still 2-3 seasons away from competing with City and Liverpool...definition of synergy