What now?

The questions that have been rattling around my brain over the past 24 hours

Lewis Ambrose

May 15, 2023

Time to look ahead to the summer, right? Over the break I’ll have plenty of stuff on the squad, potential transfers, players we’re linked with. So stay tuned (and subscribe if you haven’t) for that. For now, before we all let this season go, there’s this …

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. The five stages of grief don’t have too much of a scientific basis but that doesn’t mean they’re miles off the mark. Even if it’s often more coincidence than anything else.

I’ve been through the lot over the course of the last month. I’ve been through the whole set in any number of orders. Anger after Liverpool, depression after West Ham and Manchester City. A mixture after the games against Southampton and now Brighton. Denial throughout the season. First, denial we were in a title race. Then denial we would actually see it over the line. Then denial that we wouldn’t. Bargaining before every Manchester City game, convincing myself maybe they would finally let up. Acceptance after them all, admitting to myself that they wouldn’t, only for the cycle to repeat a week later.

And now, after this weekend, it’s time to slowly, somehow, move on. Before I can, or maybe to help me do it, these are just some of the things I’ve thought about since City went ahead at Goodison Park.

Where did I think Arsenal would finish back in the summer?

Luckily I can actually prove this.

Over at OneFootball, I said third. Looking back that feels insanely optimistic, but it wasn’t, we’ve been the second best team in the league and it hasn’t been particularly close.

Last season — 2021/22 — was good. Especially the second half of it. And I didn’t think it was a flash in the pan, I thought it was the start of something that derailed because of injuries. And that we’d kick on with the additions of William Saliba, Oleksandr Zinchenko and Gabriel Jesus.

Most people, almost all non-Arsenal fans, didn’t think we would make the top four. I did but even then this has all been beyond my wildest dreams. I’d hoped we could maybe compete for the title by 2024 or 2025. We’ve already competed for it now, in 2023, so why can’t we do the same and come back more ready for that challenge in one of the next couple of years?

When and why did I allow myself to believe Arsenal were in a title race?

Not just believe but I think I first said it when we beat Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in early November to remain two points clear after 13 games. We had won at home against Tottenham and Liverpool but that was the first away win of the season against a team usually at the top end of the table. Chelsea were sixth heading into that weekend, they were only two points behind Manchester United and three behind Newcastle with a game in hand.

Maybe it’s because I was already fairly bullish in the summer that the start didn’t surprise me that much but still, considering I already thought we could finish third, it feels a bit mad that I wouldn’t say (out loud) until early November that I thought we could* win the league.

*Could, not would. For some reason people only ever ask you what will happen and saying you think something could happen is frowned upon, which I don’t get and annoys me to no end. Nobody ever knows what will happen.

Even at the turn of the year I said I just hoped we were still in the running come April. Gabriel Jesus was arguably our player of the season up to that point and we knew we’d miss him for a few months. We got into April, we stumbled through it, and we made it halfway through May.

It’s heartbreaking. But it’s still been more than I’d ever actually expected.

Did we bottle it?

Dumb question, dumb framing, it’s the worst word in a sport that has results consistently decided by dumb luck.

Arsenal had bottled it at Villa until the ball hit Emi Martinez’s back. They had the ‘mentality’ to get ahead at Liverpool and West Ham before ‘bottling’ it to throw the game away but then enough ‘mentality’ to still not even lose either game. Arsenal bottled it against Southampton but had enough bottle to comeback to draw, but then bottled the chance to win because the ball hit the bar instead of going in. And we bottled it against Brentford because an offside line wasn’t drawn. And at Newcastle until VAR intervened and took their penalty away.

You see how stupid the ‘bottling’ thing is? It’s for people too lazy to ask and answer …

What went wrong?

Without William Saliba and Takehiro Tomiyasu (crucially injured at the same time) Arsenal couldn’t control games. The ability to play a high line was compromised, so Arsenal couldn’t press as high as effectively without leaving gaps at the back. And the ability to play out from the back was compromised, so Arsenal could neither break through opposing teams nor keep the ball as efficiently.

For half a season, we were lucky. We were lucky in that our best players were available and that key players were always in form. When Bukayo Saka wasn’t scoring, Martin Ødegaard and Gabriel Martinelli were. Until they weren’t, and then Saka started up. And the three all fired up just as we lost Gabriel Jesus. When Gabriel had iffy moments in the autumn, William Saliba was imperious. And as Saliba dropped off post-World Cup, Gabriel played the best football of his Arsenal career to date.

That is lucky. Every player will have barren spells and ours didn’t coincide with each other. Plus everyone was available.

Luck like that doesn’t always last a season and when it doesn’t, the squad depth kicks in. Arsenal didn’t have enough quality options.

A maximum of three Manchester City players will make it to 30 league starts this season. And that’s only if De Bruyne, who has appeared in one of their four league games since the win over Arsenal, starts all three. Six Arsenal players are already over 30 league starts. Only injuries have stopped William Saliba (27), Thomas Partey (26) and Zinchenko (26) from also making it to that mark.

The players who have come in for Arsenal’s starters are not good enough to start for a team that wants to win the league. And that’s fine. We were eighth two years ago and fifth last year. Manchester City have been built to win the title for years, we’re still building.

Everything can’t go right for 38 games. So if you want to win the league, you have to be built to keep winning just enough when things are going wrong, like when you lose a couple of defenders or your centre-forward is injured or failing to score. We handled some of those things this season, we couldn’t handle them all. We aren’t built for it yet.

I think Mikel Arteta and Edu know this and will do something about it this summer to go after another title challenge and compete in the Champions League at the same time. Because this current squad cannot do that.

What now?

As in, right now? I’m going to shove my Fever Pitch DVD to the very back of the bookcase and feel sorry for myself for a little while.

What next?

Get Saliba fit and signed to a new contract, or replaced if either becomes more challenging than we’d like.

Sign at least one midfielder.

Sign another attacking option so we don’t flog our first choice front three.

Move on from having 'a first XI’ and ‘squad players’ to having 15 or 16 players who want to, and are good enough to, start every single game and play the way Arteta demands.

And then sit back, listen to everyone say there is no way we can have another season this strong, and wait patiently to hear the Champions League anthem in N5 again. I’m starting to look forward to it already.