Ninety-one years without back-to-back titles
1935. That was the last time Arsenal successfully defended the English league title. It also made them only the second club in the country to win three in a row.
The Gunners head into the new season carrying a label they hadn’t worn for 22 years: champions. The 3-0 win over Manchester City in the Community Shield did the rest. It is the biggest margin in this fixture since another Arsenal-City meeting finished by the same scoreline in 2014.
Don’t get carried away, though. Of the last 15 Community Shield winners, one has gone on to lift the Premier League title.
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Stability nobody else can match
The real edge sits somewhere else entirely. Nine clubs changed managers this summer. Nine bosses will take charge of their first league games on the same day, something not seen since 1946-47.
Mikel Arteta is comfortably the longest-serving manager in the division, with six years of rebuild work behind him. His squad sits right in the sweet spot too: 74% of the minutes in the Community Shield went to players aged between 24 and 29, and David Raya was the only man over 30 in the line-up.
Among Arsenal’s rivals, only Michael Carrick at Manchester United and Unai Emery at Aston Villa were already in place before the summer. Opta’s supercomputer gives them 6.2% and 4.8% title chances respectively.
Two blows at the back, questions up front
The title was built on a suffocating defence. Twenty-seven goals conceded, eight fewer than anyone else. 28.3 expected goals against, the best figure across the five major European leagues. That works out at 0.74 xG conceded per match, the fourth-best mark in Premier League history since 2012-13.
William Saliba will miss a big chunk of the year, though. It is a back problem, one that has been hanging around since the World Cup. Jurrien Timber, fresh off groin surgery, will also miss the start. Ben White and Cristhian Mosquera step in, and neither offers quite the same profile.
Another strength is under threat: set pieces. Arsenal scored 19 goals from corners last season, a Premier League record, and 29 in total from dead balls, posting a +14.1 xG edge in that area against Brentford’s -5.1, the next best. Referees now have new instructions on grappling, and VAR can look back at an earlier phase before a corner if it leads to a goal or a penalty.
Then there is the other end. Arsenal scored 71 goals, and only four champions have managed fewer in 33 completed Premier League seasons. Christos Tzolis arrives to rebalance an attack heavily skewed to the right, where 42.5% of their open-play chances were created last season, the highest rate in the division. Bruno Guimaraes is expected to ease the load on Declan Rice. The rest may come down to the treatment room: Martin Odegaard played 35% of league minutes last season, Bukayo Saka 57%.
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