It took 6 years for Mikel Arteta to win his first Premier League title with Arsenal. Can they do it again? Today I saw a short video on Sky Sports where they predicted Arsenal to defend the PL title. If I am correct, he is now the only manager who has won the Premier League. Since Pep Guardiola left, there is no other manager with a title. There was a lot of activity on the benches; Enzo Maresca signed with Manchester City, Xabi Alonso signed with Chelsea, Andoni Iraola signed with Liverpool and Alvaro Arbeloa signed for Fulham. It’s quite a nice waltz.
By checking the odds on 36Vegas for the final winner, I can see that the order is Arsenal, Manchester City, Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham, Aston Villa and Newcastle are in the top 8.
Btw, you can read your 36Vegas review here.
Sky Sports, on the other hand, predicts the following: Arsenal, Manchester City, Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest, Everton and Newcastle. The two say basically the same for the top 7 spots. Then Nottingham, Everton and Newcastle.
Great Team
Arteta put together a really great team over the years, and it seems like he is not stopping. They recently bought Bruno Guimaraes from Newcastle for €87,5 million, Christos Tzolis from Club Brugge for €40m, Illan Meslier from Leeds, Piero Hincapie from Leverkusen for €40m and most recently Ezri Konsa from Aston Villa for £50m (as per Fabrizio Romano).
I have created a possible line-up for next season. Arteta will not have the easiest job picking his best team.
Arteta used the Raya – Calafiori, Gabriel, Mosquera, White – Lewis-Skelly, Guimaraes – Tzolis, Odegaard, Madueke – Havertz starting lineup against Manchester City in the Community Shield. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see the match, but by checking the statistics, I can see that Arsenal made better use of their chances in front of the goal. They had 9 shots, of which 5 went on target, and 3 of them were goals. City, on the other hand, had 12 shots, 5 on target and 0 goals. City also had 59% of ball possession and 4 corners against Arsenal’s 2. I understand it’s just the first game of the new season, but this City team will need a great amount of work. Now let’s get back to Arsenal.
Fixtures
Let’s see the fixtures until the end of the year and my predictions:
Coventry (H) – should be an easy win for Arsenal
Aston Villa (A) – close match, but Arsenal should win
Chelsea (H) – the first real test; I think it will be a draw
Sunderland (A) – Arsenal to win
Brighton (A) – close match, could be a draw
Leeds (H) – Arsenal to win
Nottingham (A) – Arsenal to win
Everton (H) – close match, but Arsenal should win
Liverpool (A) – draw, but it depends on how well Iraola prepares the team during the season
Hull (H) – Arsenal to win
Newcastle (A) – Arsenal to win
Manchester City (H) – huge game, I think Arsenal will win
Brentford (A) – Arsenal to win
Tottenham (A) – local derby with a draw
Bournemouth (H) – Arsenal to win
Manchester United (H) – draw
Crystal Palace (A) – Arsenal to win
Fulham (A) – Arsenal to win
So, by checking the first 18 games of the season, Arsenal should have a pretty great run with almost all games to win. The biggest tests will be, of course, against Chelsea, Manchester City, Liverpool and United. With the depth of the squad, I believe Arteta should find the best solution to keep all players motivated.
Will they be able to defend their title? I guess yes! For me, Iraola’s Liverpool is not ready to fight for the title; Xabi Alonso’s Chelsea will be interesting to watch, and Enzo Maresca’s Manchester City could be close, but I think they will not be ready to win the title. I have a bold statement. I think Michael Carrick will drive Manchester United to the top 3. Since he took over United, he has done a fantastic job, so I think they can cause a big surprise.
Champions League
Arsenal were very close this year to winning the Champions League, but they were defeated in the end on penalties. That’s why Arteta is trying to build a more competitive team and go again for the Champions League trophy.
It’s interesting to see that PSG is (again?) the favourite to win the Champions League, then Arsenal, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Manchester City. We can make bold statements here, but I have doubts about Arsenal winning the CL this year, and also about PSG winning for the third time. So far, only Real Madrid could do it. This year, I think Barcelona will have the best chance of winning it, especially now that they have signed Rodri.
But we will see what happens. One thing is for sure: Arteta is very ambitious to bring Arsenal back to winning trophies again!
Zoltan Tamas
Senior SEO Editor · 16 years of experience
Zoltan cares about legal brands and user safety
