Well at long, long last it’s happened. Several near misses , unbelievable tension and ridicule from fans of other clubs but eventually it happened. Yes ….an ex- Arsenal player lifted the Strictly Glitterball! Wow, well done Karen Carney …hold on, you say, something bigger than that happened last season? Of course, I’m only being flippant.
Can you remember where you were on 19th May this year at 9.50 pm? Of course you can! It was the moment the final whistle was blown at the Vitality Stadium down in Bournemouth. Manchester C130y had failed to take maximum points against the Cherries and after twenty two years, as Sky incessantly reminded us, Arsenal were champions again.
What did you feel? Triumph, relief, pride, disbelief or a mix of all those emotions? While I had anticipated we would win the league (whatever my Predictathon entry might have said!), the feeling of celebrating a title victory again was extraordinary. That wonderful evening, as tens of thousands of Gooners congregated at the Emirates to celebrate, it became increasingly apparent to many of us that global Arsenal support was significantly bigger than we had realised. Even some of the team arrived at the Emirates in the small hours drawn by the need to be at a place which was at the centre of so many peoples’ universe.
We still had one more league game, a trophy lift, the small matter of a Champions League final to come and finally a bus tour around North London, the impact of which brought most of London to a standstill. Ultimately, we fell just short to an extraordinary PSG side, losing in a penalty shootout in that final, but the strength of our performance and the fact that we had been unbeaten in open play through the whole Champions League season, ensured it was a respectable and narrow failure, even if it did highlight the deficiencies in our squad at the very, very highest level.
The Season in Microcosm
Three successive second place finishes in the last three seasons would suggest that we were very real contenders for the title when the season began, even if Liverpool’s triumph interfered with the narrative that had Arsenal slicing into C130y’s lead over those seasons. However, two Champions League seasons where we reached the quarters and then the semis suggested an exciting trajectory. Yet, Arsenal began the season with a lot of pundits suggesting that if Arteta did not deliver trophies he had to step away from the Arsenal hot seat. Sadly, a large number of foolish Gooners took these stupid prognostications on board. We may have a lot more supporters than we realised but not all of them are blessed with brains or much understanding of football.
Well Arteta has delivered! A seven point winning margin in the league and an incredibly narrow failure in Budapest represent an enormous achievement and confirms that the exciting trajectory charted over the last few campaigns accelerated towards one of Arsenal’s greatest ever seasons, not mentioning a defeat by C130y in the Carabao Cup Final at Wembley.
The summer has been, for a number of us anyway, a time of celebration, of reflection and a chance to decompress after what became, for me anyway, a hugely tense period. The season was followed almost immediately by a World Cup that was exciting, controversial and tedious in equal measure and sadly stained by the corruption of the execrable Gianni Infantino.
Now season 2026/27 is upon us. As we return to the Emirates for the Coventry fixture on 21st August, there will be a new league trophy emblazoned on the honours display around the stadium. It has taken twenty years of occupancy at the Emirates to achieve the status of champions. Now we are all wondering what the immediate future may hold.
Frankly, in my sixty-eight years of supporting Arsenal, I can scarcely remember more cause for optimism than we have now. Our squad is incredibly strong and, as I write, we have added Bruno Guimaraes and Christos Tzolis. The Vinícius Junior liaison was ultimately fruitless, but indicated the genuine ambition and credibility of Arteta’s Arsenal.
Yet, I sense some pessimism and bad vibes among supporters. The reasons relate back to the aforementioned World Cup. Many of our players who had an incredibly intense season went deep into the competition managing injuries which all seemed to worsen during the competition. Three of our finest stars, Rice, Saka and Saliba left the tournament nursing injuries, which in Saliba’s case has subsequently proved to be serious. Many of our players have scarcely recovered from the effects of the tournament before football has begun again. This is true for all our rivals of course but the impact on Arsenal is particularly severe. Those who dislike Arteta hold him responsible for many of the injuries we have suffered but there is no doubt that the impact of the World Cup and the increasing intensity of the Premier League have created an uncertainty that reduces the bullishness you would expect from most of our supporters.
The New Season Awaits
To be absolutely honest I’m not sure if I’m ready for the new season yet! It may seem strange but I found last season extremely nerve wracking and a great sapper of emotional energy. You’d think a veteran of my years and experience would take it all in my stride but I’m so emotionally invested in Arsenal that I often find the televised games agonising. I love going to live matches but I was a nervous wreck at times last season. I don’t think I’m alone. While I don’t have the same investment in England in the World Cup, I need time to decompress before I put myself through it all again. My wife thinks I’m mad! So, imagine how Declan Rice must feel, living your life at that pace, under that pressure! It was so satisfying to win the league last season but we all want Arsenal to defend our title this term with honour and character.
What’s New?
I’m going to start aside from the playing issues. The radical change in our medical and conditioning departments underlines where Arteta believes we need to up our game, although many supporters believe his own training methods are responsible for a second successive season of serious injuries. I prefer to blame those who put the fixtures together which includes Sky and TNT who have created this extraordinarily intense footballing marathon.
At Arsenal, Dr Zafar Iqbal has gone. Iqbal was Arsenal’s long-serving Head of Sports Medicine and Performance. He left after the club conducted a review of its medical and injury-management processes. He had been in the role during the 2025/26 season. He has been replaced by Dr Arnaldo Abrantes, who arrived from Aston Villa and has taken over responsibility for medicine and performance. Tom Allen has also left — this is a particularly significant departure. Allen had been Arsenal’s Head of Sports Science and Performance since 2017, overseeing areas including physical performance, nutrition and performance support. His departure means that a key part of the conditioning structure which had been in place for many years has been changed. Sam Wilson, the lead performance coach, has also departed. So Arsenal haven’t simply changed the doctor — they’ve changed several of the people responsible for the physical preparation of the first team.
Eneko Angulo has arrived from Real Betis as Arsenal’s new Head of Rehabilitation. That is an especially interesting appointment because rehabilitation and getting players safely back from injury were areas that attracted considerable scrutiny and criticism last season and going further back than that.
José Jiménez previously with Bayer Leverkusen, has been brought in as a fitness coach, replacing Wilson. There is therefore a significant change in the actual day-to-day conditioning team as well as the medical leadership.
Over the last few years we have increasingly developed a Spanish influence in our club. I remember once landing at Miami Airport and hearing a continuous flow of Spanish speakers. The Arsenal back room must be a bit like that!
Why Has Arsenal Done This?
I think the important point is that Arsenal won the Premier League despite their many injury problems, rather than because they avoided them. They had a succession of significant absences involving players such as Saka, Ødegaard, Havertz and Timber, while the team also played an enormous number of matches. Arsenal played 63 matches, an exceptionally heavy workload. The club therefore brought in Spanish medical/performance specialist Joaquín Acedo to examine the injury situation. His review appears to have been influential in the subsequent restructuring. This isn’t simply a case of Arsenal saying “we need better physiotherapists.” It looks more like a move towards reconsidering the whole relationship between medical care, conditioning, training load, recovery and return-to-play decisions. That matters enormously for Arteta because his style of football does place huge physical demands on his players. If Arsenal can keep its key players available for substantially more of the season, it could be worth several points over a campaign. How we manage our inevitable injuries and how we rotate our best players will be key to success this season.
The Squad
Assessments of playing resources, carried out some weeks before the deadline, are inevitably going to be speculative. Last year, we signed Eze and Hincapié after the season had started, and it is likely that we may do the same sort of thing again. We may also part company with established members of the squad, having already lost Leo Trossard, Christian Nørgaard, Karl Hein and Jakub Kiwior and others need to follow especially if we are able to generate significant sales income, a part of our trading that has not worked well in recent years. We really do have to get better at selling. I’ve been called out on this for several years but it is galling to see Chelsea and C130y raising serious sums of money for very average players.
I suspect before the end of the window we might wave goodbye permanently to Martinelli, Vieira, Jesùs, Nelson, Nwaneri and possibly Kepa. If we don’t (apart from Martinelli), they won’t play much of a part next season and we’d raise over £100 million from their sales as well as reducing our wage bill significantly. A buyback clause for Nwaneri would enable us to benefit if he does emerge as an outstanding talent. Loans might be very beneficial for Ceadach O’Neill and Ife Ibrahim who have stood out in pre-season appearances.
Some excellent pieces on potential acquisitions have been written on GHF during the summer. It is difficult to ‘scout’ players and expect them to be picked up by the club so what most of us do is to follow the ITK rumours about potential signings. Guimarães looks an exciting and appropriate signing for a title side. He moves the dial in midfield and had Vinícius Jr, (sigh!) joined as well he would have embellished our left hand side, brilliantly. That will be the key focus of our activity and at the moment, despite having signed the very impressive Tzolis, we seem likely to recruit one of the elite wingers out there. That could include Alvarez and might certainly extend to Barcola if the fee is not outrageous. Yildiz of Juventus is another that comes highly commended but were we to pivot to Nico Williams my heart would sink. He looks like a show pony who won’t adapt well to England or the Premier League.
My major concern is the goalkeeping position. We have one of the best goalkeepers in the world who is an integral part of our defence and has the ability to make quite extraordinary saves which turn games. But if he gets injured we have Kepa backing him up, whom I never rated at Chelsea, and who made a pivotal mistake in the Carabao Cup Final. He has already disappointed in pre-season. We have brought in Islan Meslier from Leeds. It is not clear if he is being brought in to understudy Kepa or replace him. Whatever ….be very afraid! I know several Leeds fans and they are absolutely astonished that we have signed him. He was third goalkeeper at Leeds and they released him! There is incredulity at Elland Road that the League Champions have taken him on. Cena , our goalkeeping coach championed Raya but also championed Runarsson and Matt Turner, eccentric choices for back-up positions at our club. A good back-up like Stefan Ortega is essential.
One clear change in strategy is the deliberate acquisition of top-class young talent although whether this is to bolster our own playing resources or to generate serious funds as some of our rivals do, is not fully clear. We are actively raiding other clubs for their youth talent as well as being raided ourselves on occasions. It is as competitive out there as it is in the main transfer market.
The Rivals
I should have got Potsticker to write this section given his outstanding ability to predict league positions but I have seen many predictions about the title and most have our name at the top. Partly this reflects the consistency we have shown in ascending to the top in recent years but it also has to be said that a lot of our rivals are in relative disarray .
C130y have lost the best coach in the world and, in Maresca, have replaced him with someone considerably less impressive. They seem about to lose Rodri and Bernardo Silva has already decamped to the Bernabeu. Elliott Anderson is an excellent acquisition but one suspects that, while they will be formidable all the time Haaland racks up the goals, they don’t induce the fear factor they used to induce. And of course, there is a remote chance that there will be a negative verdict in relation to their 130 charges (some hope!). Liverpool have acquired an excellent coach in Iraiola, but lack a cohesive defence; Salah has gone and they will be contenders but one we should finish above.
Manchester United may find having to play more than 40 games this season more stressful. Tielemans is a good acquisition to strengthen an improving team but while one would expect them to finish in the top four, it would be a real surprise if Carrick can lead them to the title. Chelsea have acquired a top class coach, ten centre backs, umpteen goalkeepers, none of them very good, and have wingers in plentiful supply, as well as top quality midfielders in Rogers, Caicedo and the intensely annoying Fernandez, unless he can engineer a move Their front three is very impressive and they might be the dark horses this season.
The noisy neighbours will have much more to shout about but so they should after spending a quarter of a billion and finishing 17th two years running. They will be helped, like Chelsea, by having no European football. Villa have been very badly hit by outgoings but will still be one of the better footballing sides in the division.
The amuse bouche from Cardiff on a day when C130y lost their best ever player was a genuine surprise and changed the mood around the club and supporters. That was an emphatic performance and reminded us how deep the squad is, how flexible we can be with MLS and Ødegaard performing at that level and how promising Tzolis is. It also reminded us, if we needed reminding, that Arteta is the most driven of coaches and he ate Maresca for breakfast in Cardiff. That was the perfect way to enter the season and was typified by the ability to bring on possibly the best midfield player in Europe as a sub at half time, then, a World Cup winner later on, and we could afford to leave another World Champion on the bench. Don’t forget too that we have two of the very best defenders in world football to come back. Thats an incredible base that Arteta and his coaching team have built.
Discipline
Last year’s preview dwelt on the series of eccentric refereeing decisions that cost us so much in the previous season. The PGMOL were much kinder to us last season. We did not receive a single red card and, in fact, last season, we did not see a penalty given against us. Every Arsenal fan I mention this to grimaces, believing that we will be hit harder by red and yellow cards in the new campaign.
Conclusion
All this suggests that we should have an excellent chance of retaining our crown but the Champions League will be immensely hard to win next season. I started last season by expressing a personal preference to win the Champions League more than the Premier League but this altered as the season went on. The thought of falling short for another season was too much to bear. We now have to achieve something we haven’t done since the nineteen thirties and win back to back titles. My instincts tell me that Berta may deliver ‘a madness‘ late in the window but, whatever, we should have enough depth and quality to make this another very special season.
We are lucky enough to be living through a special time in the history of Arsenal football club. These moments don’t come around in English football very often and we need to enjoy them. Our club is very special to us all. Let us hope we can celebrate more success next season and beyond.
‘Victoria Concordia Crescit!’
