Arsenal's Title Charge Is Built Different This Season

We carry the scars of 22/23 and even though the team is in a similar position the positions have flipped between Arsenal and Manchester City

Arsenal are approaching the final stretch run of the season and are leading the Premier League by 6 points after 24 matches, ahead of Manchester City.

The last two serious challenges (2022/23 and 2023/24) where Arsenal found themselves in a similar situation, Manchester City has caught and then surpassed Arsenal leaving them in second place.

It is natural to have gone through this and then feel like it can and maybe will happen again. As Arsenal fans we haven’t seen our team lift the Premier League trophy in 22 years and we have experienced the agony of coming close but falling short in a number of different ways.

Sports has this wonderful, horrible way of messing with your perceptions and expectations; when things are going well you come to expect that to continue but when you have fallen short you start expecting and looking for reasons why it will happen again.

I bring this up because I sense the general nervousness and have seen images like this below circulating around the internet, from rival supporters trying to do some banter and some Arsenal “fans” that seem to root for Arsenal to fail because they love negativity.

Media generally, and social media specifically, amplifies negativity and with Arsenal’s large and engaged fanbase, they are an easy target to try and provoke.

I went back and looked at what things looked like at this stage during that season and this table never actually happened and existed. After the fact Transfermarkt will put games in round order and not actual played order, Arsenal had a game in hand and it wasn’t until after round 25 and a midweek makeup to where both teams had played equal matches.

Arsenal had a 5-point lead instead of the current 6 and it was the beginning of March because of the World Cup but overall, it was a very similar position to where we are now.

Here is what my simulation showed at the time:

Arsenal were favorites but was just 59% compared to 91% that we have now. To ease that anxiety, let’s revisit 22/23 and explore how things have changed.

2022/23 is not 2025/26

The badge on the shirts might be the same, but there has been a lot of change in both teams since 22/23. Arsenal have continued to strengthen the core players that, the lovable surprise team was built around but it is still drastically different three years later. That is even more the case with Manchester City, they have really transitioned that squad with a massive rebuild in the last 18 months.

Back in 2022/23, City were still the best team on the planet, they had won the two previous titles and had won 4 of the last five. In the process of that they had put up points totals of 100, 98, and 93 that were 3 of the 6 highest in the history of the Premier League.

Arsenal were an up-and-coming team but the position in 22/23 was something that felt like a surprise for a team that was coming off of finishes of 8th, 8th, and 5th in the previous seasons.

This was reflected in the team ratings. My team ratings are relative to the average of that season, so they aren’t perfectly translatable season to season, but that City team was at 153 and this City team is currently sitting at 129. Now Arsenal are still on a similar rating of 137 but that is now a rating that puts them above City rather than behind them.

This is similar in the Elo ratings; they put City as the best in Europe with a 2023 rating and Arsenal as 6th best with a 1932 rating. That has basically flipped in the present, Arsenal are now viewed as the strongest team in the world with a 2062 rating and with City still strong but down in third at 1964.

There is another cool rating system that looks at how the betting odds rate teams, and this tells a similar story.

At this stage of the season, they had the highest rating of any team at 3.53 compared to Arsenal’s 3.02. The current rating is again flipped, and Arsenal have overtaken them as the highest rated team at 3.48 while City are still strong but are at 3.34.

The big thing to remember is that 2025/26 is not 2022/23 and that there has been a lot of change in the last three years. The names on the badge still say Arsenal and Manchester City, the lead at this stage is similar but the fortunes of the teams are far from the same.

Nothing has been won yet for Arsenal and still need to have a “take care of business” mindset to push them over the line. We as fans can also probably try to not let the pain of the past give us extra anxiety, leaving the scars of 22/23 and 23/24 behind. This Arsenal side has genuinely evolved into one of the world’s elites, and the numbers back it up, we need to internalize and embrace that mindset, turning this team into the inevitable machine that breaks the will of challengers.

Buckle up for a massive weekend.

Arsenal host Sunderland at the Emirates, Sunderland have been a surprise team (and surprised Arsenal dropping points in the reverse fixture) and Arsenal will need to not look past them but will be starting with the expectation to take all three points.

On Sunday, all eyes will shift to Manchester City’s trip to Anfield to face a resurgent Liverpool. This trip to Liverpool has not been a pleasant one for City under Pep, they have won just once with a 1-3-6 record overall.

Arsenal can’t look past Sunderland (and I have a hard time imaging that they would) to do their job and ramp up the pressure on the chasers. Never count the chickens before they hatch, but Monday’s table could look very sweet indeed: a widened gap, momentum surging, and those old ghosts fading further.