Ohhhhhhhh, Arsenal

I have to come clean about something. For a while now, when writing about the state of the Premier League title race, I have treated an impending Arsenal coronation as basically a fait accompli. This has been in part an earnest reflection of my belief that the Gunners have the best top-to-bottom roster in the world, employ one of the game's best managers, and, maybe most importantly, compete in a field without challengers of the level we've come to expect. However, I'd be lying if I denied that part of my written confidence in the Gunners was meant as a jinx. It would be so funny, and so incredibly Arsenal, if the team were handed every conceivable advantage en route to a title race they should by all rights win at a canter, only to wilt under the pressure and collapse before reaching the finish line. While I of course have no influence on the performances or states of mind of anyone on the team, I do get a dark little thrill when I imagine one of my Arsenal-supporting friends seeing me assure them on the page that they shouldn't fear the thing that they are obviously, rightly most terrified of, in doing so only increasing their dread.

Now, no one with any familiarity of the club's historical reputation would've been surprised to see Arsenal ultimately fumble away the trophy. Nevertheless, I don't think even the biggest haters would've expected Arsenal's title charge to get this dire, this quickly. On Wednesday, the Gunners traveled to the West Midlands to face Wolves. The odd timing of the game (scheduled during the Champions League playoffs to compensate for Arsenal's domestic cup duties) and the gap in the table between the teams (first-place playing last-place) meant most neutrals probably didn't even bother monitoring what would've appeared to be an easy three-pointer for Arsenal. If you did decide to check the scoreline at some point during Club Brugge vs. Atlético Madrid or the like, you probably would've found what you expected. The Gunners got out to an early lead with a Bukayo Saka header in the fifth minute, and doubled the advantage about an hour later with Piero Hincapié's 56th-minute goal. Even later, should you have spotted that Hugo Bueno halved the deficit in the 61st minute, you probably wouldn't have assumed Arsenal was in any real risk. But what those context-free scoreboard checks would've hidden from you, which the final 2-2 scoreline cemented, was that Arsenal had been playing like total ass, and is now in the midst of a full-blown panic attack.

The Wolves draw was bad—historically so, even. The presumptive champions gagged a game away to a team that is all but mathematically relegated already (the point gives Wolves 10 for the season, 17 behind the last safety position). The best defense in the league gave up two goals to the league's worst attack, a feat said attack had only accomplished three other times in its prior 26 league matches. For the first time ever, the Premier League's top-placed team took a two-goal lead on a team in the relegation places and failed to win. Join the rest of the non-Gooner internet in cackling at this team's misfortune!

Most concerning for skittish Arsenal fans is that the loss wasn't a fluke. The Gunners have now won just two of their last seven games in the league. It's become clear that what were on one hand aesthetic qualms with the team's approach weren't limited merely to the realm of taste. Arsenal struggles to attack. The team is set up first and foremost to protect itself defensively, and most of the team's behaviors with the ball are aimed at making sure they aren't too vulnerable when they lose it. Because of this, Arsenal has a hard time creating chances in open play, which means they find it hard to build up big, comfortable leads unless they score from set piece or two, which means almost every match is a slog to the very end. The conservative tactics seem to ramp up the nerves of Arsenal's players, who aren't in the habit of killing off games with long, brave possessions that eat up the clock and result in lead-padding goals, and it emboldens opponents, who always know that if they can keep the game close, there will come a time when the Gunners get gassed and anxious at the end and opportunities to strike will emerge.

Many soccer fans are rightfully wary of the concept of "mentality" as a causal factor in any given team's performance, having been turned off by years of lazy pundits extolling that nebulous force as the only one that really matters. But I do think it's important to acknowledge that the mind and the body are always inextricably linked, and that they intertwine in interesting ways in soccer. In this case, I do think Arsenal has a mentality problem. It's not that the individual players in the squad all have some natural disposition toward cowardice and "lack the stones to go grab the game by the scruff of the neck," as one of those aforementioned lazy pundits would probably put it. Instead, in my estimation, the defensive, risk-averse, tightly controlled style that has brought Arsenal so close to the title in recent years is a strategy that does not respond well to adversity.

When players are instructed to follow the coach's elaborate script for how to approach a game, they can grow overly reliant on that script and don't know how to adapt when, as will always happen eventually in such an inherently unpredictable game, the dynamics change. When players are given decidedly conservative gameplans week after week, seeing the ball more as a threat to your defense than a weapon to wield in attack, they can come to almost fear the ball, prioritizing the avoidance turnovers and playing with a self-consciousness that is antithetical to the confidence, daring, and spontaneity that creative, effective attacking requires. And on the other side, players and teams usually gain confidence when the ball is at their feet and they are consistently getting it closer to goal—the very scenarios the Gunners gift to opponents when they look to lock in their narrow leads by turtling up defensively. The effects of all of this were evident in the Wolves game. Arsenal got ahead but couldn't turn the game into a blowout, and once Wolves got a glimmer of hope, the tide completely turned and Arsenal couldn't do anything about it.

To be clear, there's no magic solution to any of this. It's not like Mikel Arteta's approach this season is inevitably doomed to fail and a different, more adventurous set-up would surely succeed. Arsenal's own recent history attests to this. If you remember back to the 2022-23 season, the last time Artetenal spent nearly the entire season on top before crumbling in the run-in, the rap against that team was that it was too open and free-flowing, that defensive vulnerability costing them the title. Indeed, Arsenal won just three of its last nine league games that year, keeping a clean sheet only twice. Arteta seems to have taken that lesson to heart. Ever since then his teams have emphasized out-of-possession play at the expense of the attack, going so far as spending a trillion pounds buying center back after center back after center back, determined not to fail the same way again.

Maybe the team has now gone too far in the other direction, and will continue to capitulate and eventually throw away the title. Then again, maybe they will steady the ship, hold on to their current five-point lead in the table (though Manchester City has played one fewer match), and go on to win it all. You certainly can't rule out the possibility that this year will still end in glory. This is, after all, the deepest roster in the world, led by a great manager, and up against a Man City team that I still don't really trust to kick off one of those 11-game winning streaks they used to manage every year at around this time. (While it is true that Arsenal has no excuse not to be sitting on something like a 10-point lead right now, it is also true that, if this City were like the City of the recent past, they already would've run down and overtaken the Gunners by now.)

If I were a betting man, though, I'd put my money on Arsenal. Like, ALL of my money. Because they are definitely, absolutely, unquestionably going to Do It. Do you hear that, Patrick Redford? It's going to happen! No pressure!