Arteta’s Arsenal Have Developed an Aggressive Backbone

Mikel Arteta (Prime Video AU, NZ – CC3.00)

It has been an incredibly exciting few years for Arsenal fans up and down the country with former playing legend Mikel Arteta taking up the managerial hot seat and beginning to reshape his first team squad in an effort to propel us back to the top of the Premier League table as serious title contenders.

It has not all been plain sailing and as Gunners fans will be well aware, the only real silverware we have yet managed to add to our trophy cabinet has been the FA Cup back in the 2019/20 campaign, but our 43 year old former Spanish international midfielder does have two FA Community Shields to his name as well.

That does not reflect the reality of his sustained improvement and success at the Emirates Stadium though as it seems our gaffer used  btc casino promotions  after originally joining and came out as the big jackpot winner, and we are now absolutely benefiting from that. He has slowly and steadily rebuilt the first team squad into the title challengers that he was hoping for.

For the last three seasons we have finished in second spot and as runners up and the disappointment has been in the fact that we had the opportunities to get ourselves over the line and hold our nerve, but we were ultimately unable to.

The 2025/26 campaign feels slightly different though. We have added additional threats to our armoury – namely potency from set pieces – and we have better tightened up at the back. Twenty-one games into the campaign, we have won 15 matches with a further four draws and we have a clear six-point advantage at the top of the table.

As we head through the New Year, the month of January and into the second half and the business end of the season, having only lost twice so far, the omens feel very good indeed.

Despite spending £64 million on Swedish international striker Viktor Gyokeres, he is still struggling to settle in and really perform, particularly with a consistent goal threat, and whilst it is slightly ironic that we finally address the question of a dyed in the wool striker and he does not score as we expected, everyone else has stepped up to fill the gap.

We are also in top spot in the league format of the Champions League and with a three points gap over German Bundesliga giants Bayern Munich, we are a shoe in to qualify through to the next round of the competition. We are also still in with a shout of both the FA Cup and the League Cup and whilst the quadruple is still on, it simply has to be our aim to give ourselves a truly phenomenal season to prove just how far we have come in the last few years.

A major difference this year seems to have been a significant improvement in our mental strength. We seem to be tighter, better drilled, more motivated and far more willing to really dig in and perform the ugly stuff to take a narrow victory if that is what is available to us on any given day.

It is a change that those in the wider world of football have noticed, and the recent clash with Chelsea is the proof of the pudding as the players just kept plugging away, did not let their heads drop or their effort levels, and we just aggressively ground out the game even if it was not exactly pretty to watch for large parts of the match.

Arsenal are always talked about for the flowing football, the intricate attacking play that Arsene Wenger infused in us, but under Arteta we seem to have really developed an ugly backbone where we do not quite know when we are beaten, even if you would see better football on a muddy, boggy Sunday League pitch.

We go into some games expecting a battle, expecting a scrap…we longer go into them thinking that defeat is an option.