Arsenal’s defeat at home to West Ham United on Saturday afternoon has essentially put an end to the Premier League title race.
While they have a game in hand, the Gunners now sit eleven points adrift of leaders Liverpool, while Mikel Arteta’s team’s performance levels suggest they’ll likely drop more points in the coming weeks.
Arsenal were abject against West Ham, struggling to create a single chance of note in a dire 90 minutes.
Without Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Jesus, Gabriel Martinelli or Kai Havertz, the North Londoners look incapable of scoring, and there’ll likely to be without all four of these forwards for at least another few weeks.
With 12 games remaining, Arsenal’s maximum points tally for this season is now 89, which would only have been a sufficient tally to win the league in two of the last eight seasons.
Arsenal won’t improve their league points tally for first time under Mikel Arteta
Since Arteta took charge, Arsenal have improved their final points total year-on-year.
In the Spaniard’s first season in the Emirates dugout, Arsenal amassed just 56 points, improving this to 61 the following campaign.
In 2021/22, the Gunners made a significant jump to 69 points, before accumulating 84 in 2022/23 and 89 last term.
| Arsenal’s Premier League points totals since Mikel Arteta took over | |
| 2019/20* | 56 |
| 2020/21 | 61 |
| 2021/22 | 69 |
| 2022/23 | 84 |
| 2023/24 | 89 |
If Arteta’s team miraculously win all 12 of their remaining fixtures, they’ll match their points total from last season.
This ends the tactician’s run of constant improvement and progress at Arsenal, and will likely prompt question marks to be asked of the manager.
Arsenal have been unfortunate not to improve this season
While Arsenal have certainly shot themselves in the foot with some of their transfer activity, or lack thereof, they’ve also been very unfortunate in several aspects that have ultimately derailed their season.
The Gunners have been shown five red cards this season, four of which have arguably been extremely dubious.
Meanwhile, Arsenal have had extensive injury issues, with almost every single first-team player ruled out at least once with a fitness problem.
Saka has missed multiple months, Jesus and Havertz have suffered season-ending injuries, while Martinelli, Martin Odegaard, Riccardo Calafiori, Declan Rice, Mikel Merino, Takehiro Tomiyasu and Ben White have all faced spells on the sidelines.
It could be argued that Arsenal aren’t blameless in this pile-up of injuries, although the unprecedented nature of the forward crisis they’re currently enduring is certainly bad luck.
Eclipsing 89 points is a difficult task at the best of times, but with these factors going against Arsenal it’s almost impossible to expect them to improve upon that.
A lot has to go right to win a Premier League title, and things haven’t for the Gunners.
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