Roll up, roll up for Arsenal's ‘now or never’ title season

The pieces are in place for the Gunners to take the step from perennial runners-up to Premier League winners following Mikel Arteta's successful rebuild, writes Miguel Delaney

- By Miguel Delaney

Now that Arsenal's attackers have had some games and sessions to work with Viktor Gyokeres, there's quickly been a realisation. That has been the need to play early passes. It isn't something their attackers have been too accustomed to, given the team's preference for control and Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka’s tendency to go inside.

Mikel Arteta insists on smart players, however, and they know to get that timing right.

It might be an apt theme for the season. When Arsenal pressed ahead on Gyokeres over Benjamin Sesko, the phrase used by the club was that it was a signing for “the here and now”. In other words, to win now; to finally bring almost five years of work to fruition. The club even have a Premier League trophy silhouette on the wall at the training ground, ready to be filled in, such is the will to finally deliver that trophy for the first time in 22 years.

And yet the obvious follow from “here and now” is whether there’s any sense of “now or never”. Such a question perhaps indulges the more intense noise around Arsenal - some of it created from within - as well as the doubts about Arteta himself. They don’t always sync with the basic facts.

Arsenal have enjoyed almost unimaginable strides from 2020, when they looked a basket case and almost a lost cause. Arteta has made them a serious team again, just looking to make that leap from second place and semi-finals to major trophies. Club executives don't actually talk of “final steps”, since “the context changes from one season to another”, but the aim is to build the squad to “a certain level”, controlling what you can control.

That's just one other reason this feels a decisive campaign. After three successive seasons of second places, the gaps in the squad were obvious. Arteta and sporting director Andrea Berta knew exactly what was needed.