Arteta's planning has led Arsenal to verge of greatness

Debate over team's style has disguised the fact that their path to the quadruple is very much a manageable one

- Barney Ronay

All this structural chat is unfair on the players, who keep beating the teams in front of them

ruyff's Ajax, Messi's Barcelona, Rice's Arsenal. Stein, Michels, Ferguson, Arteta. The Dark Side of the Moon, The Very Best of The Beatles, Arsenal 2025-26 highlights DVD. Total Football, tiki-taka, hugging the goalie at corners. Get ready. Make room among the greats. It may just be coming.

And yes, you can laugh at this. You can point to the fact these other people, the actual greats, did it for a long time, not just one year. But the fact is we are now very close to a reckoning up. And should this happen, it will be impossible on the basic numbers to exclude this Arsenal team from a list of the greatest to have played the game.

Here are the facts as they stand. Arsenal are 19 games from all-time status. They don’t have to win them all. They may need only repeat their results of the past 19 games: one defeat and 14 wins. At which point Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal would become the first English winners of the quadruple.

Most things don’t happen. This one could, just as it could also fall apart. For now base camp has been captured. That peak is in sight. Sauron has fired up the plume of power. Nineteen games to rule them all. Just reaching this point is significant. What does it mean?

There are two remarkable things about this Arsenal team. First, the basic arc. Arsenal have won one domestic trophy since 2017. They have been cast as mental-block merchants, although this may change quickly now. Second, and most hilariously, nobody out there seems to think they’re any good.

The table-topping team, Champions League favourites, are widely considered not just unlikely quadruple winners, but a thing to be corrected. The tone of the discussion has been: why have we been Arsenaled like this?