The Arteta narrative has to change: A Premier League recap

Arsenal all but lock up the title while everyone chokes in the race for CL places.

Author

Ted Knutson
March 16, 2026

This was the weekend Arsenal won the Premier League.

Well, sort of. It’s the weekend the gambling odds tipped them over into 90% or more to win, which is close to certain?

Sphincters of Arsenal fans are notoriously tight, and for good reason given how frequently they had come to a title winning the title in recent seasons only to fall short, but this one looks imminently likely.

Arsenal spent a lot of money last summer on a variety of players to try and build a deeper squad (yes, yes, EVERYONE spent a lot of money last summer), but this is what we said about it in their transfer grade. I wanted to review it here to see if it was sane or stupid, which we will start to do across the board in the next two months before diving into team rebuilds.

Optimism, joy, team rebuilds… yay!

Assuming Arsenal win it — and it IS still an assumption, even if a likely one — I think the most curious thing will be how the talking heads in the media adapt to discussing “Premier League winner Mikel Arteta.” Because they sure as shit haven’t talked about him in that light this season. And half of the online Arsenal fans seemed to have wanted him sacked before the season began.

Football is amazing.

Huh. A bit like it was Liverpool’s last season, it seems like it is the Gunners’ year.

Watch the Bernardo Silva goal, which was absolute chipped perfection. And then if you want to see what actually happened in this match, watch the City highlights because obviously the West Ham highlights fail to do this injustice justice. West Ham fans have suffered enough so far this season, they didn’t need all of that up in their grills.

Jeremy Doku only has 1250 minutes in the PL this season, and given how unplayable he was to start the year, that could be the actual difference in the league.

United have all sorts of questions about this squad they need to answer during the summer, including what to do with Bruno and Casemiro, but they should have Champions League revenues to help with the rebuild. As a neutral party, I am fully content with United spunking half that fresh revenue on additional three-year deals for both midfielders, and United fans should be too. 😘 

The first two goals in this were good fun. Casemiro put United on top off an incredible header from a corner. Then United couldn’t clear away a Villa corner properly and Ross Barkley put home an easy one to even the score.

The Cunha goal was courtesy of laughable defense from Villa, and one that I feel like I rarely see in the PL this season. Bruno had time and space to pick a nicely-weighted throughball to Cunha that put him behind Villa’s line, and he slotted it home from the angle. Either the pressure was wrong from Villa here or the level of the line was or both, but it was very easy and potentially the benefit of tired legs and minds versus not.

The Sesko goal to make it 3-1 was definitely the result of both tired and dumb. Villa need to pull the cord soon, or they will be outside the CL spots again for next season. They continue to have the worst metrics BY FAR of any team competing for those spots.

I don’t think we can safely assume anything about Chelsea at this point. They are weird. They are undisciplined. They have tactical issues. And they are still talented. What does that cocktail yield over the last 7 matches?

You know that thing I said above about Bruno’s assist to Cunha being rare? Well, Newcastle had a very similar one from central for Gordon’s goal. Midfield pressure was lax despite 3 CMs in the vicinity, the CB was 1-1 on Joe Willock?? (hence the confusion?), the back line kept him onside, and he was through on goal to square the ball to Gordon for an easy one. Arsenal had a very similar one a couple of weeks ago against… Mansfield Town.

For my part, I love these types of goals, so keep ‘em coming!

And that Gordon goal was… it. Chelsea had 22 shots for the match, pretty much all of which were low quality, and they are now in sixth with a tough set of fixtures directly ahead, but an easy run-in in May.

Given their squad issues, Newcastle are weathering a very rough fixture run much better than I anticipated. Yay, Magpies.

Liverpool’s senior players expressed frustration and confusion around this one, and if they don’t know what to think, I don’t really know either. The home team took the lead via another Szoboszlai free kick (woo, finally all these set piece goals!), but Richarlison evened the score in the 90th, presumably irritating both sets of fans as it keeps Igor Tudor around for longer.

From Liverpool’s perspective, their most valuable chance came from Ekitike with the last kick of the match. Without that, Spurs would have been ahead on xG, as LFC created almost nothing significant on the counter even with the lead.

It’s weird when the team that won the league last season seems kind of tactically adrift at this point in the year, as the players brought in during the rebuild should be up to speed by now, but here we are.

I cannot wait for the stream of “Slot or Not” podcasts in Scouse accents yet to come.

The highlights of this are actually fun, including a block of the line by Brighton that conveniently ends up in the keeper’s hands in the most nonchalant way, and a Yankuba Minteh goal from an angle that should be impossible but somehow was not.

Remember all the stuff people said about Sunderland and Le Bris in the first half of the season, pre-AFCON? Does that still apply now? Incredibly, they have the exact same 10/10/10 record as Brighton, but it would feel like a miracle if Sunderland managed to pull that out of the bag next year as well.

Boring nil-nil, right? More like a 37 shots, 2.6 xG nil-nil. The Premier League is fun, honest!

Leeds unlucky to draw despite only having 10 men for a half? Will it matter in the relegation battle? Are Palace still unbettable? Why are you asking me all of these questions?

Nevermind, this was dire. We take all the “fun” conversations back.

—TK

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