Does one defeat mean it’s all over for Arsenal?

By Tony Attwood

The agreement seems to be general. Arsenal have a pretty amazing squad this season, but if you take out Gabriel Magalhães and William Saliba at the same time and play another top-four team, have the match away from home, and allow it to run for an extra five or six minutes, then Arsenal might lose by just one goal.

So should Arsenal have foreseen this, and had a third player of the Gabriel Magalhães or William Saliba calibre ready for this occurrence? Well, yes that would have been good, but one also has to ask, if the reserve player were that good, would he have stayed at the club, waiting just for this moment, knowing that there was every chance he’d never get a game, other than in the League Cup? Probably not, because he would have been watching Gabriel and William, and thinking, “without those two in front of me in a squad, I’d be playing each week.”

And looking at most of the squads in the top division, that situation probably appears in each case.

But here’s another thing. If I had come onto this site and shown everyone the league table with 40% of the season gone, looking like this, I suspect most people would have seen the current position as decent progress

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Arsenal	15	10	3	2	28	9	19	33
2	Manchester City	15	10	1	4	35	16	19	31

Of the injured men, however, there is good news on one front and that is Saliba is almost ready to play again. Maybe not this week in the Champions League, but almsot certainly next weekend. Although come to think of it, that games is against Wolverhampton Wanders, so maybe it will not be worth the risk. They are, I am told, something of a hearty bunch of ruffians.

Now normally at this moment, having just played a league games, I wouldn’t immediately focus on the next match, although it is in just three days’ time – on Wednesday away to Club Brugge – but a bit of nerve calming is needed, I think.

Now, of course, being top of the Champions League while playing a club that is 26th in that league should not be too problematic for Arsenal. Indeed, we might also note, having been thinking about Aston V, that last season that club made it through to the knockout stages with five wins, a draw and two defeats. Arsenal already have the five wins, with three games to go, so I can’t imagine there will be too many risks taken with any players on Wednesday in a league where coming eighth is just as good as coming first.

As for injuries overall, Arsenal are not the most affected club in the Premier League, at least according to Physiocroom.com The most affected team as of today is reported as being Chelsea with eight men down, followed by Tottenham with seven and Liverpool with six. Arsenal then come in, in fourth position, with five injuries so far this season.

At the bottom of the table is West Ham who have one man out, which does show that it is possible to go through much of the season without injuries, although it probably also means being 18th in the league.

And look a little further down the table table also reminded me that doing well one season does not automatically mean that the club has a firm basis for doing well the next season. In this regard we might consider the likes of Nottingham Forest, currently 15th, but last season 7th or Bournemouth (now 13th, last season 9th). It seems the big clubs stay at the top, leaving the rest to shuffle back and forth.

We might also take a look at where Arsenal were at this stage last season, and in such a comparison, we can see that the goals scored is just about the same, but the goals conceded are 40% lower than a year ago.

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Arsenal 2025/26	15	10	3	2	28	9	19	33
3	Arsenal 2024/25	15	8	5	2	29	15	14	29

So yes, quite clearly Arsenal are progressing on all fronts except in attack, where things are much the same as before. But since that has been achieved without last season’s top scorer, even on that front, we can take some satisfaction.

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