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By Tony Attwood
One year ago there were calls for Arteta to be sacked by Arsenal, primarily because he clearly did not have a winning mentality. And while at that time no one in the club seemed to have any inclination other than to support the manager. in June Arsenal released 22 players including Mo Elneny and Cedric Soars who had each played a lot of first team games. Some saw this as a clear out, others saw it as a reward to two men who had give a lot of their professional career to being backups at Arsenal – and done it without fuss.
Then the signings started with David Raya who had been on loan the previous season – and what a masterstroke that was. Next came Sambi Lokonga and Nuno Tavares on loan, followed by Calafiri, for a fee estimated at around £33m.
To my surprise Smith-Rowe left for Fulham, while less of a surprise, Karl Hein went to Spain on loan. Merinio joined on 27 August, for around £27m while Fabio Vieira went on loan to Portugal. Neto came in on loan from Bournemouth and Sterling was loaned by Chelsea right at the last, as Ramsdale, Nketiah and Reiss Nelson all moved out – the latter being another loan.
And by and large that all seemed to turn out rather well..
It gave us a squad of 22 – which few commented on, but when I came to look was pretty much at the top end for top six Premier League clubs… most clubs did not end up with 25 men on their books, as the rules allow.
So wee started the season with a 2-0 win over Wolverhampton. Little did we realise, it was to be one of Wolves’ best results of the season.
And so how does all that compare with this season?
Actually it is hard to say. Guimarães could start given that he came on as a sub against Como, and Myles Lewis-Skelly seems still to be at the club even with all the talk of him leaving. Declan Rice, Martín Zubimendi and Martin Ødegaard are presumably not yet ready having come back to training late after the WC.
As for the left side of attack, we have Christos Tzolis coming in – I have no idea how he is going to find it or if he will be on the pitch from the off.
Much has been made of Arsenal not winning very much in the pre-season games although Arsenal did actually overcome Borussia Dortmund and Como on penalty kicks – but for the media that doesn’t count. So maybe the whole approach is to take the Community Whatnot to penalties, as happened in the last two victories in the pre-season showpiece.
We beat Liverpool at Wembley in 2020 that way after all and although this game isn’t at Wembley we could take that as an omen. (The problem is I don’t believe in omens, so you’ll have to do the believing on my behalf).
And there is one bit of statistics that might urge Arsenal on if they ever bother with such trivia, and that is that an Arsenal win will give them the same number of outright wins in the Shield (it used to be called the Charity Shield but the FA admitted they didn’t keep proper records) as Man U have. ManC have only won it seven times.
And speaking of which, I think I may have missed something but I can only find three Manchester City pre-season games – a 1-1 draw with Inter Milan in Hong Kong, a 3-1 win over the K League All Stars in Seoul, and a 3-1 win over Atletico Madrid also in Seoul.
So a ManC win will be put down to the virtue of not wearing themselves out by playing multiple games, and Arsenal trotting around the world desperate to earn some money to pay for all their transfers.
But perhaps we might be a bit encouraged by Manchester City’s start to last season, which, leaving aside friendlies (as they are very difficult to judge because of who is available and what the manager it playing at with various formations) started the league season with that easy win over Wolverhampton (and we all know what happened to them) and then defeats to the mighty Tottenham Hots and the somewhat more realistically mighty Brighton and Hove Albion. Here are the results….
| Date | Match | Result | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Aug 2025 | Wolverhampton Wand v Manchester City | W | 0-4 |
| 23 Aug 2025 | Manchester City v Tottenham Hotspur | L | 0-2 |
| 31 Aug 2025 | Brighton and Hove A v Manchester City | L | 2-1 |
So maybe they won’t have warmed up yet.
