A critical moment

There’s no doubt that Mikel Arteta has taken Arsenal back to where they belong. For the first time in years, this club has felt like a genuine force again - competing, respected, and sitting at football’s top table alongside Europe’s elite. That alone deserves huge credit. He rebuilt a broken culture, restored belief and put Arsenal into all the right conversations.

But football doesn’t stand still, and this season is starting to feel like a defining moment.

Arsenal’s recent run has been difficult to ignore. Crashing out of the FA Cup, losing the League Cup final, and most recently suffering a damaging home defeat to Bournemouth, these aren’t just isolated results; they’re symptoms. More concerning than the outcomes themselves is the way performances have dipped. The fluency has gone. The intensity looks inconsistent. Key players, who once drove this team forward, now look either out of form or unavailable altogether.

At the same time, Manchester City are doing what they always seem to do around now. Peaking.

While Arsenal stumble, City are accelerating. Fully fit, cohesive, and ruthless. Convincing wins over Arsenal, Chelsea, and Liverpool in quick succession across three competitions have reasserted their dominance. It’s a reminder of the level required to win the biggest prizes. Not just talent, but timing. Not just quality, but inevitability.

And that’s where the uncomfortable question begins to creep in.

If Arsenal fall short in both the Premier League and Champions League this season, despite the opportunity in front of them, what then?

Because when you dig into the details, the issues feel deeper than just form, they feel structural. Arteta’s system relies heavily on a core group, and right now, that core looks physically and mentally stretched. Kai Havertz doesn’t look fit and, more worryingly, doesn’t look close to rediscovering his level. Martin Ødegaard can barely string together games without breaking down, and looks physically short of what’s required. Bukayo Saka, arguably the team’s most important attacker, has been run into the ground to the point where his output and sharpness have dropped significantly. In Bukayo’s case, hopefully he’s young enough to bounce back out of it, but what Mikel has built this project around is breaking - it’s hard to see how they could piece together and go again next season, if it ends in heartbreak.

Then you look behind them. Jurrien Timber was pushed hard and is now injured. Ben White has been overplayed for multiple seasons and now looks like a player who simply can’t cover those minutes anymore. There was a run earlier in the season where White couldn’t get a minute and Timber was playing every minute - the result? Timber is now unavailable when it matters and White has arguably been at fault in all three recent critical defeats. What once looked like a tight-knit, well-drilled group now looks like a squad that’s been stretched to its limit.

This is where the debate around cycles becomes unavoidable.

This group has been together for a while now. They’ve grown, improved, and come close. But football history is littered with teams that reached a peak and couldn’t quite push beyond it. Sometimes, no matter how much progress has been made, a reset becomes necessary - not as a failure, but as evolution.

It’s not about blame. Arteta has raised the ceiling of this football club. These players have given everything to get Arsenal back into contention. But when performances dip at the crucial stage, when belief wavers, and when rivals surge past you, it forces reflection.

Would going again with the same group truly deliver a different outcome? Or has this team reached its natural limit together?

And yet — football has a way of flipping narratives in an instant.

Arsenal could go and beat Sporting and Manchester City this week and change everything. Presuming City win their game in hand at home to Palace - An Arsenal win over City opens up a six-point gap and rewrites the story entirely. A defeat, and suddenly it’s level, with City holding the momentum and likely a superior goal difference. The margins are that fine.

What’s strange is that, despite everything, Arsenal have actually extended their lead over City across the last three gameweeks combined. That tells you how quickly things can shift, but also how fragile the current position feels.

In truth, though, there have been warning signs for a while. It’s hard to feel like a title-winning side when your attacking output looks like this. Saka has just 9 goal contributions in the league. Gabriel Martinelli has one league goal all season. Leandro Trossard hasn’t scored in 2026. For all the criticism aimed at Viktor Gyökeres, his 12 league goals still make him comfortably Arsenal’s most productive forward. And Viktor is clearly the level of a contributor, not at the level of a player who can win in by himself, like Mohammed Salah essentially did last season for Liverpool.

Had Arsenal’s wide players come anywhere close to their previous levels, this conversation likely wouldn’t exist. Arsenal would be clear, confident, and in control. Instead, they’re searching for answers at the worst possible time.

That’s the difficult reality. A couple of these forwards need to find form and stay fit for this final run, can Saka find 4 goals, 3 assists in these last 6 games? He’s capable. Can club captain Odegaard stay fit and give this team some rhythm? Can Calafiori and Timber return to top form for SIX Premier League games? It feels like we are not asking a lot but as Arteta said, we need these players back ‘immediately’.

Because if this season ends without silverware, particularly given the position Arsenal were in, it won’t just feel like a missed opportunity. It will feel like the opportunity - maybe not for the club as a whole, but for this manager. Like when Jurgen Klopp decided to leave, it feels like this project would’ve met a similar level of exhaustion, both physical and mental.

Change, in that context, doesn’t have to mean failure. Sometimes, it’s the only way to ensure that all the progress made under Arteta doesn’t plateau. Sometimes, it’s what allows a great project to become a truly successful one. I think even Mikel would reflect on what’s best for him if it did fail, perhaps taking a similar approach to Klopp.

I’m all in until we’re out - there’s no other way to be right now - and I’ve seen what this team is capable of. My problem is I’ve not seen it recently - the manager and players, though, still have an incredible opportunity - take it.

The coming weeks won’t just define the season; they may define the future of this manager.