How Arsenal can go again to win the Premier League: Lessons from ...

Arsenal rushed headlong into an unexpected title race in August 2022, led the Premier League by seven points in the December, then burned out — winning only twice in eight matches across April and May — and finished five points behind serial champions Manchester City.

Despite the desolation of being in first place for 248 days only to end up empty-handed — the longest stretch by any club without winning the title in the Premier League era — last season saw them reset, remould and go on to surpass their 2022-23 points total, equalling City’s 89 of the previous season.

They won 16 of their last 18 games and lost just once to achieve a points total equal to or better than 20 of the 31 previous Premier League champions. But it was still not enough. City made it four titles in a row by a margin of two points.

“Don’t be satisfied because we want much more than that,” said Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta. “And we’re going to get it.”

It was a defiant message, but how do they find it within themselves to climb the mountain a third time in 2024-25? How do they turn the scars of failure into motivation?

The Athletic spoke to three people who experienced a similar challenge — Graeme Le Saux (Blackburn Rovers, in the 1994-96 seasons), Les Ferdinand (Newcastle United, 1995-97) and Mike Marsh (Liverpool, 2013-15) — to try to find out.

Le Saux was part of the Blackburn team that ended the club’s 81-year wait for a league title in 1995.

Steelworks magnate Jack Walker took over his local club in 1990, with Blackburn having spent a quarter of a century languishing outside the English top flight. He immediately injected the cash to attract Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish as manager and secure promotion in 1992. The following season, the first following the Premier League rebrand, they finished fourth, 13 points behind champions Manchester United.

Le Saux joined in March 1993 (no transfer windows in those days, just a once-a-year deadline at the end of that month) and in his first full season, Blackburn clawed back what had been a 16-point January deficit to go level with United in the April. However, one win in their final five games saw them finish eight points adrift of Sir Alex Ferguson’s men, similar to the way Arsenal’s challenge would unravel in spring 2023 when they won only three of their final nine matches.

“When you’re in it, no player looks beyond the next game, even if you are chasing,” says Le Saux. “We didn’t look up. It was: next game, three points; next game, three points. For us, it was easier to chase than it was the following year when we were ahead, as there is no doubt in your mind about what you have to do: win.

“United and this City (side of today) are at their very best when they have that very singular focus. It’s not pressure in the negative sense, it puts them under a positive tension. There is a point when you can rationalise it as a player and go, ‘Well, they are actually a better team right now, they have more experience (than us) and a manager with the Midas touch’.

“It is not all about you not being good enough, there is a begrudging respect, as you know how hard it is and what it takes. United were by far the best, most consistent team in that period.”

But there must have been some fear that Blackburn’s golden moment, the time when everything clicked, may not come again?

“No,” says Le Saux, “because Kenny made a big effort to ensure that we left those final weeks on a positive note rather than disappointment, in the way he analysed the season with us and highlighted improvements we had made.

“He could be tough and dig people out when needed, but there was no finger-pointing at all at the end of that season. He wasn’t one for sharing his emotions, but he was proud of us… It wasn’t, ‘Oh god, we’ve blown it. We’re not going to get that chance again’. None of that entered my mind.

“When we got back (for pre-season) after the summer, there was a fire burning in all of us that we were determined to do the same again and put ourselves right up there.

“If I’m in that Arsenal dressing room now, there is no way I am looking back. I’d be thinking, ‘We’ve learned again, I feel more comfortable with these guys and these tactics, let’s take all the good stuff and improve again’. Then you put City under ridiculous pressure to (try to) win five in a row.”

Despite falling short in 1993-94, Blackburn did take four of a possible six points in their two matches against United.

Arsenal did the same last season against City, securing their first league win over them in eight attempts since Arteta took over in December 2019, while also beating them on penalties in the Community Shield at the start of the campaign. City’s Spanish midfielder Rodri questioned Arsenal’s mentality after the goalless draw in April’s reverse fixture, saying they “just want to draw”.

Le Saux says at times the rivalry between Blackburn and Manchester United was personal, too.

“We knew in that second year how close we were, as we unsettled them and dominated them at times,” he adds. “I saw Roy Keane (a star United midfielder at the time) not long ago and we were talking about a game at Ewood Park where I caught him and he needed a couple of stitches. He said he knew then that we were coming for them.”

Blackburn’s move from training on public pitches into a state-of-the-art complex helped the players feel like they belonged in the elite, while Le Saux’s ascension into the England team meant his confidence had grown by the 1994-95 season. Rather than signing a raft of new players to have another bash at United, Blackburn added only one regular starter, Chris Sutton from Norwich City for £5million (a British-record fee at the time) to partner Alan Shearer up front.

Le Saux believes Arsenal are also evolving the squad in the right way, with two or three additions each window.

“There is something to be said for building on the relationships you’ve got, giving the players and manager time to develop,” he says. “Keeping the core of the squad is crucial, as you need partnerships across the pitch. It is about feeling comfortable in the team, but I never took it for granted that I would start. There was always a hunger to improve the squad, too, as it kept players on their toes. I needed the insecurity and anxiety to drive me.”

The new strike partnership propelled Blackburn into an eight-point lead by the following March. Then the jitters arrived.

“We started looking over our shoulder, which was horrible,” says Le Saux, recalling a draw away to Coventry City which left the gap at three points with nine games to go. “We were so nearly there, but we weren’t. We got distracted. We were absolutely awful. We had that one game where, collectively, everyone was off, heavy-legged and second to everything. Alan scored a goal that we didn’t deserve and it finished 1-1.

“I went into the changing room and was really, really disappointed. I don’t remember who it was, but someone suddenly said, ‘This might be the most important point of our season’. And it turned out that was the case.

“It was the most disheartening moment of the season as we knew the machine that was coming for us (in United). We knew what they would do down the home stretch. (But) Somehow that comment meant we came out of the changing room and onto the bus with the narrative turned. That says it all to me about how you win a league.”

Despite losing both meetings against United that season (as well as the Charity Shield, as it was known then), Blackburn improved their overall points total by five from the previous year while United’s dropped off by four. It was a nine-point swing that saw them win the title on the last day of the season — by that single point snatched against Coventry two months earlier.

“It is always a bit of an anti-climax because, suddenly, it’s over,” says Le Saux, now 55. “The longer I’ve been retired, the more I’ve come to appreciate being part of a group of players who achieved that incredible success. We will always be able to say our name is on that trophy.”

GO DEEPER

Shearer interviews Dalglish: On Klopp, Fergie, Newcastle, Blackburn and much more

Les Ferdinand can still remember Kevin Keegan’s pitch to him in the summer of 1995 as he lured him from London side Queens Park Rangers to Newcastle United.

“‘He told me he was building a team to win the league,” recalls Ferdinand. “I’m not sure even he was expecting us to go at it like the way we did in the first year.”

Ferdinand scored 21 goals in his first 24 league appearances for Newcastle to help them race nine points clear at the top of the table with a game in hand over second-place Manchester United by the middle of February.

It was turning into a procession for what would have been the club’s first league title since 1926-27, but a collapse followed. Newcastle won only five of their remaining 13 league games, finishing four points behind Manchester United, who motored through 13 victories in their last 15 league fixtures.

“We lost it rather than them winning it,” Ferdinand says. “We were a little bit — I hate to use the word — blase about how far ahead we were. People were talking about having the league sewn up by March, so there was a complacency and once we got on that slippery slope, it was very difficult to get off.

“The fans, the press… everyone was getting ahead of it. I remember coming back from London over the Christmas period. I got out of my car at the training ground and there was a fella with a shirt on saying, ‘Champions 96′. I was like, ‘Oh no. That’s not what I want to see’.

“It was almost like (people considered it) a done deal. I often wonder if that was in some of our heads. We were playing so well and were so confident that overconfidence crept in.”

Ferdinand believes that Newcastle team lacked experienced winners — players with the know-how to steer them through when their aura of invincibility vanished. “There was no real panic in us. The attitude was almost, ‘OK, chaps. We’ve lost, but you are going to lose one or two over a season’. Before we knew it, the gap was down to three points.”

Arsenal had a stellar second half of last season — the only hiccup coming in a 2-0 home defeat against Aston Villa in the middle of April — but they endured a mini-rut in December, picking up four points from a possible 15 either side of Christmas. Ferdinand knows how difficult it can be to arrest such runs once anxiety begins to spread.

“We just went out and played, but then everyone started talking about needing to do this and needing to do that,” he says. “Instead of playing free-flowing stuff, we were thinking, ‘Maybe we need to shut up shop a little’. We started giving early goals away in games… I don’t care what sport you play, the minute you bring thought into it, it’s over.”

In early April, away to Liverpool, also title contenders that season, a 3-2 lead with just over 20 minutes to go turned into a 4-3 defeat — an all-time Premier League classic of a match in which Stan Collymore scored the winner in stoppage time. It took a lot out of Newcastle.

“I always think there are pivotal games in a season that, if you win, it gives you a bounce,” Ferdinand says. “It was the Liverpool game (for us) as, if we had beaten them, I guarantee we don’t lose to Blackburn the next week (a 2-1 defeat, again having led late on). I think that would have gotten us across the line.

“Everyone was silent after that game but Keegan said, ‘How can I have a go at you?’. We had played exactly as he wanted and nine times out of 10, we win that game. That was probably when we realised, ‘We’re not going to win this’. As much as we were trying to pull each other together and galvanise the team, too many of us lost form at the same time.”

It still went down to the final two games and prompted Keegan’s famous post-match rant in response to counterpart Ferguson’s mind games: “I’ll tell you, honestly, I will love it if we beat them, love it!”

But once the adrenaline had faded away, Newcastle had to contemplate starting the marathon of 38 games all over again the following August.

“It was probably the worst break I ever had in my career,” says Ferdinand. “Even now, there isn’t a day I wake up where I don’t think, ‘How did we not win the Premier League that year?’. Every year, you see a team lift it and the joy that goes with it, I wonder that.

“Keegan addressed missing out early in pre-season, but he’s a human being and every one of us was depressed. We were trying to get ourselves motivated to go again, but we let a cloud hang over us when we came back. We were so far in front that there was no battle until it became one. I think it is easier for Arsenal to come back psychologically. They look like they are going from strength to strength.”

Had Newcastle remained at around the levels of the previous season in 1996-97, they would probably have won the league at a canter. Manchester United got it again instead with a meagre 75 points. Newcastle fell to 68 — a drop of 10 points from 12 months earlier.

Fifth as 2013 became 2014, Liverpool caught fire in the new year.

Without a title since the 1989-90 season (in which time their arch-rivals Manchester United won 13 of them), they went 16 league matches without defeat, meaning Liverpool entered their final three fixtures with a five-point cushion over Manuel Pellegrini’s Manchester City — albeit City had a game in hand.

Captain Steven Gerrard’s now notorious slip against Chelsea proved costly, as they lost 2-0 at home on that late April Sunday. The following Monday night, from three up early in the second half at Crystal Palace and seemingly set to both go top (with one match to go for them) and take a chunk out of City’s goal-difference advantage, they imploded to only draw 3-3. City won their game in hand two days later and were crowned champions by two points on the final Sunday when both teams won at home.

Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers’ assistant, Mike Marsh, now at Championship side Preston North End, was in hospital for an emergency appendix operation during that collapse at Selhurst Park and had to listen to it unfolding via radio commentary, but he was back at work in time for that final game, a 2-1 defeat of Newcastle which proved to be in vain as City beat West Ham 2-0.

“It was heartbreaking,” Marsh says. “It felt like that was our chance. I thought other teams would strengthen around us the next year and, if ever we were going to win it with those players, that was the one.

“The remit we began working with was to sign young players and develop them, but we were going into games full of confidence with one of the best in the world, Luis Suarez, scoring goals every week. When we started going three- and four-nil up in the first half against Arsenal and Everton (in successive home games in late January and early February), that is when I was thinking, ‘This could be the year’.

“Everybody said we bottled it towards the end, which was harsh as we didn’t take our foot off the gas. There has been a lot of chat about it, but ultimately it came down to Steven slipping, which can happen to anyone in any game.”

Gerrard became the pantomime villain following that moment against Chelsea and continued to be mocked by opposition fans into the next season and beyond. “It was a tough summer,” says Marsh, who had been a young player at Liverpool when they won that previous title in 1990. “It’s tough for the players, so our job was to try to pick them up and cajole them into going again, which is hard after such big disappointment.

“The idea was to use it as motivation and, if we could improve a couple of areas, we gave ourselves a good chance. You have to have a lot of character and mental resilience to compete again and, unfortunately, we weren’t up to that.

“It just felt like it knocked the wind out of our sails. We found it really tough to overcome. Stevie felt responsible, but he carried on and tried to do the best he could. I’m sure he was hurting, but he was so professional you’d never have known the next season.”

Suarez ended up being sold to Barcelona in summer 2014 for £65million, with Liverpool losing the 2013-14 Premier League’s top scorer and player of the year in the process.

They reinvested those funds by signing eight players in that same window — Mario Balotelli, Rickie Lambert, Divock Origi, Lazar Markovic, Adam Lallana, Emre Can, Alberto Moreno and Dejan Lovren — but would finish just sixth that season, 25 points behind champions Chelsea. Then, when they started 2015-16 slowly, Rodgers was sacked in the October and replaced with a certain Jurgen Klopp.

“We lost Suarez and (strike partner Daniel) Sturridge got injured early (in the 2014-15 season, missing three months),” says Marsh. “In hindsight, we went for quantity over quality (on those transfers) and fell short in a few areas. We were close to getting a couple of players, including Alexis Sanchez (the Chile striker who instead went from Barcelona to Arsenal that summer). We couldn’t get it over the line and ended up signing players who couldn’t fill Suarez’s boots.

“My own experience is that if you are going to strengthen, go for real quality. You might need to push the boat out for players who are used to winning and getting over the line, but that experience is a major plus.”

Arsenal made major signings last summer after their title near-miss, reacting to the departure of key midfielder and former captain Granit Xhaka by signing Kai Havertz, Declan Rice, Jurrien Timber and David Raya. In the current window, they have already added Italy international defender Riccardo Calafiori, while midfielder Mikel Merino, a Euro 2024 winner with Spain last month, is another they hope to add.

“The challenge for Arsenal now,” Marsh says, “is that City are in the way — and they make it so difficult to get over the line.”

(Top photo: Getty; Dave Kendall – PA Images, Catherine Ivill – AMA, Matthew Ashton/AMA/AMA/Corbis; design: Dan Goldfarb)