Arsenal's Strong Start to the Season Shows Title Contention Potential

Three league games played, three games won. For Arsenal this season could only have started better if Manchester City, who look like being one of their two most serious challengers, had dropped points. But it’s not just about results: Arsenal have been comfortably the better side in each of those three games, approaching each of them in very different ways.

After the controlled victory over Coventry City and the tight game against Aston Villa that was won thanks to ratcheting up the pressure in the 15 minutes after half-time, came success in a far more open game in which they conceded for the first time this season. Chelsea tested Arsenal on Sunday, went ahead, and yet Mikel Arteta’s side still always looked like they would win – even if it did take a superb late save from David Raya to keep out an Estevão shot. But the goalkeeper too is part of their strength; even if an opposing team can work a shooting opportunity, Raya has the capacity for spectacular saves that can dispirit opponents.

Arsenal threatened from set-pieces but also from open play; they can beat opponents in multiple different ways, even when Declan Rice, probably their player of the season last year, has an off day (his unpunished late trip on Morgan Rogers was cynical and nasty, one of those deliberate offences miles from the ball that the game would benefit from treating as a red card offence).

The uplift may simply be confidence, the pressure of not having won the title, of those three successive second-place finishes, now lifted. But there are also individuals who look sharper, livelier, fresher than they did at any point last season. Martin Ødegaard is perhaps the most obvious. He struggled with injuries last season and scored only one goal; already this season he has two in the league and one in the Community Shield. Some players return from the World Cup and look exhausted or find the readaptation to the grind of the domestic game difficult; Ødegaard seems reinvigorated.

There is an imagination to his play, a lightness, and he took his goal against Chelsea superbly. His link-ups with Kai Havertz, another at times mercurial presence, were often delightful, conjuring space and angles where none seemed to exist and bringing the winner. In a team that last season developed a reputation for uncompromising physicality, there is something almost otherworldly about seeing two such ephemeral talents combining, sprites glimmering on a castle wall.

But it’s not just Ødegaard. For Bukayo Saka, last season felt like chickens coming home to roost. He is only 25 but Sunday brought what was already his 205th league start, while playing regularly for England as well. Fatigue had been stored up, which is always a worry for players who emerge as early as he did. Thomas Tuchel didn’t use him in the World Cup semi-final for reasons of tiredness or injury that remain opaque (the situation was promptly confused when he scored a hat-trick in the third-place game). But he seems back to something like his best in the early weeks of this season, fizzing in from the right-hand side and delivering dangerous corners on demand.

The other standout in the early weeks of the season is Riccardo Calafiori, who has already developed a very promising relationship going forward with Christos Tzolis, even if a few issues remain to be resolved defensively on that flank. The Italian, who scored Arsenal’s opener in the Community Shield, is not only a threat from set-plays but is very good at breaking through the lines, making him a real weapon against low blocks.

Chelsea are improving. Xabi Alonso’s side were far less open through midfield than they had been against Fulham and Brighton – easier as that can sometimes be to manage against sides who don’t instinctively cede possession. It may be, especially as the attrition of European fixtures strikes others later in the season, that they emerge as a very serious force. Arsenal, though, are very, very good now, and that means they could be several points clear by the time that putative Chelsea challenge emerges.

Arteta’s side are not merely playing with great authority; the fixtures have also fallen well for them, getting Villa away and Chelsea at home while both sides are still finding their patterns of play. It’s still very early. We haven’t even got to the first international break yet. Pitfalls are always waiting, and football is not a sport that reacts well to being taken for granted. But for Arsenal, their title defence could hardly have started better. Things could change but, at this moment, it seems more likely that they’ll have it won with several games still to play than that their grasp on the title will have slipped.