Arsenal‘s Premier League championship charge suffered yet another wobble on Wednesday, leaving many Gunners fans to wonder: “Is it happening again?”
A 2-2 draw at bottom side Wolverhampton Wanderers was, in the context of the 2025-26 title race, fairly disastrous. After dropping points in their previous league outing, a 1-1 draw at Brentford, Mikel Arteta’s side fumbled a two-goal lead at Molineux, thereby failing to extend their lead at the top over Manchester City to seven points and keep their fate in their own hands.
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Having topped the table since September, Arsenal have run out of steam in recent weeks at a pivotal point in the season. They have now won just two of their last seven league games.
Their lead at the top of the Premier League has been reduced to just five points, with City (who have a game in hand) now breathing down their necks. Put simply, if City manage to win all of their remaining 12 games, including a home fixture against Arsenal in April, they will finish top. The same can be said for Arsenal, should they rally to win their remaining 11 games, including that crucial trip to the Etihad, but they have left themselves with no margin for error.
While all is not lost quite yet, recent history does not make pleasant reading for Arteta’s faltering side. City have mustered much stronger finishes than Arsenal during the closing stages of the past four seasons — regardless of their position in the table relative to the Gunners.
There is still a lot of football left to play in this campaign, but the fact is that Arsenal have put fewer points on the board than City from this stage onward in every season since 2021-22. They’ll need to buck that trend if they are to prevent their agonizing wait for another Premier League title from rolling on into a 23rd year.
2021-22
Arsenal were the youngest squad in the Premier League with an average age of just 24 years and 308 days. They were also never really in the title race, instead jostling for European qualification. Despite being chased hard by Liverpool, City spent the entire second half of the season at the top of the table and eventually won the league by a single point.
By way of comparison, Pep Guardiola’s champions claimed 30 points from their remaining 12 games of the season, while Arsenal could only muster 18 in the same time frame, earning them a fifth-place finish and UEFA Europa League qualification.
2022-23
At this exact point three years ago, Arsenal were perched top of the table with 27 matches played, five points clear of defending champions City in second (sound familiar?), having both played the same number of games.
The Gunners remained top until gameweek 33, when they were unceremoniously thrashed 4-1 by City at the Etihad and bumped from top spot in the process. City held firm, going on to win the title by five points, having taken 31 points in their final 12 games, as opposed to Arsenal’s comparatively meagre 21-point haul. That was the first part of City’s Treble triumph, as they also won the FA Cup and UEFA Champions League that season.
2023-24
Arsenal found themselves competing with Manchester City and Liverpool for the title for the majority of the 2023-24 campaign. Indeed, the three teams were often separated by just a point or two throughout the second half of the season in what proved to be one of the more enthralling title races in recent years.
The Gunners went the distance, and even topped the table on several occasions in May. But ultimately, it wasn’t enough to prevent City from coming up on the rails and steamrolling their way to a fourth consecutive title win. Guardiola’s side earned just one more point than Arsenal over the course of their respective final 12 games, but it was enough for them to wrap things up with victory over West Ham United on the final day.
2024-25
With Manchester City suffering from burnout and well off the pace in the title race, Liverpool and Arsenal were left to duke it out at the top of the Premier League. Arteta’s team had been in second place since December, but a run of dropped points during the last few weeks of the season (notably a galling 2-1 home defeat against AFC Bournemouth in early May) allowed Liverpool to pull away at the top to finish 10 points clear.
Despite dropping as low as seventh just before Christmas, City did at least manage to improve their results after the turn of the year. They even put more points on the board than Arsenal (27 points to 21) from their final 12 games of the campaign to end up in third place, just three points behind the exhausted Gunners.
