Arsenal Football Club Is Nervous. And Everyone Knows It

Five points clear with ten games to go. Arsenal fans would have taken that deal in August without hesitation. So why does it feel like the wheels are coming off?

The answer is not just results. It is the accumulation of things that should have been fixed — a left wing that was never properly addressed, a captain being asked to do something that isn't his game, and a squad whose moving parts still don't quite fit together. Arsenal are not in crisis. But they are not yet convincing either. And in a title race, the absence of conviction is its own kind of problem.

After the 2–2 draw with Wolves, the nervous energy around the club has become impossible to ignore. What follows is an attempt to explain where it comes from — and whether it's justified.

The Left Wing Problem

Start with the most straightforward failure: Arsenal did not buy a left winger in the summer, and they are paying for it now.

Leandro Trossard is a useful player. His 0.59 G+A-PK per 90 ranks 10th in the Premier League — the second highest in Arsenal's squad, behind only Merino. But statistics can flatter. When Trossard doesn't contribute a goal or assist, he tends to disappear. He lacks the pace to consistently threaten in behind, and his ability to beat a man is inconsistent. Where he is genuinely good — crossing, combination play, clinical finishing in tight spaces — those qualities only emerge when the team is already in a good position. He is a finisher of moves, not a creator of them.

Martinelli is the opposite in almost every respect. His pace is elite — arguably no winger in the world combines his speed with his defensive work rate. But his final product is a persistent problem. He cost Arsenal points against Nottingham Forest and Brentford by failing to convert chances that a top-level winger converts. And those weren't just any chances — they were the kind of rare, clear-cut openings Arsenal had to fight for all game to create.

Together, Trossard and Martinelli represent a patchwork solution to a problem that needed a real answer. The player Arsenal need is someone who can do on the left what Saka does on the right: beat their man, deliver a quality final ball, and demand constant defensive attention. Rodrygo fits that profile closely — quick, composed in tight spaces, capable of making things happen on either foot. Barcola and Yildiz would also have represented genuine upgrades. None of them arrived.

Not fixing the left wing is Arsenal's most consequential mistake of this season.

Ødegaard and the Wrong Job

The more complex problem — and the one that speaks to something deeper about Arteta's management — is Martin Ødegaard.

Arteta has consistently used Ødegaard the way Pep Guardiola uses Kevin De Bruyne: as the primary creative hub, the player responsible for unlocking defences from deep. That framing misunderstands what Ødegaard actually is. He is closer to Bernardo Silva than De Bruyne — a player whose core value lies in his press resistance, his ability to keep the ball in tight spaces, and his work without the ball. He can contribute goals and assists. But that is not the foundation of his game.

The clearest illustration is the outswinging cross. De Bruyne and Trent Alexander-Arnold have accumulated a significant portion of their assists through one specific delivery: a firmly whipped outswinger with the right foot, from just above the corner of the penalty area. It is a ball that bends away from the goalkeeper and into the run of an attacker. Ødegaard cannot deliver that ball with his right foot. When he receives possession in that zone, he either has to shift onto his left — giving defenders time to reset — or float an inswinger that has consistently failed to find its target.

This has a knock-on effect. Early in Ødegaard's Arsenal career, opponents would leave him in one-on-one situations on the right side because they respected his technical quality. Over time, they learned they could double up on Saka — knowing that a single defender would have enough time to recover to Ødegaard before he could play a meaningful ball. The inability to hurt teams with the right foot has directly reduced the space Saka operates in.

There is evidence that Ødegaard can break down a low block — but from the other side. In the 4–3 win against Luton in 2023, his assist for the winner came from a whipped delivery out of the left channel, where Declan Rice typically plays.

Rice is arguably the best No. 8 in the world, so rotating him deeper on a permanent basis is not realistic. But Arteta might benefit from experimenting with switching their positions in certain phases — giving Ødegaard more access to the left channel and asking Rice to carry more of the right-sided responsibility.

The numbers, at least, are curious. Arsenal have dropped points seven times with Ødegaard in the team and three times without him. Their best run of the season came during his absence. That is not sufficient evidence to draw firm conclusions — but it is sufficient reason to ask questions about how he is being used.

Top is without Odegaard, Bottom is with Odegaard

The frustration is not that Ødegaard is a bad player. He is not. The frustration is that Arteta has built his attacking system around a version of Ødegaard that doesn't exist — and the system has been distorted to accommodate that fiction.

The Eze Problem Is a Structural One

When Arsenal signed Eberechi Eze, the expectation was that he would solve the club's creativity issues. So far, the results have been mixed at best.

The performances against Spurs are outstanding. Outside of that, his influence has been limited in a way that is difficult to ignore. In the most recent Brentford game, he registered just 17 touches in 45 minutes before being substituted at half-time. When Arsenal faced Brentford earlier in the season, he again recorded 17 touches — this time in 30 minutes. Compare those numbers to his time at Crystal Palace, where against the same opponent he routinely recorded 49, 55, 59, or 64 touches per game. The contrast is stark.

The explanation appears to be positional. At Palace, Eze operated primarily as a left-sided No. 8 — almost exactly where Declan Rice plays for Arsenal. That role gave him freedom to receive between the lines, drive at defenders, and influence the game from deeper positions. The glimpse of it we saw against Wigan, where he operated deeper and registered an assist, suggested that version of Eze exists at Arsenal too.

10 Blue is Eze for Crystal Palace. 41 Red is Rice for Arsenal

The structural issue is that Arsenal now have three players — Ødegaard, Rice, and Eze — who all function best in a similar left-of-centre No. 8 role. That imbalance has forced Arteta into awkward solutions, including experimenting with Saka centrally in Ødegaard's usual position. When you are moving your best player out of his natural position to fit the rest, something is wrong with the puzzle.

There is still reason for patience. Eze's historical production data at Palace shows a clear pattern: April and May are consistently his best months of the season. If that holds, Arsenal may yet see the player they signed — arriving, appropriately, just when they need him most.

The Weight of History

It has been 21 years since Arsenal last won the Premier League. That fact hangs over everything — over the fanbase, over the players, and whether Arteta acknowledges it publicly or not, almost certainly over the dressing room too.

The parallel with Liverpool is instructive. Before their title in 2019–20, Liverpool carried their own version of this weight: decades without the league, the infamy of Gerrard's slip in 2014, a reputation for finding ways to fall short when the pressure peaked. The question was always how they would shed it.

The answer, in the end, was not a dramatic act of will. It was the removal of doubt through dominance. When Manchester City dropped points in the winter of 2019–20, Liverpool showed no mercy. They built a gap that made the race irrelevant before spring arrived. The title was won not by outlasting City in a final-day drama, but by making the drama unnecessary.

Arsenal had a version of that opportunity this season. City won one, drew three, and lost one in January. Arsenal won two, drew two, and lost one. Two of those draws could have been wins. Had they been, the title race might have already been over. Instead, the door stayed open — and City walked back through it.

That missed opportunity is why the nervous energy has returned. Arsenal supporters know the script. They have seen this team lead before. They have felt the grip loosen. And the scar tissue from those experiences does not disappear just because this squad is different.

Before the visit to the Etihad in April, there is the Carabao Cup final in March. Silverware would do something results alone cannot — it would give this Arsenal side a tangible thing to point to, proof that they can win when it matters. A defeat, on the other hand, would pour fuel on the anxiety.

The gap is five points. The run-in is manageable. Arsenal are, by most measures, the best team in the league this season. None of that is in dispute.

But history is not interested in who was best. It is interested in who won. And until Arsenal demonstrate they can close out a title race, the question will keep being asked — fairly or unfairly — whether they have what it takes to do it.

Manchester City know the psychological terrain. They have been here before. They will be ready if Arsenal give them an opening.

The best thing this squad can do is make sure they don't.

Only time will tell whether this Arsenal side is different.

This is what happens when Arsenal Football Club is nervous, and everyone knows it.