Kolkata: “Everybody’s waiting,” says Claude Makelele throwing his head back and laughing. “Every single team is waiting.”
There is resonance in comments on a season 21 years ago as Arsenal mount their title defence, at home on Friday against newly promoted Coventry where Lampard is in charge, as another season starts. It took Arsenal 22 years to be England champions again. Guardiola did that an incredible four times and is the only Premier League manager to have won the title in four successive seasons (2020-21 to 2023-24). Manchester City’s shoddy show in the Community Shield is no indication of how the season will pan out; out of 34, only eight Community Shield champions have won the league that season. But with nine new men in charge, 2026-27 starts with a league record. Regis le Bris of Sunderland and he joined in 2024. But Arsenal will need to improve their 25-26 tally of 42 goals from open play. It is the worst since Chelsea won the league in 2016-17 and they scored 61. Last term was not pretty and there was a lot of reliance on goals from set-plays (25 goals). Chelsea were dubbed boring in 2005-06 but they got the job done.
Because a goalkeeper needs treatment as new rules, many of which were implemented in the World Cup, kick in, one where an outfield player will leave the pitch for one minute if play is stopped. Because they are playing the defending champions, can manager Mikel Arteta get his team to turn up for 38 matchdays against opponents who will want to be the best version of themselves. Because four of last season’s top 10 have appointed new coaches, arsenal have not won back-to-back league titles since the 1930s but they start as favourites.
They were consumed by the challenge, especially after three successive second-place finishes. If he cannot, Arteta will be on a list that has, among others, Kenny Dalglish, Arsene Wenger and Juergen Klopp. If he can, Arteta will join Mourinho, Alex Ferguson and Pep Guardiola as managers who were successful in retaining the title. He will be missed. But Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool are proof of how difficult it is to replace managers who have shaped the club. For being able to transform City, Guardiola headlines the list of tacticians who have left. The list gets longer if you consider that Roberto de Zerbi and Michael Carrick weren’t at Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United when the year began. Guess who is the fourth longest-serving manager/head coach? They will also have to deal with World Cup fatigue with Rice, Bukayo Saka, Martin Zubimendi, Mikel Merino and David Raya being involved till the final weekend and skipper Martin Odegaard for only a week less. Can Arsenal emulate their London rivals?
Frank Lampard, another voice in the three-part series, says Mourinho transformed Chelsea “from nearly wanting to be winners, to winners. “I want to live that moment again,” Arteta has said. Arsenal aim to be the best club in the world, he told Sky Sports last week.
The midfield engine – the one Real Madrid’s Bentley missed, according to Zinedine Zidane – was reminiscing about Chelsea defending the 2005-06 Premier League title in “Mourinho”, the eponymous Netflix series on his former manager.
