Arsenal have missed a golden chance they might regret for years | OneFootball

Gunners have not taken advantage of Man City’s fallow year. Mikel Arteta’s side should be stronger next season… but so will their rivals

Arsenal have fallen 11 points behind title rivals Liverpool after losing 1-0 to West Ham on Saturday

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It may feel like spring but we are not yet in March, and already the post-mortems of Arsenal's latest title push are under way.

Saturday's defeat to West Ham, followed by Liverpool's nerveless win over Manchester City, left the Reds 11 points clear of Mikel Arteta's side at the top of the table with as many games to play.

From here, it is just as hard to imagine Liverpool dropping enough points to make it interesting as it is to believe that a depleted and toothless Arsenal, who used midfielder Mikel Merino as an auxiliary centre-forward against the Hammers, will be faultless in the run-in.

Injuries have been a factor in a title race which has never really got going, while bad luck and slack discipline have hampered Arsenal.

Arsenal look set to miss out on the Premier League title again this season

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Most fans point to a disappointing summer, during which the club did nothing to improve Arteta's best XI, and a January window when they failed to land the striker the head coach so desperately wanted as the biggest reasons for falling short again.

Gary Neville has even pointed to Arsenal's "obsession" with set-pieces (which, as an aside, makes you wonder if we are heading for the inevitable backlash against the cult of set-piece coaches like Arteta favourite Nicolas Jover).

Whatever the reasons - and the reality is surely a combination of all of the above - this season has to go down as an enormous missed opportunity for Arsenal, unless they can pull off a miracle from here.

Ever since Arteta swapped City for Arsenal in December 2019, the Spaniard has worked with a clear-eyed focus, characterised by a cold ruthlessness and occasional outbursts of raw emotion, to replace his former club as the dominant force in English football.

Impressively-backed by the board for the most part, Arteta has transformed the squad and upended Arsenal's soft culture, readying the club for their time.

Like all great competitors, he has believed his side could topple City at their imperious best but part of him must have sensed that their likeliest route to a first league title in more than 20 years would be a fallow year for the champions - as in 2019-20, when they finished 18 points behind Liverpool - or Pep Guardiola's departure.

Now City's fallow year has come, Arsenal will surely finish ahead of the champions but not Liverpool, thereby squandering what may come to look like a golden chance. It is strange for the club to have worked so hard to topple one opponent, only to do so and remain in the same place.

This is not to take anything away from Liverpool, who have been outstanding and, until now, every bit as consistent as Guardiola's best City teams, who tended to kick on from around this point in the campaign.

This season looks set to go down as an enormous missed opportunity for Arsenal

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Fair to say, though, that Liverpool do not yet possess the same aura of impenetrability as City; they have felt more fallible, more potentially susceptible to a pressure which has never truly come.

Since the start of December, Liverpool have drawn six of their 14 Premier League games, including four of the last eight, repeatedly leaving the door ajar for Arsenal.

Arteta's side, though, have missed their openings and are still yet to string together a run of more than three straight wins in the League this season.

Last term, Arsenal managed three winning streaks of four or more games, including one run of eight straight victories and another of six in a row.

While this has never felt like Arsenal's title to lose, had they beaten West Ham and Liverpool dropped points at City - a prospect which would surely have been more likely if they had felt an experienced Arsenal side breathing down their necks - the title would actually have been in the Gunners' hands.

As it is, Arsenal looked destined to match their own record of three straight runners-up finishes from 1999-01, a sequence which would surely feel more palatable if they were likely to finish behind City again, rather than Liverpool.

Incidentally, the blow of Arsenal's last hat-trick of near-misses was softened by the club doing the double either side of it, in 1997-98 and 01-02.

Arteta will believe his own side can similarly respond to another disappointment by taking their chance next season but Slot's Liverpool will presumably be fortified by an historic title win and City should regroup ominously, as they did in 20-21, when they won the title by 12 points.

There may be other, unexpected contenders, too, in this new era of top-flight equality, making it easy to wonder if this will be a season that Arsenal look back on with regrets in years to come.