It was described as a two-horse race for the Premier League title, but Arsenal never really came close to Liverpool in the battle for the trophy.
No one predicted Arne Slot‘s side to win the title in his first season at Anfield, but the narrative quickly turned to it being a weak league once the Reds had built up a head of steam.
Typical, right?
Arsenal were the ‘closest’ contenders throughout the season, but despite all the talk from north London, they only ever came within four points from matchday eight, back in mid-October.
How close were Arsenal in reality?
Liverpool officially clinched the title after 34 games, having sat at the top of the table since November 2 thanks to a 26-game unbeaten run.
Slot’s side dropped 20 points before being crowned champions while the Gunners dropped a mammoth 35, a tally that is not conducive to a title battle as we well know.
And as you can see from the graph above, Arsenal were only above Liverpool in the table on matchday four after the Reds lost to Nottingham Forest at Anfield. Their lead was a single point.
From that point on, Liverpool started to open up a lead on the Gunners that they never came close to chasing down, with the margin steadily growing from one point, to four, seven, nine, 10, 12, 13 and now 15.
From matchday 10, Liverpool never relinquished their place at the top – and, in fact, when the season concludes Slot’s men will have occupied first place for 32 out of the 38 matchdays.
Mikel Arteta declared he would give up on the title race “over my dead body” in mid-February, but that comment preceded a run of 14 points from a possible 24, while the Reds took 18 from 21.
And while Arteta and the Arsenal fans may point to their injuries, namely Bukayo Saka’s long-term hamstring blow, as the main factor in their demise, it is clear the race was never on to begin with.
The lead only grew and in reality Arteta’s men never mustered a consistent title challenge to Slot’s side, who defied expectations to deliver the club’s 20th league title.
Ultimately, there was never truly a title race as Liverpool set standards that the Gunners could not match in their fifth full season under Arteta.
Debunking ‘weak’ league narrative
We don’t always have to listen to the nonsense others spout when Liverpool have won anything of meaning, but we can’t let the ‘weak’ narrative slide.
I recently analysed the league’s competitiveness since its formation using the C5 index of competitive balance, which sees a perfectly competitive league take a value of 100 – thus as the index rises the competitive balance decreases.
• READ MORE: LFC title 10th MOST competitive Premier League season since 2000
My findings were that the least competitive season on record is 2017/18, when City won with 100 points, while the most competitive remains the Premier League‘s first season in 1992/93.
As for the current campaign, after 33 games it ranked as the 17th-most competitive campaign in the competition’s history and the 10th most competitive since 2000 – hardly ‘weak’ now, is it?
So not only did Liverpool ensure Arsenal never got a sniff, they did so against competition who were anything but weak.
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