Mikel Arteta has admitted Arsenal should have won the Premier League title in 2023-24.
Arsenal finished as runners-up in the Premier League for the second straight season, despite ending the campaign with the best defensive record in the division and the club’s highest-ever number of wins in a single campaign. The Gunners finished two points behind champions Manchester City, following another tense title race with Pep Guardiola’s side.
Arteta has reflected on his side falling short and said the statistics suggest Arsenal should have ended the season as champions.
“When you are analytical and you gather all the stats and everything the team has done over the past 11 months in the Premier League, we should have won it,” the Spaniard told ESPN.
“That’s what the stats say. The reality is that we didn’t so there is something that is there that we haven’t managed as well as Man City or other clubs in the past. I think we understand where those margins are.
“I think we have come very far. We have been really consistent now in the past 24 months in terms of performance and the levels that we want to hit. But those margins are super small. One thing is to get the 90% that we want and actually the 10%, 5%, 1% is what defines success and winning major trophies.
“Now we have to continue to do all the right things that we are doing and just make those small margins that are going to be able to win the tournaments.”
Arteta was asked where he felt his side lost the title race, with a 2-0 defeat to Aston Villa in April putting the North Londoners two points behind Manchester City with six games to play.
“The small margins, we have the game against Villa and when you look at the expected goals of what we generate just throughout the game, we should win it, but we don’t. So efficiency in the box was a dictator of success when we are so dominant like we are right now in many games.
“You have decisions as well. They are not in your hands and they can take a point or two points or three points away from you and that can decide the title. At the end, we are going to have to be that good that our worst version is going to have to be much better than the best version of the opponent.
“This is what we are going to try to do and in order to do that we are going to have to dominate a lot of things that are going to be difficult to identify with your eyes when you watch a football match. I’ll leave it there.”
Arteta added that he hopes to use last season’s disappointment as motivation for the new campaign as Arsenal look to win a first Premier League title in 21 years.
“I don’t want to get over it. I am really satisfied with the way the team is performing, the way the players are evolving, what the team transmits, the momentum we have as a football club. In all departments, not only on the men’s side, but the women’s side, what we are doing with the academy, the prospects that we have there. But we need that pain and that hunger to achieve what we want to achieve because the competition is unbelievable and we are going to need everybody feeling that way to achieve it.”
