Arsenal Wouldn’t Be Popular Premier League Champions, But Success Will Be Vindication for Mikel Arteta | OneFootball

After 22 barren years, Arsenal are on the verge of winning the Premier League title. Their style may not be popular, but success will be vindication for Mikel Arteta.

Arsenal are so close they can almost reach out and touch it.

After finishing second three seasons in a row, it’s looking highly probable that Arsenal will – finally – win the Premier League title for the first time in 22 years.

Some fans probably began to wonder whether Mikel Arteta would ever get them over the line, and those fears likely peaked after Arsenal lost to Manchester City on 19 April, a result that appeared to suggest Pep Guardiola’s men had all the momentum even though the Gunners retained their place at the top.

But Arsenal have won all three of their matches since, while City’s instant-classic 3-3 draw with Everton swung the pendulum back in favour of Arteta’s side.

And now, with only relegated Burnley at home and a trip to Crystal Palace – who’ll likely be distracted by the Conference League final – to come, Arsenal won the title in 86.5% of the Opta supercomputer’s latest 10,000 simulations.

At no point in the past six and a half years has it been straightforward, but Arteta has almost completed the Arsenal renaissance he set out to inspire in December 2019. Assuming they hold on, the jubilation at the Emirates Stadium will be hard to contain and the Spaniard will be revered for ending a barren run that extended beyond two decades.

For plenty of other people, however, the focus of discussion around Arsenal might not be quite so enthusiastic. Purely in terms of playing style, they’ll probably be one of the least popular Premier League champions ever.

Gunners fans won’t care, and who’d blame them? But talk will quickly turn to how they did it.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll be well aware of Arsenal’s set-piece prowess. Long an under-utilised facet of the game, Arteta sensed this was an area in which his team could make gains to bridge the gap to the best teams. They’ve since made corners arguably their biggest strength, and they’ve been at the forefront of the Premier League’s set-piece revolution.

Ithiel Piñero / Data Analyst

A commonly held opinion is that such a focus on set-pieces has had a detrimental impact on the quality of football, making it less entertaining. But no one can say it’s not been effective.

Over the past three seasons, for instance, Arsenal have scored 60 Premier League goals from corners, 11 more than any other team. After Tottenham in second (49), the teams with the next most goals from corners over the same period have 39 (West Ham and Liverpool). That’s how much more effective they’ve been than the rest.

But there’s a perception that such efficiency at set-pieces has had a direct – and adverse – affect on Arsenal’s quality in open play.

In the context of this campaign, their 41 goals from open play doesn’t seem hugely alarming when it’s noted that only Liverpool (43) and Man City (62) have managed more.

But what’s eyebrow-raising is Arsenal’s record compared to previous Premier League champions.

Arsenal have averaged 1.08 open-play goals per game in the Premier League this season. They do, of course, have two matches to get some more, so that figure may well change. But, given what we’ve seen this term, that’s unlikely to deviate drastically.

So, is 1.08 open-play goals per game a lot?

We’ve extracted the per-game average of open-play goals for every team to win the Premier League, and Arsenal are on course to set a new record low.

The existing record low for the champions came in the inaugural Premier League season, when Manchester United won the 1992-93 title having averaged just 1.17 open-play goals per game.

To avoid finishing the season with a lower average than that, Arsenal would need to score at least four open-play goals over their final two matches of the campaign – that would see them conclude 2025-26 having averaged 1.18 open-play goals per game.

Essentially, they need to score open-play goals at twice the rate they have across their first 36 matches of the season.

Arsenal’s record is even starker when considered in the context of recent Premier League champions.

The last side to win the title having averaged under 1.5 open-play goals per game were Leicester City (1.21) in 2016; since then, the title winners have averaged 1.84 open-play goals on a per-game basis, ranging from 1.61 (Chelsea in 2016-17) to 2.24 (Man City in 2017-18). The latter is a Premier League record.

The Gunners are also on track to post a record low for total open-play goals by the title winners, requiring five more just to draw level with the 46 tallied by Leicester 10 years ago. By comparison, Liverpool scored 67 open-play goals on their way to the title last season.

Of course, the flipside to all of this is Arsenal are at the far end of the spectrum when it comes to the set-piece efficiency of title winners.

Ithiel Piñero / Data Analyst

If they don’t score again from set-pieces (excluding penalties), their 23 goals from them will be the joint most by Premier League champions, equalling Manchester United’s haul of 23 in 2012-13 (0.61 per game).

So, if Arsenal get just one more set-piece goal, they’ll break that particular record both in terms of total and per-game average. Compare that to last season’s Liverpool, who scored 10 set-piece goals over the campaign at a rate of 0.26 per game (joint-third lowest in history for PL champions).

As mentioned, it’s Arsenal’s effectiveness at corners that’s largely developed their unrivalled set-piece aura. It would appear they have a near-perfect blend of brilliant takers, physical and aerially dominant players to load the box with, and an imaginative set-piece coach in Nicolas Jover.

Ithiel Piñero / Data Analyst

It’s certainly not been a one-off season when it comes to the nuisance their corners represent, though in one respect they found a new level in 2025-26 as they’ve already broken one notable record.

Their 17 goals (excluding own goals) from corners in 2025-26 (which Tottenham have matched) surpassed the previous record by any team in a Premier League season, not just the champions. West Brom (16) in 2016-17 set that benchmark for a 38-game campaign, which was equalled by Arsenal in 2023-24.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this all translates to Arsenal being on track to score the greatest proportion of non-penalty goals from set-pieces among all Premier League champions, with 35.9% of theirs coming via dead-ball situations.

In fact, no other Premier League champions have even gone above 30% from set plays, with the current record belonging to Man Utd’s 2007-08 title-winning side, who got 29.7% of their non-penalty goals from set-pieces.

Ithiel Piñero / Data Analyst

That also means Arsenal’s 64.1% of non-penalty goals coming in open play will be comfortably the lowest by a team to win the Premier League, assuming they get the job done without scoring a sudden glut of open-play efforts.

Before this season, the smallest proportion of non-penalty goals scored in open play by Premier League champions was 70.3% (Man Utd, 2007-08).

There’s no two ways about it; if Arsenal win the 2025-26 Premier League title, they will be both the least-effective champions at scoring in open play and the most-effective champions at scoring from set-pieces.

But does it matter?

Arsenal’s open-play output and set-piece efficiency are nothing new, and in some circles have almost been used to illegitimise their title charge at times this season. But as we highlighted before, the fact only two teams have scored more than their 41 open-play goals suggests it’s a league-wide issue and certainly not specific to Arsenal.

After all, the Premier League has seen 1.8 open-play goals per game on average this season; it was last lower in 2009-10 (1.76). Only seven campaigns in the Premier League era have averaged fewer open-play goals per game than 2025-26.

Similarly, we’ve seen an average of 0.74 set-piece goals per game in England’s top flight this term, the third most in a single season behind 2010-11 (0.76) and 2009-10 (0.79).

And then, if we look at proportion of goals scored in open play, 70.7% this season is the third lowest ever in the Premier League and 29.3% from set-pieces is the third highest.

Ithiel Piñero / Data Analyst

Ithiel Piñero / Data Analyst

Perhaps all of this does mirror a dip in the entertainment on offer and quality of football in the Premier League this season – it’s subjective, though hardly a rare opinion. And maybe it does all come back to Arsenal, because other teams have seen them having such joy and then followed their example. But does any of this make it a problem?

Truthfully, it would be wonderful if every match was exhilarating and exhibited engrossing attacking football, but that’s not how it works even at the best of times. Football is an ever-evolving beast; times change, trends come and go.

The Pep Guardiola vs Jürgen Klopp era produced several record-breaking seasons in many respects, but such periods can’t go on forever, and that also goes for philosophical/style trends. Arteta just happens to have positioned Arsenal as a team to capitalise on the power vacuum that was always likely to appear eventually at the top of the Premier League; his astute assessment that set-pieces could help them get there doesn’t make him an enemy of the sport, it’s just proof that he’s a very good manager.

Guardiola was rightly lauded for influencing considerable change across the Premier League after he joined City. The broader league data this season suggests Arteta has done something similar – or at the very least been one of the leading players in philosophical shift.

Only time will tell if that sticks to the same degree as the change inspired by Guardiola. But either way, and regardless of whether you enjoy watching Arsenal, Arteta is on the verge of doing what no other Gunners boss has for 22 years and winning the Premier League.

That is vindication enough.

Enjoy this? Add Opta Analyst as a preferred source by clicking here.

Enjoy this? Subscribe to our football newsletter to receive exclusive weekly content. You should also follow our social accounts over on X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.