Arsenal are winter champions. They might have beaten Wolves 2-0 at Molineux on Saturday night but it was all inconsequential when it came to ensuring that they would be top of the Premier League at Christmas after Manchester City’s 2-1 home defeat to Brentford earlier on Saturday.
It might sound like a weak brag, but it is something nobody would have believed before the season began. Arsenal are good. Indeed, they are very good. Right now, they are England’s finest - by five points, no less, even if everybody’s money remains on City to outlast Mikel Arteta’s side in the second half of the season.
Don’t worry, we’re going to address the ‘winter champions’ thing. It’s a phrase that’s never really used in England, and maybe that’s because it was only recently that seasons were built in distinct halves. Nineteen matches against 19 different teams, then the same lot again in the second segment.
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Previously, the fixture list was bent and twisted to the whims of clubs, local police and whatever else. Take a glimpse at fixture lists from the 1950s and you’ll find a whole host of double-headers, particularly around Christmas, when teams would take each other on at one venue on Boxing Day, then head to the visitors’ ground for the return game the following day.
On the continent, though, there has been far more order for a much longer period of time. You play every opponent once, then when you’re done you go back to the start of the list and play the reverse fixtures in the same order. ‘Matchdays’ were a thing in Italy and Spain and France long before Fantasy Premier League made the word popular with an English audience, with week 20 emulating week 1, 21 repeating 2 and so on.
So there is always some real merit in the ‘winter champions’ label in other leagues. A team has been the best side in an exact half of the season, and they get the recognition for it even if it’s not in the form of silverware.
Now, while Arsenal are only 14 games into the Premier League campaign, this is a season like no other. Once club football returns from the ill-conceived winter World Cup, it will be a long slog to the finish line. No break after 19 matches to assess where everyone’s at. Form will blend from one portion of the season into the other, making this six-week hiatus a more appropriate time to take stock of the ‘first half’ of 2022-23.
And there can be no doubting that Arsenal deserve the acknowledgement for their wonderful beginning to the season. They invested in the future, shipped out the spare fat and built around a small group of players they really belived in. Granit Xhaka’s renaissance has been something special, Gabriel Martinelli and Martin Odegaard, whose double won them the game at Molineux, have grown into wonderful first-team footballers and at the back Ben White and William Saliba have looked dominant.
At the crux of it all, Arteta has them looking vibrant and fierce, enterprising and intelligent. They might not be Premier League winners in the making, but they are worthy leaders right now, and they have six weeks to sit and stare at a Premier League table which reflects their unanticipated excellence.
*18+ | BeGambleAware | Odds Subject to Change
