Heroes not, Bottlers

The 2022/2023 premier league season has been more than intriguing. As usual, the season started out with premier league fans having high hopes for the usual suspects Manchester City and Liverpool. However, things didn’t go as anticipated with Liverpool struggling to play in Europe next season while Manchester City had to rely on the second stanza misfortunes of Arsenal to become favourites for the premier league title again.

Call them what you may, Arsenal are not bottlers but heroes. London Reds are at war with adversaries who have the luxury of fighter jets, rocket launchers and the latest Chinese and Russian military hardware. All Arsenal had for this war was a kitchen and were able to keep Manchester City away for months.

Manchester City, Arsenal’s sole challenger so far, have had the luxury of a FIFA World Cup winning forward Julian Alverez on the bench, they also could afford to send a world class fullback Joao Cancelo on loan to Bayern. At the beginning of this season, City shipped out England international Raheem Sterling and Brazil international Gabriel Jesus not for their poor forms but because they can afford to do so since they can boast of quality in excess.

Gunners on the other hand have had to rely on a tiny, inexperienced and young squad depleted by injuries to maintain their lead against almighty Pep and his City side. To add to their woes, Arsenals had to rely on the young shoulders of Eddie Nketiah for goals when their talisman Gabriel Jesus was out injured.

There’s no doubt gunners have had a turbulent second half to a season that started really well. Dropping six points from a possible nine in their last three games however, it will be unfair, hypocritical and ignorant to judge Arsenal on recent games when no football fan tipped them or gave them a chance at the beginning of the season.

It’s worthy of note that Arsenal, with their performance early this season, forced the entire football world to believe it’s their year with the level of consistency they have shown. It’s left for the gunners to keep the football world believing. The title race isn’t over, there's still a lot to fight for.

Finally, Arsenal are not bottlers but heroes.