Is this Arsenal's worst Premier League season ever?

Is this Arsenal's worst Premier League season ever as the Gunners look set for mid-table obscurity under Mikel Arteta

By Adam Le Roux

There’s no denying this has been a campaign to forget for Arsenal fans, with their attempts to challenge at the top of the table fizzling out almost as quickly as they had begun.

It's been so bad that a mid-table finish was on the cards before the Christmas decorations had even been brought down from the loft.

A porous defence, a crumbling midfield, a shot-shy attack and the ability to self-combust within seconds has seen the Gunners’ season stutter and splutter along with nothing much to play for in the league and wan hopes of a European spot all but diminished after the weekend’s draw with Fulham.

But many Gooners of yesteryear will be well-accustomed to the feeling of a season petering out and settling for a spot in the nether regions of the top division, with only the Wenger-revolution consistently putting Arsenal in the conversation at the top of the table towards the end of the last century.

Before that there were a number of campaigns that would be forgotten about two minutes after the final whistle had gone on the last day of the season, with this one likely to be in a similar vein unless the European forays bear fruit at the end of the season.

Arsenal left to lament lacklustre losses

It’s easy to forget that the Gunners started the season with three wins from their first four matches, with the only defeat coming to a Liverpool side who were still flying at that point, and early hopes pointed towards a season vying for the European spots.

Although as a club there are bigger aspirations than aiming to secure fourth place, given the transitional phase the club is in, many fans would have accepted even a spot in the Europa League for another season, but as the weeks progressed even that looked like a pipe dream.

It started with a defeat to Manchester City, where Mikel Arteta’s side looked lively but couldn’t make the breakthrough in a 1-0 defeat, before the same happened with Leicester a week later, as scourge of the Gunners Jamie Vardy stole the points for the Foxes with ten minutes to play at the Emirates.

Victory over Manchester United at Old Trafford followed - a momentous day in itself after so many trips to the Theatre of Dreams without a win - but that did nothing to stem the tide, as a seven-match winless run followed, seeing the Gunners drop as low as 15th.

A Boxing Day win over Chelsea saw things turn around for a brief spell with a seven-match unbeaten run sparking hopes of a rise up the table, but it is a lack of consistency that has blighted Arsenal’s season as much as anything - and is ultimately why they find themselves slap bang in the middle of the league at present.

There have been glimpses of what this side can produce when everything comes together, with the form of the side at the turn of the year as good as any team in the division, with Bukayo Saka, Alexandre Lacazette and Emile Smith Rowe all firing and producing the goods on a regular basis.

And the addition of Martin Odegaard has added another layer to Arsenal's attacking play, which looked so devoid of ideas in the early stages of the campaign, but there are still so many question marks over so many of this squad at present - as the weekend draw with Fulham proved.

The one saving grace has been the form in Europe, with Arteta overseeing a relatively routine journey through to the semi-finals of the Europa League, although it could have been so different had Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang not buried his late opportunity against Benfica in the Round of 32.

In continental competition the Gunners have looked a different beast entirely - they seem composed, determined, ready to fight for each other and do anything they can to win - a far cry from the side we see flounder on a regular basis in domestic competition.

When a team can only turn up for the big occasions you often have to question their mentality - why is it they can only produce the goods when the pressure is on? If they can sweep the floor with Slavia Prague when all eyes are on them why can’t they do it against a side who sit in the Premier League drop zone?

Premier League starts with a saunter

But Arsenal fans of a certain generation have been here before, they are used to not knowing what side they are going to see turn up on a Saturday afternoon, with the Gunners as likely to finish the season in third as they were 13th.

And that was the case when the Premier League began back in 1992, with the glamour and the hype of a new era of football surrounding the sport, but for Arsenal it was very much a damp squib.

And if you think the Arsenal team of this season are inconsistent, nothing compares to that team 29 years ago, who sat both bottom and top of the division at points in the campaign - enduring a six-game winning streak and then going on an eight-match winless run.

With the likes of Tony Adams, Lee Dixon and Nigel Winterburn at the back this was still the crux of the side who had won the title back in 1991, but failed to get going in the league, and eventually stuttered to a 10th-place finish.

Ian Wright helped himself to 15 Premier League goals but the next highest scorer was Kevin Campbell with just six strikes - thereby showing the issue with the Gunners at that point was the same as now - putting the ball in the back of the net.

The one saving grace was in the domestic cup competitions, where the side continued to produce their best football, winning both the FA Cup and the League Cup to save face after a disastrous season in the league.

Paul Merson and Steve Morrow both found the net in a 2-1 victory over Sheffield Wednesday in the League Cup triumph at Wembley, after John Harkes had given the Owls an early lead, before defeating the same opposition 2-1 in the FA Cup final replay later in the year, with Andy Linighan scoring the decisive goal a minute before the end of extra-time.

So although there was no success in the league, a cup double did something to lift the spirits along the Holloway Road that year, which cushioned the blow of a domestic campaign that saw the Gunners succumb to 16 losses.

Nayim goal gives Gunners gloom

That 1992/93 season may have been one of despair, but the two pieces of silverware certainly helped maintain a good feeling around the club.

However, two years later another disastrous league campaign saw the Gunners finish in the bottom half of the Premier League for the first - and so far only - time.

Seventeen defeats in a 42-match season saw Arsenal reside in 12th place when all was said and done in 1994/95, with just 13 victories all season and a mammoth 12 draws, matchdays at Highbury weren’t a pretty sight.

In fact, the side only won six times in front of their own fans all year in the Premier League, with off-field problems blighting the club as much as their issues on the pitch.

With manager George Graham relieved of his duties in February after allegedly taking bungs, and Paul Merson checked into a rehab facility to deal with drug and gambling issues, things couldn’t have been much worse at Highbury, and that evidently affected the players on the pitch.

Once again it was the likes of Dixon, Winterburn and Adams at the back, as well as David Seaman in goal and Ray Parlour in the midfield with Stefan Schwarz, but the Gunners just couldn’t get themselves firing on all cylinders.

Wright plundered 18 goals from 31 appearances, but once again it was very much a one-man team when it came to finding the net, with no other playing reaching double figures - John Hartson next highest with seven strikes.

And this time there was no domestic cup run that could save them, with Millwall dumping them out of the FA Cup before Liverpool ended their League Cup dreams at the fifth-round stage.

But the one bit of relief - as it has been this season - came in Europe and the Cup Winners’ Cup, where Arsenal seemed to come alive and play with the passion and verve that so often deserted them in the nitty gritty of a Premier League season.

Whether it was being as far away from London as possible, or playing without fear in cup competition, Arsenal came alive on European nights, with Omonia Nicosia and Brondby dispatched in the early rounds, before Wright struck the decisive goal against Auxerre to fire them into the semi-finals.

And after both clashes against Sampdoria finished 3-2 it came down to a penalty shootout and as Attilio Lombardo missed the decisive kick it was the Gunners who earned a showdown with Real Zaragoza in the final in Paris.

Alas, it wasn’t to be that night, with Juan Esnaider and Hartson trading goals in normal time, before the game looked set to be going to penalties once again, only for Nayim to lob Seaman from all of 40 yards from the right touchline to win the game in the dying seconds of extra time.

As ends of finals go they don’t get more dramatic, as ends of seasons go they don’t get any more heart-breaking, but even as close as they had come it ultimately ended without a trophy for the Gunners, just as the current campaign could.

With a tasty tie against Villarreal to come in the Europa League semi-finals, Mikel Arteta will have to pull out all the stops to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself this season, but with the 90s ending with such success might this nadir be the turning point for the club just as it was 25 years ago?

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