Arsenal: The fixture list is ideal for the same old downfall

With a nice run of games between now and November before consecutive games against Manchester City and Spurs, the Arsenal downfall is seemingly inevitable once more.

Arsenal, or at least the Arsenal of the past decade, are a depressingly predictable team. The pattern of the season, the style of play, the type of players that they buy – and, more significantly, that they don’t buy –, the investments that are made and the success, or lack thereof, that they achieve.

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What is the most obvious component of the organisation, though, is the structure of their season. It is seemingly an annual ritual that the same weaknesses, the same strengths, the same triumphs and trials, victories and vices, are discussed and debated every single year.

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The Gunners enjoy a fairly promising start to the season, with fans beginning to believe that change has finally come. They then suffer an early loss in late August that spells trouble, perhaps forcing Arsene Wenger into some late window panic buys. They then proceed to enjoy a blossoming September and October, before faltering in November with two or three difficult fixtures in succession.

Christmas is a period of stemming the tide, leading to a January and February where hope is again inspired for the closing months of the season. And then, it one disastrous week, it all comes crashing down. A humiliating loss in the Champions League, an away defeat to a lesser Premier League side where they are outfought, and another dismantling against a rival at the top of the table, and, suddenly, all that is left to fight for is a fourth place and an FA Cup trophy, of which three have been won in the last four years.

And a brief look at the upcoming fixture list shows a schedule that lends itself perfectly to the beginning of that perpetual cycle of despair and disappointment once again.

Including Monday night’s hosting of West Bromwich Albion, Arsenal, over the next five Premier League games, face the aforementioned Baggies, Brighton, Watford, Everton and Swansea. Within reason, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that they proceed to win all of those games.

After Swansea’s trip to the Emirates to close October, Arsenal must then travel to face Manchester City, the best team in the country right now. And then, after another international break, the first of the two North London derbies takes place, with the Gunners hosting. To add to the potential struggles, Arsenal will then play, including the North London derby, five games in just 15 days, including an away trip to Cologne in the Europa League. They end that run with Manchester United coming to town, hardly an easy match.

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Unfortunately, the fixture list is such that Wenger and his players are in prime position to do exactly what they always do: impress in September and October, fall flat in November, and enter a stage of crisis in December. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen, but I have little confidence in the club being able to change the tide.