The reality Arsenal fans best prepare for this season

The 2021/22 Premier League season is only eight matches in and already it’s coughed up all manner of emotions for Arsenal fans, who’ve sunk to the very depths and been catapulted high up in the skies.

Tottenham at home? Glorious. Manchester City away? Grim. Crystal Palace at home? Tepid. Aston Villa at home? Terrific.

At the beginning of the campaign the various absences coupled with the club’s transfer business having not been completed made an unavoidable impact on performances. In the six matches since Mikel Arteta has had a near full complement of players and been able to call on all six of his summer signings, the team has gone unbeaten.

It’s a deceptive unbeaten run though, with some distinctly average displays against Brighton and the Eagles intertwined with electric outings in the North London Derby and most recently against the Villans.

The realisation Arsenal fans best prepare for this season is that this team will be inconsistent that Aston Villa performances won’t be weekly occurrences

There is a common denominator: inconsistency. While it was breathless seeing what Arsenal can produce in their recent 3-1 win, the worrying aspect is the gap in performance level against a weaker team in the same stadium just days prior.

In the space of 96 hours supporters have seen two faces: one ugly and one pretty. The parameters for those two displays are so wide that the probability of the next one landing somewhere in between those two is high.

A byproduct of having the youngest team in the Premier League is the ‘mid-table-esque’ inconsistency that will follow. Arsenal won’t be able to press teams to the degree they had against Villa every week, with or without European football. Players will still make poor judgement calls in the final third and then in the following game nail every choice of pass.

What is the important next step is reducing the gap between Brighton and Villa. The match against the Seagulls was arguably the worst since the squad was at its strongest, and working on the nuance of such performances to ensure that if Arsenal are off the boil they can still pose a threat is reliant on two factors.

The manager takes the flak for asking too much of individuals and utilising them in ways that don’t enhance their finer traits, just as someone like Martin Odegaard needs to discover consistency in competitive encounters. Key figures like him – but not only him – can be the glue to piece Arsenal together. Two poor outings from him in succession played their part in two of the weaker collective displays in this run.

Finding a winning formula, both in selection and setup, is achievable. The result is Tottenham and Aston Villa. Finding a different formula to combat adversity, however, is where the manager needs to unearth new methods and the players have to face up to setbacks.

We’ve seen close to the ceiling of this team just as we’ve slipped on the floor. Building from the ground up will reduce the margin for performance level, and in turn can impact the heights Arsenal can reach. That’s the next step.