We officially have a title race, and it's almost exactly what we all expected, right? Led by a dynamic collection of wide attackers, a big-money center-forward signing and an imperious, preternaturally-calm center-back, a team in red is giving Manchester City a run for their money at the top of the table.
Of course, the team in red is not Liverpool. No, it's Arsenal, who haven't qualified for the Champions League since 2016 and haven't won the Premier League since they went undefeated in 2004. But guess what? Mikel Arteta & Co. have been even better than the Invincibles; in fact, they've been better than almost everyone.
Since England's top flight became the Premier League in 1992, just four teams have won more points than the 44 Arsenal have through their first 17 matches. In 2017-18, Manchester City took 49 of a possible 52 en route to a league-record 100-point season, while Liverpool did the same two years later en route to a 99-point season. A year prior, Liverpool made it 45 from 52, ultimately ending on 97 -- the fourth-most in league history ... and the most by a team that didn't win the title.
The other side to best the 44-point mark was Jose Mourinho's second-season Chelsea in 2005-06: 46 points, ending on 91, and winning their second straight title.
Four other teams have matched Arsenal's 17-game total, and all of them won the league. So, of the eight previous teams to reach 44 points at this stage of the season, seven of them (88%) went on to win the league. Of course, the one team that didn't, Liverpool in 2019, was being chased by the same team and same manager, Pep Guardiola's Manchester City, that are currently chasing Arsenal.
With a five-point lead atop the table and a very real shot at winning this thing, shouldn't Arsenal be pushing more of their chips into the center of the table? Wouldn't they, more than Chelsea, have benefitted from paying a premium to loan in a star attacker like Atletico Madrid's Joao Felix?
While the Gunners have reached this point by mostly patient building and acquiring young talent, you acquire all of the young talent so you can win the league, after all. Now, Arsenal can still win the league without doing anything this window, but wouldn't they be more likely to win it if they brought in a couple key contributors this window?
Unfortunately, it's not that simple.
How close are they?
Right now, Arsenal have a five-point lead on Manchester City. Different projection systems vary on what that might mean for the rest of the season, but we're going to use FiveThirtyEight's model today. Despite that five-point lead, the Gunners have a 40% chance of winning the league, per FiveThirtyEight, while Manchester City are up at 50%. Manchester United (3%), Newcastle (2%), and Liverpool (2%) round out the tail.
Put another way, FiveThirtyEight projects Manchester City to finish on 85 points and then Arsenal to "pull a Liverpool" and finish one point back.
- Stream on ESPN+: LaLiga, Bundesliga, more (U.S.)
The specific numbers of the projection aren't really important. The general takeaway is that City are slight favorites because they're probably the best team in the world, but it's still very close. We're at the point where one unexpected result -- good or bad -- will flip the race around.
Let's compare this to where things stood this preseason. Arsenal were projected to finish on 61 points. They had a 2% chance of winning the league, and they only had a 28% chance of finishing in the top four. That tells you what a surprise this season has been, but outside of the most optimistic Arsenal fans and a handful of Mikel Arteta's blood relatives, everyone knows what a surprise this season has been.
Instead, it's useful to look at where the other teams at the top of the table were projected to end up. City came into the season with a 46% chance of winning, while Liverpool were at 30% and Chelsea at 11%. In other words, the most dominant team in Premier League history had about the same title-winning probability as Arsenal have right now. A team coming off of one of the best single seasons of the past 10 years was 10% lower than where Arsenal currently are, and a team that had won the Champions League just a year prior was four times less likely to win the league than Arsenal are right now.
Although they are the youngest team in the league, we just don't know the next time Arsenal will have as good of a shot at winning the league as they do right now. Just ask Chelsea and Liverpool fans how quickly things can change. With down seasons at both of those clubs, with Newcastle and Manchester United just beginning on what appear to be upward trajectories, and with no Champions League games to worry about this year, Arsenal's title window might be as wide as it ever gets.
Given all of that, any kind of short-term move that could increase Arsenal's title odds by just a percentage point or two is uniquely valuable right now. Plus, with a relatively thin squad -- both across the attacking band and in the midfield -- there are clear areas to acquire players who can add depth to a lineup that pretty much seems to select itself at this point. Not everyone is gonna stay healthy -- see: Gabriel Jesus -- and your stars can't just play every minute of every match from now until May. I mean, they could, but it'd be naive to expect it to happen. There's a reason why there's only been one Leicester City.
Whether it's a loan deal for an expensive attacker or a move for a veteran who doesn't fit the age profile of the team and will only decline in value, Arsenal should be looking into these kinds of normally imprudent moves. The only problem: they rarely ever work.
January signings almost never make an immediate impact
Every season, title contenders in baseball and basketball trade away future assets to acquire stars who might even be out of contract at the end of the season. This is what the trade deadline in the NBA and MLB is all about: short-term transactions to maximize your chances of immediately winning something.
European soccer doesn't quite allow for this because there are no trades and there is no draft, so you don't get teams exchanging draft picks and prospects for ready-made stars. Of course, it's still possible for a team to acquire a player to immediately help out; it just almost never works out that way.
According to data from the consultancy Twenty First Group, 34% of the teams who were in first place in January across one of Europe's Big Five leagues signed at least one player for a transfer fee since the 2012-13 season. That number is even higher in the Premier League, in particular: 44%. On top of that, 25% of these January leaders made at least one loan move, but just 13% of the Premier League leaders.
Despite a sizable amount of transaction action, the moves themselves rarely ever offer an immediate payoff, either. The average January signings made by teams in first place play 35% of the league minutes over the remainder of the season. When you add in loans and free transfers, that number drops down to 26%.
Since 2012, only 13 players were acquired by a team in first place and then went on to play at least 40% of the league minutes. Eight of them were for teams that were already heavy favorites to win: PSG, Juventus, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City. The other five:
2021: Fikayo Tomori, DF, from Chelsea to AC Milan
2020: Angelino, DF, from Manchester City to RB Leipzig
2020: Dani Olmo, MF, from Dinamo Zagreb to RB Leipzig
2016: Augusto Fernandez, MF, from Celta Vigo to Atletico Madrid
2016: Mohamed Elneny, MF, from FC Basel to Arsenal
What all those players have in common? Their teams didn't win the title. In fact, on average, when a team ranked third or higher in their league signed a player in January who then made at least one appearance that season, that team dropped nearly one full spot (0.75) in the table. When you limit it to just the top two, the average team still drops 0.44 places in the table.
Why? The biggest reason is that most transfers don't even work out in the long run, let alone the short run. It's hard to integrate new players into your system on the fly, and many managers are also reluctant to change things up when they're going well. Plus, if a team needs to make a January signing who immediately becomes a key starter, there's a decent chance that the team itself wasn't as good as their place in the table suggested.
Since 2012, only six players were signed and then played by teams who weren't in first but ultimately went on to win the league. Two of them were Bayern players -- defenders Alvaro Odriozola and Alphonso Davies -- so they don't really fit the spirit of the exercise. In 2015-16, the last time Arsenal were leading the Premier League ers in January, Leicester City signed defender Daniel Amartey from FC Copenhagen and winger Demarai Gray before going on to win the title. However, that duo combined for just 287 league minutes, making it hard to argue that either one made much of a difference.
Although they were still chasing in January while Arsenal are currently in first, Atletico Madrid might provide the more relevant model for the Gunners. Atletico's LaLiga title in 2014 -- over both peak-level Real Madrid and Barcelona -- was one of the most unlikely championships of the past 15 or 20 years. Given the preseason expectations and the relative strength of the team -- a Champions League-caliber club with significant resources -- an Arsenal title would seem like a similar achievement.
As they hauled in, and then held off, Barcelona and Real Madrid, Atletico signed 28-year-old Brazilian midfielder Diego from Wolfsburg for the remainder of the 2013-14 season. In his early 20s with Werder Bremen, Diego was one of the best players in the Bundesliga, but his career stalled out for a few years after a high-profile move to Juventus.
Atletico also brought in, on loan, 28-year-old Argentine midfielder Jose Sosa from Metalist Kharkiv. Before spending three seasons in Ukraine, Sosa played a year for Napoli and three for Bayern Munich -- all as a squad player. They both fit a similar archetype: talented in-their-prime players who never quite caught on with a big club. The latter point is why they were both available in the first place, but the former made them more likely to be a hit than your average temporary 28-year-old signing.
Neither player did a ton -- Diego assisted two goals, Sosa scored and assisted one -- but they played a combined 979 minutes, made 28 LaLiga appearances and started eight matches from January on. With how close the table ended up being -- both Barca and Real finished three points back -- perhaps Atleti don't win the title without those minutes from Diego and Sosa. And with how close the Premier League table is likely to end up being this season, perhaps Arsenal won't win the title without similar minutes from some peak-age January arrivals of their own.
Finding the right additions, though, is the hard part. Otherwise, we'd have more than two examples from five leagues across 10 years of players who might have actually made a difference.