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As the Arsenal players returned to the dressing room after the 2-1 win over Chelsea, Mikel Arteta gave a quick speech praising them for a hard-fought victory, but with one mild caveat. The Basque told them that they didn’t manage the last 15 minutes as he wanted, but that wasn’t a conversation for that moment.
It might well be a conversation that returns again this season, however, and not just for Arsenal.
In normal title races, after all, it would be hard not to feel that the leaders’ very angst will wear them down. Too many games devolve into a dogfight, too many are played right on the margins. That is difficult to sustain. It’s like you’re teetering on the edge so often that you eventually fall through.
Except, Manchester Cityare the exact same. Four of their last five Premier League games have been battles right to the finish, with only an easy 3-0 win over Fulham the exception.
That in itself is unusual for a title-chasing Pep Guardiola team.
The mood around City has nevertheless felt different - both outside and in Guardiola’s own team talks - because they’re the chasing team, and they’ve done it before. It’s now about staying in touch rather than staying on top.
Just as perceptions of City have apparently changed, though, so maybe should perceptions of the title race. That’s especially acute as the race turns into a run-in, with now just 10 matchweeks left.
This one might actually have proper twists and turns, in a way that hasn’t really been seen since the 1990s. It’s already been covered in these pages how this is the most competitive Premier League in a decade.
Winning runs are low. Thrashings are way down, with just six matches involving wins by four goals or more. As the top two currently typify, so many games are a battle.
And that is going to have an effect. Aside from the mental effect, where the tension of every match gradually erodes your edge, there’s the physical effect. The endings of games can’t just be played out, circulating the ball at ease. Key players can’t be taken off to reduce their minutes.
It’s instead all in, all the time, pushing everything to the maximum in a different way to most of recent Premier League history because, for pretty much all of the last decade, the champions and challengers have been close to perfect.
The immense financial advantage of the Super League clubs, when they had their teams right, translated into big wins and longer streaks.
The peak of this was obviously 2018-19, when both City and Liverpool collectively dropped a mere two points out of 60 in the run-in. You arguably had to go back to John Stones’ clearance off the line against Liverpool, as early as 3 January, for where the title was actually “won”.
The last title race between Arsenal and City wasn’t far off that, though. In 2023-24, they collectively dropped seven points over the same spell. A total of 17 games out of 20 were won, with both enjoying several comfortable wins. Even as long ago as 2007-08, Manchester United and Chelsea were dropping just 13 points out of 60.
Compare that to 1994-95, when the wage stretch from bottom to top was far lower - 2.85x compared to roughly 4.5x now. Blackburn Rovers and a United without Eric Cantona lost a collective 24 points out of 60.
So many more games were so much more nervous. More fallibility created more drama.
The very construction of a run-in was also different, of course. Sir Alex Ferguson’s approach before Jose Mourinho was generally to stay there or thereabouts until the last 10 games, and then put the foot down.
Hence they claimed 25 points out of the last 30 in 1995-96, and 28 in 2002-03. The performances of their rivals were instructive, though. Arsene Wenger’s great Arsenal claimed just 18 points in the 2002-03 run-in, with a result record of 5-3-2, Kevin Keegan’s doomed Newcastle United 17 points and 5-2-3.
And while the Premier League has not exactly returned to those levels of parity, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that the congested calendar has offered a counter-balance to financial superiority. The effects of greater money have been reduced.
This becomes all the more influential when so many games are so close.
Put simply, if you’re going from one tight win to an exacting Champions League knock-out tie, and then onto another tight win, the chances of not doing enough in the next game naturally increase.
Suddenly, that crucial final edge - the will that so often takes challengers through when they need a goal late on - just isn’t there. It's sapped.
The very monotony of the schedule works against that, too. So might the actual fixture list itself.
Some at Arsenal still believe that they would have won the title in 2023-24 had it not been for how the Champions League fell. In their first big quarter-final for 14 years, a young team new to the stage put too much emotional intensity into a tough tie against Bayern Munich - and one no one now really remembers - only to then not have enough for a 2-0 home defeat to Unai Emery’s Aston Villa.
Some will scoff at that, but the exact sequence of matches can have an effect. Guardiola and his staff would reasonably say this has now been reversed for both clubs - starting with this weekend. While City have Newcastle United in the FA Cup, Arsenal face Mansfield Town. The new Champions League “tennis” system meanwhile ensures that City can see a potential run of games that is: Real Madrid (a), West Ham (a), Real Madrid (h) Arsenal in the League Cup final, Bayern Munich (h), Chelsea (a), Bayern Munich (a), Arsenal (h), Burnley (a), Liverpool/PSG, Everton (a), Liverpool/PSG, Brentford (h).
Get through that, especially in a season when so much is demanded of these squads, and the players will deserve every medal coming their way.
Arsenal’s trips to Sporting or Bodo-Glimt obviously shouldn’t be dismissed, but it isn’t disrespectful to say they aren’t as challenging as facing Europe’s superclubs.
Arteta might nevertheless point to how December saw City sign the most wanted attacker in the Premier League, in Antoine Semenyo, and the most wanted defender, in Marc Guehi, to augment a wage bill that was last season £70m more than his own.
The wider point, given how recent games have gone, it’s that it’s hard to see even squads as ample as these as sustaining long winning Premier League runs over these periods.
There will likely be slips, and maybe turns.
There will also be big decisions. Should Arsenal, for example, only keep Kai Havertz’s starts for the Premier League? Might Guardiola have to make similar decisions with Rodri and Erling Haaland?
Either way, this is why Arteta was so focused on Arsenal’s final 15 minutes against Chelsea to the point he also discussed it in the press conference. He did add that the calendar allows little time to prepare.
He and Guardiola have privately discussed this among themselves.
On Wednesday, there's even the rare situation that both teams kick off at the same time. That is a throwback to the 1990s, in a season that may yet have a few more.