Arsenal's Impressive Title Defence: Three Wins, Three Styles

Three league games, three wins, three different ways of winning. Arsenal have opened their title defence with the kind of authority that leaves only one obvious caveat: Manchester City haven’t slipped yet.

Everything else points one way. Arsenal have not just beaten Coventry City, Aston Villa and now Chelsea; they have controlled them, bent each game to a different plan and still looked the more complete side every time.

Arsenal show different faces, same outcome

Coventry were handled with calm control, the sort of routine victory that never quite feels routine in this league. Villa required something else. Arsenal squeezed them after the break, tightened the screw for 15 relentless minutes and forced the game their way.

Chelsea posed a different question again on Sunday. Xabi Alonso’s team went ahead, stretched the game, and finally became the first side this season to score against Mikel Arteta’s champions. It still never truly felt like a match Arsenal would lose.

They had to live a little. The contest opened up, Chelsea broke lines, and Arsenal’s back line was finally asked to scramble. Then came the moment that underlined the depth of their armoury: Estevão let fly late on and David Raya, almost idle for long spells this season, flung himself across goal to claw the shot away.

That’s part of the point. Even when opponents do carve out chances, they still have to beat a goalkeeper with a taste for the spectacular. One save like that can drain belief from a chasing side.

At the other end, Arsenal looked dangerous from everywhere. Set pieces, combinations through the middle, switches to the flanks – there was no single pattern Chelsea could lock onto. They even survived a rare off day from Declan Rice, last season’s standout, whose late trip on Morgan Rogers was ugly, cynical and, frankly, the sort of deliberate foul far from the ball that the sport should consider treating as a red-card offence.

A lighter Ødegaard, a sharper edge

Some of this surge feels like the natural release of pressure. Three straight second-place finishes carry a weight. Once the title is finally won, that strain eases, and it shows.

But this is not just psychology. Certain players look transformed, quicker in body and mind than at any point last season. Martin Ødegaard sits at the heart of that change.

Injuries blunted him last year and he finished with just one league goal. Already this campaign he has two in the league and another in the Community Shield. Where some players return from a World Cup and stagger through the domestic grind, Ødegaard has come back with a spark.

There is imagination and lightness in his touch again. He took his goal against Chelsea with a crisp certainty, drifting into space, shaping the finish with the air of a player who knows he’s dictating the tempo. His understanding with Kai Havertz, still a mercurial presence at times, gave Arsenal a different kind of threat.

Their combinations were often exquisite: give-and-goes in tight spaces, disguised passes that opened angles where none seemed to exist. One such exchange delivered the winner. In a side that last season gained a reputation for sheer physical force, watching those two glide and flick their way through a packed defence felt almost surreal, like watching sprites dance along a castle wall while the battlements rumble beneath them.

Saka and Calafiori rise again

Ødegaard is not the only one who looks reborn. With Bukayo Saka, last season felt like the bill arriving for years of heavy usage. He is only 25, yet Sunday was already his 205th league start, on top of a full England load.

That accumulation always threatened to catch up with him. Thomas Tuchel’s decision not to use him in the World Cup semi-final was officially about tiredness or a knock – explanations that never fully cleared, especially when Saka promptly hit a hat-trick in the third-place game. Whatever the truth, the fatigue was real.

Now, in these opening weeks, he looks recharged. Saka is again fizzing in from the right, driving at full-backs, demanding the ball. His corners are vicious, whipped into the danger zone with the kind of consistency that makes every set piece feel like an event.

On the opposite side, Riccardo Calafiori has emerged as the other standout of Arsenal’s early season. The Italian, scorer of the opener in the Community Shield, has already forged a lively attacking partnership with Christos Tzolis down the flank. Their interplay going forward gives Arsenal another route to goal, even if there are still defensive details to tidy up on that side.

Calafiori is not just a threat in the air from dead balls. He carries the ball through the lines with conviction, stepping past the first press and suddenly turning a static move into a surge. Against low blocks, that ability to break shape and drive between markers is a serious weapon.

Chelsea tighten up, but Arsenal stride on

Chelsea are not the soft touch they were earlier in the campaign. Alonso’s side, far too open through midfield against Fulham and Brighton, closed those gaps more effectively here. Facing a team like Arsenal, who want the ball and know what to do with it, paradoxically made their structure easier to maintain.

If they continue to harden and if the grind of European fixtures begins to sap others, Chelsea could still emerge as a major force later in the season. The signs of improvement are there.

The problem for them, and for everyone else, is that Arsenal are already at full stride.

Arteta’s team are not only playing with authority; the calendar has been kind as well. Villa away and Chelsea at home came at a time when both opponents are still working out their patterns. Arsenal, by contrast, look like a side that knows exactly what it is.

Yes, it is early. The first international break has not even arrived. Form can dip, injuries can bite, and this league punishes anyone who assumes anything.

But right now, Arsenal’s title defence looks less like a fragile lead to be guarded and more like a campaign that might be wrapped up with games to spare. The real question is not whether they can hold on – it’s who, if anyone, can keep up.