The Arsenal joint-best start is officially under way. Saturday’s 1-0 win over Hull City at the Emirates took Mikel Arteta’s side to 27 points from their first ten Premier League games — nine wins, one defeat — matching the club record set only four years ago and a tally Arsenal have reached just once in their 140-year history.
Martin Odegaard’s 72nd-minute winner settled a stubborn Hull side and sent the champions into the international break five points clear at the top of the table, six clear of Manchester City after the champions-elect slipped to a 3-1 defeat at Nottingham Forest. The quest to win back-to-back league titles for the first time since the 1930s is firmly on track — and a dip into the record books shows just how rare the heights Arsenal are reaching really are.
Arsenal joint-best start: 27 points, matched only once
Arsenal’s previous benchmark came in 2022/23, when Arteta’s side also collected 27 points from their opening ten fixtures. Many of that team have now replicated their own exploits — although they will hope to go one step further than that first title tilt, which ended with Manchester City clawing back the lead and Arsenal finishing second.
In the Premier League era, only four teams have ever registered more than Arsenal’s current tally after ten games: Chelsea in 2005/06, Manchester City in 2011/12 and 2017/18, and Liverpool in 2019/20. All four hit 28 points — and all four went on to lift the championship. Looking further back, there have been only 14 occasions of a team reaching 27 points after ten games in England’s top flight since league football began in 1888, and only eight of those went on to finish top of the table.
The Opta supercomputer likes what it sees, too. Before the Hull game, Arsenal were given a 71.3% chance of winning the title; after Odegaard’s winner, that figure rose to 71.9%. It is only November, and nobody at the club will be counting chickens — but the numbers say this is a title race Arsenal are firmly in control of.
Seven clean sheets: the defence behind the record
Arsenal’s defensive solidity has provided the backbone for the dominant start, with seven of their nine victories coming with a clean sheet. In English top-flight history, only four teams have ever hit eight clean sheets after ten games — Leeds United in 1970/71, Birmingham City in 2003/04, Chelsea in 2004/05 and Manchester United in 2017/18 — and of those, only Chelsea went on to win the title.
The Gunners have now kept four clean sheets in a row, shutting out Nottingham Forest, Everton, Liverpool and Hull, and they have not kept five in a row since 2005/06. David Raya has been beaten only five times in ten league games, making this just the seventh campaign in Arsenal’s history in which they have conceded five or fewer after ten games — and the first time they have ever done it in back-to-back seasons, after last season’s title-winning side conceded only three at the same stage.
There is a steelier edge to this team than the 2022/23 vintage, too. Four of Arsenal’s first ten wins have come by a 1-0 scoreline — the joint-most by any side at this stage of a Premier League season, and the first time any team has done it since West Bromwich Albion in 2015/16. Where the 2022/23 side scored 24 goals in their first ten games, this one has scored 15 — but they have conceded half as many, and they keep finding a way to win.
What comes next for Arteta’s record-chasers
The only blemish on the record so far is September’s 3-0 defeat at Brighton, and Arsenal’s response to that setback has been emphatic: five straight Premier League wins since, with the latest coming against a Hull side that defended with eleven men behind the ball for long spells. The international break now gives Arteta a fortnight to work with the players who have stayed behind — and the injury news is encouraging.
William Saliba played 45 minutes for the Under-21s on Sunday in his first appearance in almost four months, and he is on course to rejoin the senior squad for the return to action away at Newcastle United on Saturday 21 November. Bukayo Saka is still sidelined, but he is targeting a return for the Real Madrid clash on 9 December. Getting both back before the Christmas run-in would be the single biggest boost Arteta could ask for.
The warning from history is clear, though. The 2022/23 side also held 27 points after ten games and also spent much of the campaign at the top — before City reeled them in. This Arsenal side looks better equipped to hold on: meaner at the back, deeper in quality, and hardened by last season’s title win. If they keep winning ugly, the record books may need rewriting again. For more on the weekend’s action, check today’s predictions.
Photo: Arne Müseler, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 de) — collage by SportsBuddy
