Arsenal Eye Up the Trebottle

Arsenal fans have it tough.

The 'banter era' (a grim decade between 2008 and 2018), defined by trophy droughts, sporadic European football and consistent inconsistency, ensured Gunners fans were routinely mocked by anyone within earshot. Sad as it was, expectation was at least low. You can't be disappointed if you no longer dream of glory.

Then Mikel Arteta did something unforgivable, injecting 20cc's of pure hope-ium directly into the veins of the long-suffering North London faithful. Three second-place finishes in three years, progressively deeper Champions League runs, and a solid squad delivered sweet, painful belief. By the time the 2025/26 season arrived, things had started to click.

The football wasn't beautiful, and nobody was mistaking this for peak Wenger, but Arsenal looked capable of something their supporters had almost forgotten about: Silverware that wasn’t the FA Cup.

Almost Is The Cruellest Word

As someone with a strong but neutral view on British football and several close friends with an Arsenal devotion bordering on the religious (cut them, they bleed red), I found myself genuinely invested. The idea of Declan Rice and company lifting the trophy made me happy. Not Arsenal-fan happy, but smiling on as your long-suffering friends taste champagne happy. After years of hurt, they deserved it.

For a while, it looked like they might actually get there.

The results trickled in. The table looked healthy. At one point, Arsenal held a nine-point lead. The long wait was nearly over. The banter era would finally be buried.

The Cracks Appear

Of course, results are one thing. How you get them is another.

The nagging doubt was always there for those paying close attention. 'Own Goals' at various points threatened to become Arsenal's most lethal attacking player and an over-reliance on set pieces generated the grumbling that starts with rival fans and ends with your own. 

The Gunners' faithful could ignore the style debate while the results kept coming. The problem, as it always is with Arsenal, is that the results stopped coming.

Turning on Its Head

In the space of two weeks, the title race was flipped with the kind of cosmic efficiency designed exclusively for the pain of one specific cohort.

A nine-point lead became a footrace. Arsenal's predictable mental frailties resurfaced right on schedule, and Manchester City, because of course, it's City, began their almost inevitable charge over the final ten games. The title was drifting.

It is a peculiar kind of torture, watching a team that clearly has enough quality begin to doubt itself at precisely the wrong moment. Not a sudden collapse, not a catastrophic injury crisis, just the slow, grinding return of familiar self-sabotage.

A Trebottle in the Making

Which brings us to the truly remarkable possibility now facing Arsenal.

Not a treble (though that too was briefly on the cards) but something far more on-brand: the trebottle. Three competitions. Three capitulations.

The League Cup, the Premier League, the Champions League. One down, two potentially heart wrenching failures to go.

The worry for Arsenal fans isn't really about tactics, squad depth, or fixture congestion. It's something harder to quantify and harder to fix: the persistent, nagging sense that when the moment arrives, the team finds a way to falter.

Could City stutter in the next five games, paving the way for a final surge from Arteta’s men? Possible, but if we’ve learned anything, it’s that City’s league campaigns age like fine wines

Could Arsenal beat either PSG or Bayern in the Champions League final? Possibly. But realistically, the Gunners aren’t at that level.

Could Arsenal really clinch the trebottle? I hate to say so, but if anyone can, it’s them…