Arsenal: Premier League prediction from August shows how well Mikel Arteta has done

Arsenal took another massive step towards Champions League qualification with their 1-0 win at Villa Park on Saturday morning.

Having battled hard against Liverpool to no avail in mid-week, it was critical for the Gunners to get back to winning ways against Aston Villa in order to keep Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur at bay.

And that’s exactly what they did with Bukayo Saka scoring the only goal in Birmingham to give Gooners renewed hope of their first Premier League finish in the top four since the Arsene Wenger days.

Now, it would obviously be a dangerous game to get too ahead of ourselves here, but regardless of what happens over the coming weeks, Arsenal have still performed infinitely better than expected.

While no doubt there will have been some fans and pundits who ambitiously tipped the Gunners for a top-four finish before the season started, it couldn’t have looked any less likely after three league games.

Truth be told, it’s a little awkward to look back on all the catastrophising from Arsenal fans after the 2-0 defeat at Brentford, 2-0 loss to Chelsea and 5-0 mauling at Manchester City that adorned their opening games.

While, yes, that’s easy to say with hindsight, Arsenal’s overall league results in 2021 were very strong, the fixtures were undoubtedly tough and their form ever since has underlined Mikel Arteta’s quality.

However, if you were one of those fans who was calling for Arteta’s head when Arsenal stewed in the relegation zone, then fear not because even the data gurus at FiveThirtyEight were feeling pretty downbeat.

The revered number-crunching website uses a complex algorithm, which you can learn more about here, to predict every Premier League’s teams chances of certain scenarios playing