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Injury-ravaged Arsenal faces real test of newfound squad depth

Arsenal midfielder Martin Odegaard. Bill Streicher-Imagn Images

Injury-ravaged Arsenal faces first real test of newfound squad depth

By Alyssa Clang | Last updated Aug 30, 2025 6:19 PM ET

For the past three seasons, Arsenal Football Club has fallen short.

It's a harsh thing to say about a team that has racked up more points than any other in the Premier League during that time period, but it's true. For all of Arsenal's strengths — and there are many — the team has failed to bring home any trophy bigger than the oft-mocked Community Shield. It begins every season full of vigor and promise; it wraps them up, sadly reminding its fans that there's always next year.

Blame it on what you want: injury crises, bad luck, superior opponents, poor coaching or even just the wrong mix of players. You could make a reasonable case that any (or all) of those factors are the proximate cause of Arsenal's fragility. But this past summer, as Arsenal coach Mikel Arteta stared down the prospect of another silverware-free season, he decided that one factor stood above them all: squad depth.

And why not? Arteta had good reasons to highlight it as a problem. When his Arsenal drew 2-2 with eventual champion Liverpool at the end of last season — a result that put the final nail in the coffin of Arsenal's title hopes — the difference in depth was clear between the two squads. Arsenal called the likes of Kieran Tierney and Oleksandr Zinchenko off the bench to bolster its starters; Liverpool called the likes of Darwin Nunez, Alexis Mac Allister and Trent Alexander-Arnold. There was simply no comparison between the two squads.

"We want to build a team, like other clubs already have, where you look at the squad and you cannot really identify who is going to play tomorrow," Arteta told The Athletic this summer. "If we get to that point, and that competitiveness has as well the right level of co-operation between the players, that’s what we want.”

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Arteta went about building exactly that. He made a flurry of signings — Swedish striker Viktor Gyokeres, Spanish midfielder Martin Zubimendi, English winger Noni Madueke and more — and embedded them deep within his squad so they'd be ready for the new season.

"That is what we need," said Arteta in a news conference after his newly-improved Arsenal squad beat Leeds 5-0. "I think the other way is not realistic to survive at the level we want for 10 months. None of the other top teams in the league do it, so why are we going to be different?"

Arsenal's strengthened squad will face its first real test this Sunday, Aug. 31, when it takes on Liverpool, the defending Premier League champion. Facing Liverpool is difficult on a good day and nigh impossible on a bad one, and Sunday indeed looks set to be a bad one for Arsenal. It enters the match with three of its most important players — midfielder Martin Odegaard, winger Bukayo Saka and striker Kai Havertz — unavailable due to untimely injuries.

If you had asked Arteta a few weeks ago which three Arsenal players would be key against a team like Liverpool, he would not have hesitated to name Odegaard, Saka and Havertz in that order. They are the fulcrum upon which Arsenal's attack balances. When they're firing, the whole field seems tilted in Arsenal's favor; when they're absent or not at their peak, pulling any sort of coherent attack together feels like a tall order for the Gunners.

That's the order in front of them in this crucial clash against Liverpool, though, and it'll be fascinating to watch them execute it. If Arsenal can leverage its new signings like Zubimendi, Madueke and Gyokeres to keep its "tier 2" team just as competitive as its "tier 1," it will prove the Arsenal of 2025-26 is a very different beast than its predecessors.

If Arsenal can't, though, its long-suffering fans will be left with the same old refrain: there's always next year.

Arsenal will take on Liverpool at Anfield on Sunday, Aug. 31 at 11:30 a.m. ET.

Alyssa Clang

Alyssa is a Boston-born Californian with a passion for global sport. She can yell about misplaced soccer passes in five languages and rattle off the turns of Silverstone in her sleep. You can find her dormant Twitter account at @alyssaclang, but honestly, you’re probably better off finding her here

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