Arsenal's 2025-26 Premier League season starts at Manchester United: Whatever lies ahead I want to it 

Gooner Fanzine print writer Henry Waddon looks towards season ahead, while also reflecting on our squad, and summer transfer window so far, as excitement grows ahead of Arsenal's trip to Manchester United on Sunday.

2025-26 : Into The Unknown

Lord help the poor, poor souls among us who live unburdened by the joy of football.

How on Earth do they fill their days?

How do they survive in the long, muggy, endless football-less days of the lonely summer months all-year-round? 

As the return of the Premier League edges ever closer, I can literally, tangibly feel my nervous system re-awakening.

I can feel the cobwebs being blown off my dopaminergic circuitry. And I can feel some kind of structure, and some kind of catharsis, creeping back into view.

And part of the excitement (or dread, depending on your outlook) around Arsenal’s upcoming season is derived from the fact that… I really don’t know what to expect. More than ever, I’m finding it very difficult to calibrate our quality, and potential, against that of our rivals. 

For starters, it’s been an odd window.

We came into the summer with a laser-focused, non-negotiable intent to acquire a striker - anything else would simply have been a failure, or, at best, trimmings on an unfinished outfit.

Yet here we are, bolstered by one of Europe’s most prodigious and undeniable attacking talents, with a generational CDM in tow.

Moreover, the afore-mentioned trimmings have come in the shape of Prem-proven players, and some of Europe’s most promising young talent.

But our appetite remains unsatiated, doesn’t it?

We desperately need to strengthen in the LW position, Noni Madueke and Christian Norgaard feel like dice-rolls (and signings that feel very easy to write-off retrospectively if things aren’t going our way come autumn-time), and who amongst us wouldn’t love to see Eberechi Eze complete our summer haul (especially if it meant snubbing Spurs in the process)?

Has this been a successful, sufficient transfer window?

The answer is… I simply don’t know.

Then there’s a question of our existing talent-base.

What is the ceiling of our existing squad? What is a fully fit Calafiori capable of producing?

What, where and how will our revelatory, once-in-a-lifetime academy products Ethan Nwaneri, Max Dowman and Myles Lewis-Skelly contribute in the coming campaign?

Can our skipper return to his world-beating best, or is he destined for the nearly-man role he played across last season?

Will Leo Trossaard or Gabi Martinelli even still be with us when the window slams shut?

Have our summer signings reimagined and/or relegated Mikel Merino’s and Kai Havertz’s roles within our ensemble?

The void between world-beaters and also-rans feels paper-thin (as our last three campaigns have demonstrated); does this squad have what it takes to finally fall on the right side of that binary? Only time will tell, I guess.

And then, finally, and in all objectivity… how good are our rivals.

In what has been a truly scatter-gun, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it transfer window for the (evermore all-consuming) big clubs, we’ve witnessed an enormous turnover of players at the top end of the league.

Somehow, as the influence of multi-club ownership expands and expands and expands and expands, and as the richest clubs continue to find loopholes in financial regulations (including being awarded huge swaths of money for winning Mickey-Mouse-Sportswashing Trophies), the gross spend of our closest competitors has been truly astonishing.

Liverpool have signed some of the very best talent across the continent (with one high-profile pending transfer dragging me ever closer to the borders of utter bereavement), Chelsea and City continue their age-old tradition of signing whoever they want without fear or consequence, and even the likes of scrappy relegation-defiers Manchester United have done some (dare I say it) sensible and shrewd business, especially in the attacking department. Do we truly know just how good any of these teams will be this season?

I can say, with utmost certainty, that I for one do not.

But this is why we do it, isn’t it?

The mid-August feeling of dangling your feet off the edge of the precipice.

The risk of living through the worst days of your life, in the hope of experiencing the very best moments of your footballing existence.

The Athletic Club fixture injected the exact isotope of hopeless delusion that naive football fans such as myself need so unendingly, priming me for the cruel cycle of ups and downs that no-doubt lie in wait for us.

Whatever lies ahead, I want it all. 'Til the wheels fall off. 

Wishing you a happy season, Gooners.

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— Layth (@laythy29) August 16, 2025