Arsenal
Last Season: Premier League – 5th; League Cup – Semi-final; FA Cup – 3rd Round; Top Scorer – Bukayo Saka (12)
The Question: What Constitutes as a good 2022/23 for Arsenal?
You could say Arsenal exceeded expectations last season. Not many expected the Gunners to finish just two points off a top-four spot going into the 2021/22 season, and even fewer did when you gauged the mood after their third league game, in which they’d had no points, no goals, and had shipped nine. But between Week Four and Week 35 of the Premier League season, they were best team bar the top two.
Yet, there’s the understandable sting at how Arsenal missed out on Champions League football for sixth year in a row. The Gunners were four points clear with three games to, and lost two on the bounce (albeit one of them to direct rivals Tottenham) to drop out. And the positives continue to juxtapose themselves with the negatives for Arsenal. They won more games than Chelsea last season, won 13 at home, yet lost more than 12th-placed Crystal Palace, drawing only three times. They finished 5th despite having one of the youngest sides in the league, and at the same time spent over £100 million in the market, had no European commitments, yet had a squad that lacked depth and looked spent by the final stretch of the season.
So, what would constitute a good season this time around for Arsenal? They’ve spent quite a few bucks in the window so far, raiding Manchester City for two solid names, yet there’s the sense that something significant is missing, and the teams they’re trying to catch up haven’t been held back themselves. Another top-six finish should by no means be a disaster, but having come so close last term, there’s only one way to ensure metric progress.
The Manager – Mikel Arteta
The fallout with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was probably the headline surrounding the Spaniard last season. But there’s the sense that Arteta has stamped his feet in the Emirates dressing room, and is the supremo now. The squad has been trimmed again in terms of average age, and while there’s the feeling of a team that still lacks an outright leader, he has every reason to look forward to the new season.
Atletico Madrid
Last Season: La Liga – 3rd; Copa del Rey – Last 16; UEFA Champions League – Quarter-final; Top Scorer – Angel Correa/Luis Suarez (13)
The question: What would this new season look like for Atleti?
In a way, that seems like a vague and weird cop-out of a question. If we knew how the season would turn out for teams, none of this would matter. But the thing with Atletico Madrid is that they’re very much in ‘mystery wrapped in an enigma’ territory. They went into the 2021/22 season as Spanish champions, having lost no key players, and looked to be in with a real shout at retaining the title, but ended it by finishing in the top four partly because the other sides couldn’t. The growing alarm is that Cholismo is edging further towards its expiry date in the Spanish capital; last season Atletico Madrid conceded 43 league goals, the most they’ve ever done under Diego Simeone.
So, they enter this new season with questions about them on the pitch, but off it too. A lot of the focus in Spanish football is about Barcelona’s finances, but Atleti are not in paradise either. A massive wage bill, with players they can’t seem to shift, has played a part in their relative quietness in the transfer window (Axel Witsel from Dortmund is the headline signing), so much so that any discourse surrounding the team has barely being about what they’ll do to challenge, but rather if they’ll even be able to.
The Manager – Diego Simeone
The Argentine has crossed a decade in charge of Los Colcheronos, but this is probably the most uncertain he’s found things at the club. There’s also work to be done on the pitch; the task of rebuilding that defence is important, and his team has to rediscover that nastiness that has made them so formidable in his tenure, all without much room to bring in new names.
Barcelona
Last Season: La Liga – 2nd; Copa Del Rey – Last 16; UEFA Champions League – Group Stage; UEFA Europa League – Quarter-final; Top scorer – Memphis Depay/Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (13)
The Question: What phase of Redevelopment are Barcelona in?
Speaking of ‘a mystery wrapped in an enigma’, enter Barcelona. Last season was the first full one with Joan Laporta as president in over a decade, and it also saw Xavi return to the club in the managerial capacity. The task was rebuilding the side after years of chaos (to put it lightly), but that’s where the question lies: where are Barcelona right now? If the aim is to reignite the tactical ethos that made them untouchable, Xavi showed signs of that last season – they won 13 out of 16 (seven in a row) at some point under the Spaniard last season – yet they finished with their lowest points tally since 2007/08 and looked outclassed on more than one occasion. If the main aim is to offset the financial chaos besetting the club, they’ve managed to restructure their debt, and forestalled short-term danger, but the long-term issue can’t be overlooked.
So, what phase are Barcelona in with regards to their rebuild? It’s hard to say. They’ve dragged themselves out of utter direness and into slight precariousness, and their summer activity, however impressive, seems to speak to a strategy that relies on absolutely getting right on the pitch for things to get better off it. Perhaps the only way out is through.
The Manager – Xavi
There have been signs of the former Barcelona midfielder implanting the footballing style that defined his playing days at the club, biggest case in point their dismantling of Real Madrid at the Bernabeu earlier in the year. But he knows Barcelona are not quite there, yet is tasked with fast-tracking whatever success they seek on the pitch for stability off it.
Bayern Munich
Last Season: Bundesliga – Champions; DFB Pokal – 2nd Round; UEFA Champions League – Quarter-final; Top Scorer – Robert Lewandowski (50)
The Question: How do Bayern deal with the loss of Lewandowski?
To say Robert Lewandowski has been Bayern Munich’s talisman of the past eight years is an understatement. Not just that he’s been their top scorer every season, or has smashed the league’s records. It’s that Bayern Munich had looked significantly workaday whenever the Pole wasn’t around. And he’s no longer around, having successfully pushed for a move to Barcelona, one that hints at Bayern’s lack of pull in comparison with Europe’s other big names. Sadio Mane has joined from Liverpool, but that’s not quite the off-pitch glamour, nor the on-pitch like-for-like replacement for Die Roten – mostly because there isn’t one. Julian Nagelsmann has to truly earn his coin now.
The Manager – Julian Nagelsmann
The young manager guided Bayern to a tenth successive Bundesliga title last season, but it would be a bit too optimistic to describe the campaign as exciting. Bayern Munich looked tactically questionable on occasion last season, as the Champions League knockout rounds in particular showed. It’s time their young exciting manager prove he can lock horns with Europe’s finest, without Lewandowski nonetheless.
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