Sports14 August, 20263 min read
Arsenal Begin 2026–27 Premier League Campaign As Defending Champions After Saliba Injury Blow
This article is an automated aggregation of coverage from news outlets. Our editorials offer in-depth analysis curated by the NewsCord team.
Arsenal begin 2026–27 as defending Premier League champions. They are widely viewed as title favourites to defend.
Arsenal must evolve
Arsenal begin the 2026–27 Premier League campaign as defending champions after ending a long wait to win the league again, and the BBC framed the question as whether they can claim back-to-back titles. The Laodong.vn analysis said Arsenal scored 71 goals in the Premier League 2025-26, calling it the lowest number of a champion since Leicester City in 2016, and it added that Arsenal’s goals from live ball situations (42) were significantly lower than champions in the past 10 years. That same Laodong.vn piece argued the Premier League last season saw an average of 2.75 goals/game and that Arsenal’s 1.8 goals from live balls/game in 2025-26 fell below 2.15 in 2024-25 and 2.38 in 2023-24.
“Arsenal scored 71 goals in the Premier League 2025-26.”
In the BBC’s preview, Arsenal’s continuity was contrasted with rivals’ uncertainty, and it noted that Arsenal have not made too many major changes in the playing squad beyond the arrivals of Christos Tzolis and Bruno Guimaraes. The BBC also reported Arsenal were dealt a blow with an injury to defender William Saliba, who is set to miss an "extended period" after suffering a back injury at the World Cup.
Predictions and title odds
Sports Illustrated said Opta’s supercomputer has Arsenal as the safe bet for the 2026–27 title, giving them a 38% chance of winning the league. In that same projection, Sports Illustrated rated Liverpool’s title chances at 9.2% and described Andoni Iraola as the new man at the helm at Anfield, succeeding Slot in June. The Laodong.vn piece argued that the two most recent champions against Arsenal both witnessed a sharp drop in the number of goals scored, with Liverpool decreasing from 86 goals in 2024-25 to 63 last season and Man City decreasing from 96 in 2023-24 to 72.
Laodong.vn also said Arsenal’s number of goals from set pieces (25) was the highest compared to any champion in 34 years of the league history, while live ball goals were the area it flagged for improvement. The BBC preview added that Pep Guardiola made defending the Premier League title look easy in recent years, and it described Guardiola’s successful defence four times before leaving City this summer.
Community Shield and stakes
Mundo Deportivo said Manchester City and Arsenal face off in the 2026 Community Shield at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, with the match scheduled for Sunday, August 16 at 16:00 local time. It described Arsenal as the reigning Premier League champions and City as the FA Cup holder, and it said the Community Shield is the season’s first title. Mundo Deportivo also reported Arsenal’s squad included Viktor Gyokeres, Martín Zubimendi, Eberechi Eze, Cristian Mosquera, and Noni Madueke, while it said City’s restructuring followed Pep Guardiola’s departure and Enzo Maresca’s arrival.
“The match is on Sunday, August 16, at 16:00 local time.”
In the BBC’s framing of the defending-champions challenge, it emphasized the psychological factor of having to build up again with a bigger target on their back, and it quoted a Leicester City player’s description of the title run as "Winning the title was like climbing Mount Everest." The BBC also included Andros Townsend’s view that the competitive nature of the Premier League makes replication hard, quoting him: "Do you go into the summer with the same sort of aggression and mentality?"