The Briefing: A glimpse of the task ahead at Arsenal and do league games matter for Spurs?

Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday during this season The Athletic will discuss three of the biggest questions to arise from the weekend’s football.

This was the weekend when Nottingham Forest strengthened their position in the scrap for the Champions League places by beating Manchester City, Liverpool survived a scare against Southampton, Cole Palmer’s struggles continued but Chelsea beat Leicester City, and Brighton & Hove Albion grabbed a late win against Fulham.

Here we will ask how Arsenal’s draw with Manchester United relates to their new sporting director, whether league games make any difference to Ange Postecoglou’s future, and where we are at in the race for Champions League places.

Did Arsenal’s incoming sporting director get a glimpse of the task ahead?

On the face of it, coming second to the controlled ruthlessness of this Liverpool side falls into the ‘no disgrace’ category for Arsenal. Arne Slot’s side have still lost only once this season and are favourites to win the three tournaments they are still in. Just because Manchester City have fallen away does not automatically mean missing out on the title is a failure.

And yet, this season — domestically at least — is a failure for Arsenal because they have regressed. It’s the second weekend in March and there is no title race, for a start: in the past couple of years they have taken it down to the last few weeks or the final day, but this term it’s over with weeks to spare.

But even if you just look at Arsenal, rather than comparing their performance to the rest of the division, they have gone backwards. If they collect points at the same rate in their remaining games, they will finish on 75 points, which has only been enough to be champions in one Premier League season before and is 14 fewer than they got last season.

A lot of this is down to injuries, and going through the first couple of months of 2025 without a forward line to speak of has clearly been a significant problem. But it’s not all down to that, and it brings us to the job faced by incoming sporting director Andrea Berta in retooling the squad for next season.

The good news for Berta is that he probably will not need to sign any more defenders, given Arsenal have spent the past few years buying loads of them. But moving further up the pitch is where it gets trickier.

Thomas Partey and Jorginho are out of contract at the end of this season, so even if Martin Zubimendi does arrive there might be another addition to be made in midfield, which also takes in what sort of player they expect Declan Rice to be in the future.

But most of the focus will surely be on their attack, because you could make a case that only Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard are forward players capable of winning a title. Mikel Arteta is a bigger Kai Havertz fan than most so he will still be a key part of the team when he returns from injury, and Ethan Nwaneri is clearly a brilliant young talent. But the others — Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Martinelli — showed in Sunday’s 1-1 draw against Manchester United that they cannot be relied upon for goals.

It is the third time in three league games that Arsenal have struggled to break down opposition they probably should have beaten: at least this week they did actually get through, as opposed to against Nottingham Forest when they never really looked like scoring. Before that they laboured to a 1-0 home loss to West Ham United.

There are many reasons for Arsenal’s regression this season, and if they win the Champions League then clearly the campaign will have been successful. But they must reverse this next season, and a big part of that job now falls to Berta.

What now for Postecoglou and Tottenham?

Tottenham are 13th in the Premier League (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)

In some respects, league games do not matter much for Tottenham Hotspur and Ange Postecoglou for the remainder of the season. Unless something extraordinary happens, they are going to finish somewhere between 12th and 16th, so who cares which of those positions it is?

Everything is now on the Europa League and their second leg against AZ on Thursday: that is now the only way for them to fulfil Postecoglou’s promise that he always wins something in his second season, a glib comment that has stuck with him and one he possibly regrets.

But looking at it from the manager’s point of view, the remaining league games could still serve a purpose. Dissatisfaction is rife at Spurs, and while Postecoglou could be secretly grateful that most of it seems directed at chairman Daniel Levy and the club’s hierarchy, he is not immune to it.

His position beyond the end of the season is by no means safe: this has been a tremendously disappointing campaign, and we know Levy is not shy when it comes to sacking managers. Winning a trophy should save him, but could a few domestic wins also do it?

Postecoglou’s view of why Spurs have struggled so much is simple: it is down to injuries, and of course that has been a huge factor. Playing for half of the season with a defence patched up with gaffer tape and Archie Gray is far from ideal, but those players are starting to return now. Cristian Romero started against Bournemouth on Sunday, eventually replaced by Micky van de Ven, and they almost have a full complement of attackers now too.

The flip side of this is that Postecoglou no longer has a ready excuse: if they play badly, it is down to him, which is why their performance in the 2-2 draw with Bournemouth might not be good news. Spurs were incredibly fortunate to escape with a point, thanks to a freak Pape Sarr goal and the opposition goalkeeper, Kepa Arrizabalaga, taking leave of his senses and donating a penalty to them.

Better teams than Spurs have been dominated by Bournemouth this season, but some of their fragilities are familiar and have been exposed by much lesser opposition. On many of those occasions, Postecoglou could point to issues in the treatment room, but not so much anymore.

Perhaps all of these league games will not matter at all, and it really is the Europa League or bust. But performances like that are not helping Postecoglou’s cause.

Would new teams in the Champions League be good for the Premier League?

It is possible that, when everything shakes out at the end of the season, we will be left with a group of familiar faces in the Champions League places.

Manchester City could cling on, Chelsea’s form could stabilise, Aston Villa might be the ones who emerge from the chasing pack.

But another version of the story is that there could be a group of fresh faces who make it to the biggest and shiniest competition of them all.

Nottingham Forest currently look in pretty good shape to qualify, their brilliant win over City on Saturday not only giving them a five-point cushion to sixth place, but also perhaps allaying some fears over their form that had popped up in recent weeks — defeats by Bournemouth, Fulham and Newcastle possibly suggesting a fall could be imminent.

Brighton won again, albeit thanks to a late penalty against Fulham, making it four wins in a row. Villa also won, and although Bournemouth could only draw with Tottenham, they will perhaps take heart in their largely excellent performance, and the fact it took a freak goal to deny them victory.

All of which means just three points separate fifth and ninth, and it could be even tighter if Newcastle beat West Ham on Monday.

From a neutral perspective, having all of these sides in contention for the top five is unquestionably more nourishing than witnessing the biggest teams share the places between themselves. The struggles of Manchester United and Spurs have opened the door, but to have teams like Forest, Bournemouth and Brighton in genuine contention is much more diverting.

You could argue having sides like that in the Champions League would not be great from a coefficient point of view, given that English sides’ performance in Europe is directly linked to how many Champions League places are allocated, and bigger teams with richer recent history theoretically have a better chance of progressing.

But you only have to look at the success of teams like Villa, Brest and Lille, while Manchester City, Milan and Juventus all tumbled out, to recognise that Champions League ‘pedigree’ is not a guarantee of progression.

From a narrative perspective, the scrap for the Champions League is all we really have left for this Premier League season, what with the title wrapped up and the bottom three pretty much decided too. While it might feel like that is difficult to get excited about, it should be a fascinating tussle.

Coming up

• One more game until this round of Premier League fixtures can be put to bed, and it could be a good one: a resurgent (ish, they’ve won two games) West Ham face Newcastle, who can go level on points with Manchester City should they win.
• Then it’s big-boy time, with the Champions League back for the second leg of the second-round games. Liverpool vs PSG is the standout on Tuesday, Harvey Elliott’s late goal in last week’s smash and grab giving the hosts the edge, but this one will be very lively indeed. Elsewhere, Inter and Bayern Munich should ease through against Feyenoord and Bayer Leverkusen respectively, but Barcelona only have a 1-0 advantage over Benfica.
• On Wednesday, Arsenal will complete the formalities after their 7-1 first leg victory over PSV, and Aston Villa should have enough to beat Club Brugge after winning the first game 3-1, but the other two games — the Madrid derby and Lille vs Borussia Dortmund — are finely poised.
• It’s Europa League time on Thursday, and it’s a big one for Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur: they face Real Sociedad and AZ, and if either of them do not do the business then they might as well pack up and wait for the summer.
• There is also the Conference League second legs: Chelsea’s 2-1 lead over FC Copenhagen is narrower than they would like, but they should still go through. Fiorentina have work to do at home to Panathinaikos, having lost the first leg 3-2.
• Another one to watch out for: Thomas Tuchel names his first England squad on Friday. It will be pretty interesting to see what surprises or fresh names he springs on us.

(Top photos: Getty Images)