It’s difficult to predict what will happen over the course of a season. With 38 games spread across almost 10 months, domestic cups, and European competition, anything can happen. But, I’m going to try to do it anyway.

League Points

77

Last season, we ended with 69 points, just 2 points off of 4th place. To climb further up the table this season, we’re going to need to drop our losses column into the single-digits; down from the 13 we had last season. I think we will just manage that, getting 24 wins, 5 draws, and 9 losses for a total of 77 points.

League Place

4th

Those 77 points will probably be just enough to get us into 4th place this season. There are few out there who don’t think Man City and Liverpool will be 1st and 2nd (not necessarily in that order). I do think one of either Chelsea or Sp*rs will take 3rd if we don’t. I might be underestimating them, but I don’t think Man U have the necessary components at the moment to take them into the top 4.

Top Scorer (All Competitions)

Gabriel Jesus

This one probably won’t come as a surprise to many. He has already been scoring for fun in the preseason and I think he’ll continue to do that in the Premier League. While I have Jesus as our overall top scorer in the League, Eddie Nketiah will likely get a lot of minutes in the Europa League and domestic cup competitions and will end up our top scorer in cup competitions. However, Jesus probably won’t be far behind him in those competitions either, since he’ll likely start to take more of the minutes as we progress.

Most Assists (All Competitions)

Gabriel Jesus

Now, I know a lot of people are thinking Odegaard might end up taking this honor, but I think he’ll end up having a lot more of the “pass before the assist” type of contributions this season. Let’s not forget that he only had 4 assists last season.

Jesus’s movements in and around the box will open up space for others to occupy and Jesus will likely find them more often than not, leading to some good chances on goal. I’m predicting Jesus will have the most assists overall and in the league, but I think Lokonga will take the top spot in cup competitions, where he’ll likely get most of his game time.

Cup Competitions

Win Europa League, Quarter-Finals at best in Domestic Cups

After narrowly missing out last season, the Champion’s League is on the minds of pretty much every Arsenal fan. Our focus has to be on making it back to that competition and there are two ways of doing that: top four in the league, or win the Europa League. It’s for that exact reason that I think we might not end up putting our full weight into the FA and EFL cups. I can see us getting taken out in those competitions by teams who are hungry for any sort of silverware, but we have to set our sights higher.

Winning the Europa League may arguably be a more difficult route to take to get back into the Champion’s League, but we have a really good shot at it. We will likely be one of the best teams in the competition in the group stages and it’s a trophy that we haven’t yet won. Anything can happen in cup competitions, especially once you’re in the knockout rounds with teams that have dropped down from the Champion’s League, but if we have a shot, we have to take it.

Player of the Season

Gabriel Jesus

It would be hard not to pick Jesus for PotS when I have him as both Top Scorer and Most Assists. It seems like the obvious choice, but sometimes they’re the obvious choice for a reason.

That’s not to say there won’t be others who will be up there vying for the honor. I could easily see the likes of Saka or Odegaard challenging for this depending on how they up their game this season. Saliba is also primed to have a breakout season if he can translate his award-winning Ligue 1 performances into the Premier League.

Most Improved

Gabriel Martinelli

With the addition of Gabriel Jesus up top, Martinelli will no longer be the only one up top injecting a real burst of energy and pace to the game. I think the two Gabi’s will work together really well as they rotate positions throughout the game. This fluidity in the front three will allow Martinelli to find better opportunities in the center of the pitch. He took his game up a level last season, and he’s been put in a position to do that yet again this season.

A few other honorable mentions would be Albert Sambi Lokonga and Eddie Nketiah. Both of them had decent spells last season, and with European competition and five subs now allowed in the Premier League, there will be more opportunities for them to really show what they’re capable of.

Bold Prediction

By the end of the season, fans will be a lot more understanding if we end up looking to sell Tierney next summer.

Hear me out, it’s a bold prediction for a reason. At the beginning of last season, you would have been hard-pressed to find a supporter who would have thought it an okay idea to get rid of Leno this summer. But, when Ramsdale came into the side, he started distributing the ball and playing out from the back in a way that Leno just wasn’t comfortable with. He fixed a problem in the keeper position that we didn’t even know we had.

I get those same sort of vibes this summer with Zinchenko coming into the side. This is not to say that Tierney is bad by any means. He is, in all likelihood, a better overall defender than Zinchenko (and Leno is, in all likelihood, a better shot-stopper than Ramsdale), but it seems like Arteta might be willing to sacrifice a bit of that defensive solidity for the technical quality that Zinchenko brings. While Tierney is great at bombing up and down the left flank, it seems like this season, we’re looking for our full-backs to also be comfortable tucking into central midfield as well -- something that I’m not sure Tierney is quite as comfortable with.

If Zinchenko can come in and show us what we’ve been missing on that left side, while also staying fit for more than half of the season, I think we may end up in a position where Tierney  wants to look elsewhere for more regular minutes in a system that suits him better. I like Tierney, so I kind of hope I’m wrong, but I just have a gut feeling with this one.