Ranking Mikel Arteta’s 10 biggest wins as Arsenal manager after Newcastle triumph
Gabriel’s injury-time winner away to Newcastle United already feels like a potentially defining moment in this season’s title race. But where does Arsenal‘s 2-1 comeback on Tyneside rank among the biggest wins of Mikel Arteta’s tenure?
Arteta has overseen some huge results in Arsenal’s journey from midtable mediocrity to one of the best sides in the country.
Here are the 10 biggest wins of the Spaniard’s reign as Arsenal manager so far.
10. Tottenham 0-1 Arsenal (September 2024)
The more churlish among you will ask ‘what big wins?’, given Arsenal’s five-year trophy drought.
How big can any win really be if, when all is said and done, it failed to land any silverware? A harsh but fair question.
To that, we’d say that football is about the journey, not the destination. If football can be purely distilled down to who won what, you might as well consume the sport exclusively through Flashscores updates and Wikipedia round-ups.
The story of 2024-25 was a title race that wasn’t. Worthy champions Liverpool rarely slipped up, but every time they did, Arsenal failed to capitalise.
With one notable exception. Early in the campaign, Arne Slot’s Reds suffered a shock 1-0 defeat at home to Nottingham Forest. The following day, Arsenal moved above them, winning the north London derby 1-0.
Back then, it really felt like it was going to be Arsenal’s year. Time will tell if we see history repeat itself, or whether this Gabriel match-winner from a corner will mean more come May.
9. Arsenal 1-0 Norwich City (September 2021)
Arsenal had worse runs and needed bigger wins to alleviate pressure on Arteta (more on that later), but this was much-needed.
His first two seasons at the helm saw the Gunners register their lowest placings and points tallies since 1994-95, the pre-Wenger nadir that precipitated a total reset at Highbury.
Considerable improvement was imperative in 2021-22, but they lost on the opening weekend to newly-promoted Brentford and made it three successive defeats before the first international break.
They sat rock bottom after a disastrous 5-0 tonking by Manchester City, raising questions over whether his project would ever take off at the Emirates.
Arteta described the support shown during the break as the “best 10 days of my professional career”. Arsenal were far from glittering in a narrow victory over a severely limited Canaries side, but the three points were desperately needed.
That season they made great strides, only narrowly missing out on the top four. Arteta can look back and point to grinding out that 1-0 win as a crucial juncture.
8. Arsenal 3-1 Chelsea (May 2023)
Arsenal’s chastening 4-1 defeat to Manchester City the week before cost them the title, but they bounced back the following week to keep their hopes alive.
An impressively mature performance, Arsenal’s 3-1 victory kicked off their record 22-game unbeaten streak against the ‘big six’.
They’d come a long, long way since their routinely meek displays against the Premier League’s elite in Wenger’s latter years.
7. Arsenal 1-0 Manchester City (October 2023)
Eighty-nine points. Ninety-one goals scored. Twenty-nine goals conceded.
Extraordinary numbers in 2023-24.
Arsenal’s best since the Invincibles, tallies that would’ve sealed the title in any era in which they weren’t competing with Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering Manchester City. Jurgen Klopp knows how that feels.
Gabriel Martinelli’s late winner was fortuitous, but Arsenal’s hard-fought 1-0 victory demonstrated they were a genuine match for the most dominant force English football’s ever seen.
6. Newcastle 1-2 Arsenal (September 2025)
We’ve now arrived at a point where it’s time for Arteta’s Arsenal to get things done and make it over the line. No more excuses.
The proof will be in the pudding at the end of the season. We can only wait and see. But, for now, this feels massive.
“I think it’s a big moment,” Gary Neville reacted on Sky Sports.
“Look, it’s September, it’s ridiculous… it [the title race] doesn’t start until March. But what you’ve got to do along the way is send out some calling cards.
“You’ve got to send out some clear messages that we’re here and we’re proper, and that’s what I think Arsenal have done today.”
5. Arsenal 3-2 Liverpool (October 2022)
Arsenal showed big improvements to compete for Champions League qualification in 2021-22, but that was one small step compared to the giant leap they took the following year.
Arteta had been backed in offloading star players like Mesut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, and he’d repaid the faith by building a serious team of title challengers in his own image.
There were countless results and performances that underlined their credentials that year, but beating Klopp’s Liverpool in a ding-dong thriller was an early statement of intent.
4. Arsenal 3-1 Chelsea (December 2020)
It’s easy to forget now, but the Gunners plumbed even lower depths under Arteta than the very worst of Unai Emery’s short reign.
They’d lost eight of their opening 14 games of the behind-closed-doors 2020-21 season.
On Christmas Day 2020, they sat 15th in table, far closer to relegation than the Champions League spots.
Arsenal went into their Boxing Day clash with rivals Chelsea having taken just two points from the last 21 available, a winless run of matches that included dropped points against Leeds, Burnley, Southampton and Wolves.
Roaring to a 3-1 victory over the Blues might well be the biggest turning point moment of Arteta’s Arsenal tenure.
There were bumps along the way in the second half of the season, but this result kickstarted a major uptick in form en route to a respectable mid-table finish.
3. Arsenal 3-0 Real Madrid (April 2025)
Beating the reigning European champions 3-0 in a Champions League quarter-final. We don’t need to explain this one, do we?
This was a weirdly below-par Madrid team. And Arsenal wouldn’t get their hands on the trophy. But both of those things were true of 2006 and that doesn’t stop us ageing millennials reminiscing about Thierry Henry’s Bernabeu masterclass.
Whatever happens next with this team, you can be quite sure that Gen Z will be doing the same with Declan Rice’s pair of free-kicks in 2044.
QUIZ: Can you name every player to score 5+ Champions League goals for Arsenal?
2. Arsenal 2-0 Man City (July 2020)
A few days before this, Arteta’s Arsenal beat Jurgen Klopp’s runaway champions. That game was a relatively meaningless dead rubber, but building on that showed it was no freak result.
Arteta’s knack for a big-game gameplan was clear to see from his first six months as a fledgling coach. Their long-unbeaten run against the Premier League’s ‘big six’ was signposted very early on.
A more convincing win against a better opponent, Arsenal’s victory in the FA Cup semi-final was arguably more impressive than the final. But it was still ultimately setting the table for the main event…
1. Arsenal 2-1 Chelsea (August 2020)
Wins of great significance very rarely happen in August.
Arteta might count two Community Shields among his trophy haul, but few others do.
The Covid-hit 2019-20 campaign was an exception, with the climax of ‘project restart’ taking place in August.
Chelsea finished four places and 10 points above Arsenal that season, and much of their starting XI would go on to win the Champions League the following year, but they were outclassed by the Gunners at an eerily empty Wembley.
Arsenal’s former captain took time to make his stamp as a coach, but this early feather in his cap was absolutely vital for him to be afforded faith and patience.
He might well have not survived the dismal eighth-place, 61-point haul in his first full season had he not been able to point to a trophy, masterminded with two statement wins, early in his tenure.
READ NEXT: Where Gabriel Magalhaes ranks among highest-scoring centre-backs in Premier League history
TRY A QUIZ: Can you name every Arsenal player to score under Mikel Arteta?