Thierry Henry makes 'difficult' Arsenal Premier League title prediction as Mikel Arteta warned
Thierry Henry has admitted that it will be "extremely difficult" for Arsenal to win the Premier League title this season following their recent slump in form.
The Gunners have failed to win any of their last three top-flight matches, including successive away defeats against Bournemouth and Newcastle. That run of form has seen them drop down to fifth, five points behind second-place Manchester City and seven adrift of Liverpool at the top.
Although Arsenal have played just 10 matches, a seven-point gap to the leaders at this stage does feel gigantic - especially as the Gunners head to Chelsea in the Premier League on Sunday. And ex-Arsenal forward Henry is concerned about their chances of winning their first title in 21 years.
Ahead of Sunday's trip to Stamford Bridge, Henry said on CBS Sports: "Right now they’re not challenging for the league, obviously as you can see the results are not good enough to be able to be at the top, still a long way to go.
"But my issue, and always has been, we talked about it on matchday two [after Arsenal drew with Atalanta], away from home I don’t think it was good enough. But we were getting away with it for a very long time, now we’re not anymore. That’s what I’m saying, let’s see what’s going to happen against Chelsea.
"I think it [winning the title] will be extremely difficult. Why? Because you have too many teams to catch. One team can have a problem, but one or two – we’re going with Liverpool and Man City – I don’t see two teams collapsing, that’s my issue."
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While Arsenal's Premier League form has been shaky, their Champions League fortunes have not been great either. The Gunners went down 1-0 to Inter Milan on Wednesday courtesy of Hakan Calhanoglu's first-half strike. It means that they have seven points from their first four matches in Europe's elite club competition.
Speaking after the game at San Siro, Mikel Arteta said: "The worst thing of the night, for sure, is the result, because the performance, the attitude, the dominance that we showed against one of the best teams in Europe in this stadium, I haven’t seen it in all the other games that I’ve watched but the reality is the result and we participated in that because we had many situations that we can resolve much better in front of goal and score at least two goals and then extremely frustrated as well because there are two decisions that at the end marks the result and the course of the game."