Bukayo Saka told Thierry Henry on Tuesday night that he felt it was Arsenal's year. Fresh from scoring as Arsenal beat Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League, the captain for the night was in buoyant mood.
Saka was asked by Arsenal icon Henry about the race for the Premier League title, and whether this year would finally be the year the red half of north London was celebrating.
On CBS Sports' coverage of the Champions League clash, Henry asked Saka: "Do you think this season is the season for the title? Do you think it is important this year to win the title?"
Saka replied: "I don't want to put too much pressure on us but I do think this is the year. I think we've been close the last two years and yeah, we're getting closer. But yeah, this hopefully will be the year."
And Mikel Arteta has hinted that he agrees, without directly saying so. Arsenal's record in the Champions League is poor, reaching the final once in 2005/06, losing to Bareclona, and getting to the semi-finals once in 2008/09 in 20 attempts.
But Arteta feels something is different this season. Speaking after the win over PSG, the Arsenal boss said: "I sensed something different yesterday in the way we were preparing the game and how they wanted the level of focus. I think they wanted to prove a point tonight as well, against a top team at home we can be ourselves and we can be very dominant as well. We have to continue to do that."
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The new Champions League format, with all 36 teams battling it out in one big league, will have everyone asking questions about how the table will pan out come the end of the season. It will require teams to be on the top of their game rtight until the very end.
Speaking about the format, Arteta added: "It's too early [to look at the table]. Everybody has to play a lot of different and difficult games home and away. We have to adapt to that. We still don't know how many points we'll need. All we can focus on is trying to perform and winning our own games. That's what we've done tonight. Now focus on the Premier League.
"We want to be at the very top to play less games and have the capacity to have a better draw after that. It's gonna be a long journey I think."
