In our exclusive interview, the Arsenal legend gives his thoughts on the Gunners' chances of a second consecutive title, Aston Villa's summer of departures and where Leeds need to strengthen.
David O’Leary believes Arsenal will successfully defend their Premier League title this season, going back-to-back in the league for the first time in over 90 years.
The Gunners are 10/11 favourites in the Premier League betting to win the title this season, with doubts around the chasing pack of Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool following managerial changes over the summer.
Former Arsenal defender O’Leary believes this is Arsenal’s chance to secure back-to-back title wins, and in our exclusive interview also discusses the Gunners’ transfer business, including the arrival of Ezri Konsa from Aston Villa.
You won the league twice in three years with Arsenal, but they haven’t won it back-to-back in over 90 years. Do you think this is the team that can finally pull that off?
Yes, I do think so. I won it twice and found it very difficult to defend it. After the first one where we were very poor under George Graham, we all thought we’d learned our lesson second time round and still couldn’t click the second time. It wasn’t a case of being arrogant or complacent, we just never got it right.
I think you look at the teams like Manchester United and Man City who have defended it and gone on and won it again, they all replenished and brought in good players in the summer to keep everybody on their toes, keep everybody hungry.
I don’t think that’s what we did. I think that’s essential and that’s what we’ve done this year. I think another important thing this pre-season was not to cash in by going away to the Far East for big money games. I’ve done many with the club where you’re in, say, Seoul, it’s 40 degrees, and where you should be training in the mornings, you’re trying to limit and train at eight o’clock in the evening and you’re battling jet lag.
I think [instead] it’s been a time at home, lovely training facility in Dublin, local matches, and I think everybody’s fresh, fit and sharp, and they’re very hungry as well. Looking at what I’ve seen from all the teams, Arsenal are the team to beat.
If we’re going to defend it, we’ll defend it this year. I think they will do that.
My thing now to be hungrier is that I think by the end of the transfer deadline we will have a squad that should really go very close to winning the Champions League, and that’s the thing that the club needs to tick the box for a great club like Arsenal.
Who do you see as Arsenal’s biggest challenger for the title?
I think there will be an improvement from Chelsea. That’s essential, if they’re expecting top four, but I’m interested to see if they can be the team that push Arsenal. Xabi Alonso, great player, lovely fella, did great in Germany, and when you go to Real Madrid, anything can happen. I think there’s big expectations there.
From what I’ve seen of Liverpool, I still think there’s a lot to be done there if they’re going to challenge Arsenal. The two they’ve spent a quarter of a million pounds on – Wirtz and Isak – are not clicking whatsoever, so that’s essential for them. I didn’t see much of an improvement from them in the first game. They want to add players, but if Liverpool want to go on then they badly need Wirtz and Isak to click after a very, very disappointing last season.
Manchester United, I think they will be consistent. I think they’ll be a top four club. Great surprise at Hull, who deservedly won it. I think they’ll be up there. Do I see them challenging Arsenal? No, but I think that’ll be consistent.
I think everybody’s presumed Man City will be the one to chase Arsenal, but I’ve just got a question mark. They’ve lost the best coach in the world, the person who drove it on and was unbelievable. They’ve lost one of their best players. I always felt over the years when you played Man City, if Rodri wasn’t in the team, you had a better chance of beating them.
They’ve lost him, and I think Bernardo Silva is the same as well, even though they’d had the best days out of him and he probably thought he’d get back to an easier life in Spain and a great club like Real Madrid.
But I think particularly losing Rodri on the pitch and Pep Guardiola off it – that’s a big ask.
So from what I’ve seen over the weekend, I just think Arsenal are the team to beat by a mile, and I don’t think automatically that Man City are the team who are going to challenge them and I’ll be interested to see how they go.
Arsenal have signed some established Premier League players but haven’t made a big-money attacking signing. Do you expect to see them do that before the end of the window?
If you look at the way they’ve been sniffing around the transfer market, they tried to get Vinicius Jr out of Real Madrid, which seemed to be close. Even though it had to be back in your mind, are you getting used a little bit to get the contract there? But they were in a great position, and not far away from getting him, so that tells you their intentions.
Do I think they’re still there before the transfer deadline, and would I be shocked if somebody comes in? No, I wouldn’t. I think they have the ammunition and they know the icing on the cake is another really world-class forward. Mikel is looking for players that are 28 and proven. Ones that now, they’ve won the league, they want to get hungrier and win and win and win over the next three or four years. I think you’ll see lots of well-established players who have proven themselves, and they’re the ones Arsenal will be signing if they can.
How good a replacement is Ezri Konsa for William Saliba while he’s out injured?
I don’t think they signed him just because of Saliba. I think they wanted to strengthen there. I think it’s again about a proven product in the Premier League, and I think they thought they could get a budget for Rogers and Konsa. I didn’t think they were far away, and I think they’re quite shocked that they thought they maybe had Rogers in the bag and Chelsea’s come in and blew them out of it.
But I think Villa knew that the Konsa thing was going to happen, and it has, and he’s a he’s a ready-made player. I think whether Saliba was injured or not injured, I still think they’d have been after him.
As someone who started out playing centre-back for Arsenal as a teenager, what have you made of Marli Salmon so far and what advice would you have for him?
I think he’s handled himself well. He’s made a mistake in one game and he kept composed, and played very well after it. I thought that was a good sign.
He’s in a place where there’s plenty of competition with top, top players, and you can only learn from them as well. I’d say, just keep plugging away, keep training hard, keep being willing to learn. I think he looks a great prospect indeed. And if it’s not at Arsenal, which I hope it will be, I think he has a career out there for himself.
Your former club Leeds got off to a good start at the weekend. What did you make of their start against Forest and how do you see their prospects this season?
It didn’t look like the greatest game in the world for the first game of the season, but who cares? It looked to be fizzling out for a draw, but I thought the Forest keeper was poor for the Leeds goal. I thought he should have saved it and I think he’s a better goalkeeper than that. But it was a brilliant 3 points.
It’s very important for clubs like Leeds, who are trying to establish themselves back in the Premier League, to get off to a good start, get a good base. I’m sure Forest were expecting to get off to a good three-pointer. I think Leeds might have gone there thinking as long as we don’t get beat, get a good point away from home. And I think they’ve got two extra valuable points, which is a great bonus to them.
I think their squad is light. Looking at the bench, I still think they could do with a few players to add to it to survive a long Premier League season. I’m looking at Leeds now to kick on and be a lot further up the league. They got great, passionate support, it’s a great club, and you’re looking for them, maybe like Brentford who have come back and established themselves to move forward.
It’s not acceptable with Leeds to say we’ve just survived and stayed up. There’s too many great supporters, too much of a fan base to be just a survival club. The club deserves more than that, the fans deserve more than that, and that’s the ambition that the owners should have to be pushing on every year to get back to where they belong.
What did you make of the new signings who went straight into the starting line-up?
I like Trafford, I don’t know a great deal about Muharemovic. Harry Wilson, I’ll be interested to see the way Leeds play, where they’re going to fit him in, because they’re a very structured team and I think he’s a good signing. I think he was a lad that was exciting at Fulham and got goals, important goals, and I think that’s what Leeds bought him for. But I’ll be interested in how they fit him into the structure of the way they play.
Is it a bit of a coup to sign Trafford, who not long ago was signed by Man City to be their No. 1?
I think it is. I think it quite shocked him. I think he thought, “I’m going to Man City. I’m the future for them going forward, then that can be great as well for my England chances.” Unfortunately for him, the Donnarumma thing came up and Man City can’t afford to turn it down when they see top-class players and they can get them. It was very unfortunate for Trafford that he came on the market, and it would have been different if he hadn’t, but PSG decided to sell and for Man City there was an established person there.
He had to suffer last season, but I think it was very important for Trafford to get out this summer, go somewhere where he could establish himself and play regularly.
Where do Leeds need to look in terms of recruitment to be one of those sides that push for a European spot?
I think they need to add players who they buy at the right price and turn into really top-quality players. Like Brighton, they buy players and they’re worth a lot of money because the top teams want them. I think Leeds have got to be able to buy well and be a club that develop players to play in a big club like Leeds under the demands and the. They are brilliant supporters, but you’ve got to be a certain type of player to play there because the expectation is big. If the team is doing well, the city builds up all week looking forward to the Wednesday night match or the Saturday game. And if you win, the city is buzzing. There’s a lot of people who say it’s great when you have one club in a big city, but that can be the other way as well. It becomes a lot of pressure and expectation.
I think that’s what Leeds have got to do. They can’t be just a team to survive. They’ve got to be a team to buy players that may be bronze or silver, and turn them into gold. And if a big club comes, say, “we’re a big club, we don’t need to sell, but if we are, we’re going to sell for a lot of money.”
How hard will it be for Villa to maintain their level from recent seasons after all the high-profile departures they’ve had this summer?
I think it’s going to be very hard for them because they just haven’t lost players, they lost their best players in many ways. I think they’ve got to bring people in. I think they’ll be better than what you saw against Brighton, but to me, it looks like Watkins was the icing on the cake of what they didn’t need. The way it works out is if a club is after you, they’re not going to get directly with the club first. They get the agent and ask is the player up for it? Because there’s no point battling it out with the club, the club accepts it, and thenthe player is not interested in doing the job. So they’ve obviously got together with his agent, told him what he can earn, and is he going out there to improve his football skills? No, he’s been made an offer he can’t refuse, and his head has been turned that way.
Unai Emery was insinuating that the player’s had this offer, his agent’s obviously showed him what he can get, and he’s told Villa that he wants to go and sign there. I think in a roundabout Villa have said he can go, but this is the price they want, and it’s not the price that Saudi club have offered.
Do I think he’ll go in the end? I think he will. I think it’s all down to getting the price and then who they can Villa get in, and that will be interesting.
Who would you like to see them replace Ollie Watkins with?
It seems to be that they’re sniffing around Jackson at Chelsea. Whether he’s the cure or not, he didn’t pull up trees for me when I was watching him at Chelsea, and that’s why they let him go out to Bayern Munich. You’ve got to say why did Bayern Munich not take him on?
It’s very hard to see who’s out there to get, centre-forward-wise, without a doubt. Sometimes you’ve got to watch and not get panicked, and not think “we need a player” and go for a player that you’ve got your doubts about. Jackson, I think he’s a worker. I think there’s a talent there, but I’d like to know what price you’d have to pay for him, because I still think there’s big question marks – why are Chelsea let him go? Why didn’t Bayern Munich sign him?
Is the fear now that Unai Emery might be looking elsewhere if things don’t turn around?
I always felt that he was in charge of the place, like Guardiola, Arteta – they’re the ones who make the decisions, they’re the ones that have all the power. I thought he was the same there, so I can’t imagine that they’re doing things behind his back in any way, because I don’t think they’d want to upset him.
I think two of the players had buyout clauses that were very weak, and I don’t think they’d have been selling them for the prices that they walked out the door on, but whoever put those clauses in – Tielemans particularly – made them a very attractive option and good value. And I don’t think they’d been wanting to sell them, and if they did want to sell them, they’d have been looking to sell them for a lot more money than what it was. So that was good business by Man Utd and PSG.
The Konsa thing, I think that the money was there for it, and Rogers was a knock-out fee that they had to take as well.
Is there financial restrictions behind the scenes? I don’t know, but one thing I don’t think they’re doing is anything that is behind Unai’s back. because the last thing they do want is him to leave. It’s bad enough for losing the players, but the fella who has put it together and made Villa successful is Unai.
Troy Parrott has earned a big move to Real Betis. How pleased are you to see how well he’s done as an Irish player who has gone to European clubs to build his career?
I was in Ireland last week when it happened, and I don’t know the lad but I’ve seen him play and he’s a goalscorer. I think he’s gone to a really good side, because over in Dublin I saw Real Betis play in a friendly game against Arsenal and were much better than Arsenal on the night. I think he’s gone into a really good team, and an attacking team that will create chances, and he’s proven that he can score goals. So I think it’s a good fit for him looking at what I’ve seen in the way Real Betis play.
Is his journey in Europe a route that Irish players should be looking to take more?
I think it suited him. I think it’s all down to the individual. I don’t know the individual himself, but his personality, willing to live abroad, does he want to learn a language? Others can be scared of that and don’t want that adventure. But he seems to have relished it, enjoyed it.
I looked at Real Betis in Dublin and to myself that I could see why they have done so well, finishing fifth in La Liga last season. When I’d seen that he’s gone there, I thought that’s a good choice because of the way they play, and if you’re a striker that team will suit you. You’ll score goals with them there.
Evan Ferguson had a spell in Europe with Roma but his career has stalled. What could be next for him?
When he burst on the scene, Brighton are the shrewdest people out there and they were quoting £100 million to people. He burst on the scene, looked an unbelievable prospect, but just got injuries and floated the wrong way now in terms of his progress.
I thought he might get revived with going back with Graham Potter, who had him at Brighton and at West Ham, but that never happened. He’s faded away, I would say, and he’s become – for a person who has been talked about so much, and what a talent he is – a forgotten man in many ways.
You’ve got to always be careful, though. Young people burst on the same and they can look fantastic, but then can they go to the next level again? Some young people get rewarded contract-wise, get a new three- or four-year contract, but they seem to stay at that level.
I just fear for him. I think the ability is there, it’s just the amount of injuries that he’s had to overcome. But you looked at him early days, and he looked a talent to me and I’m quite shocked at where he’s ended up at the moment.
