“It is reassuring to know that if your performances are right, you do not need bad results from somebody else,” Arsène Wenger said after watching Arsenal leapfrog surprise package Leicester to go top of the Premier League a few days after Christmas in 2015. “That is one less stress. Once you are first, you can just focus on your performance.”

Arsenal were quickly installed as hot favourites to win the title for the first time since 2004, but things did not work out that way, the team spending just 26 nights at the summit before being overhauled by Claudio Ranieri’s 5,000-1 miracle workers.

It is a feeling Arsenal supporters have had to get used to since they were last champions 21 years ago. Across that period, which started with the post-Invincibles season in which they led for the first 10 weeks before being derailed after Manchester United ended their 49-match unbeaten run and has included a record of being top for 248 nights and finishing second in 2022-23, they have spent 773 nights (as of Saturday morning) – the equivalent of more than two years – in pole position without taking the chequered flag.