This underdog storyline with Chelsea as if they were Luton.2 is ridiculous seeing as they spent the better part of a billion and have around the same age average in their first eleven as an Arsenal side that challenged for the title last year.
The age part is largely true but isn't that basically where the similarities end?
Last year Arsenal had more or less a settled team with so many of their key players having been there for at least a couple of years and the manager Arterta being on his 4th season as well. Players like Martinelli, Saka, Ödegaard, Partey, Xhaka, Gabriel, White and Ramsdale basically started all their games and were fully settled at the club with only a handful of key additions being made into the team for the 22/23 season like Jesus, Zinchenko and Saliba. This was a squad who'd grown together as a team under the same leadership and had been allowed the time to overcome some initial struggles to reach the level they were playing at last season (and still are now).
Of our current team only Silva, James and Chilwell were even part of the squad pre-2022 and everyone else has come in sometime in the last year, not to mention the manager being new as well. It's not an underdog storyline but I said it in the summer and still stand by it that no matter how much money has been spent it would be harsh to expect a newly-built team with a newly-appointed manager to immediately look like world beaters because that's just not how it works in football. A manager implementing his ideas can take time, and the players building some chemistry between them on the pitch can take time as well. So far this season I've seen enough glimpses of quality to believe things will eventually click and the results will start going in our favor sooner or later. Whether that comes to fruition or not is another question.