Arsenal’s Pre-Season Begins Against Girona
Arsenal’s summer starts here. Not in the glare of the Emirates floodlights, but in Spain, against a Girona side licking its wounds after relegation from La Liga.
It is a gentle setting for what will be anything but a gentle season.
Arteta’s champions begin again
Mikel Arteta arrives in Girona as a title‑winning manager, finally. Last season’s Premier League triumph ended a 22-year wait and rewrote the club’s recent history. That changes everything about this pre-season.
This is no longer a team trying to prove it belongs in a title race. It is the defending champion, expected to set the standard again. Every session, every friendly, every experiment now carries that weight.
Arteta has already promised evolution. Not revolution, but a sharper, smarter version of what took Arsenal over the line last year. Tonight is the first glimpse of what that actually looks like.
New face, new questions
The transfer window has been slow by design. Arsenal missed out on Morgan Rogers, a reminder that even champions don’t get every deal they want. But they did land Christos Tzolis from Club Brugge, a prolific winger with a knack for goals and direct running.
He is the headline act of the evening. Tzolis is expected to push for his full debut here, and the curiosity around him is real. How quickly can he sync with Arteta’s positional demands? Does he hug the touchline or knife inside like a second striker? Pre-season is where those questions start to find answers.
Patience in the market makes nights like this more important. With no flurry of new signings to showcase, Arteta’s tweaks to structure, pressing, and build-up become the main event.
Balancing rest and readiness
Despite sending a cluster of players to the World Cup, Arsenal still travel with a strong core. Viktor Gyokeres and Kai Havertz are already back in the fold, giving Arteta senior quality to lean on even as he manages minutes carefully.
Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka, the heartbeat of last season’s charge, are still on holiday. Their absence strips away some star power but hands opportunity to others. Younger players, squad options, and new signings suddenly step into the spotlight.
This is where Arteta usually does some of his best work: nudging a squad player into something more, testing a youngster in a senior role, trialling combinations that might look strange now but make perfect sense in February.
Girona as the first marker
On paper, Girona are a soft landing. Relegated from La Liga last season, they are rebuilding and recalibrating. That doesn’t make them harmless.
Spanish opposition in pre-season tends to offer what Premier League sides quietly crave: technical security, patient build-up, and a different rhythm to the game. Arsenal will be pushed to press cleanly, to keep their structure, to play through organised lines rather than chaos.
For a side that wants to evolve, this is a useful first examination. Even if the stakes are low, the habits matter.
How fans can watch
There is no UK television broadcast for Girona vs Arsenal. Instead, the club has pulled the whole operation in-house.
Supporters can stream the match live on Arsenal’s official website and app via a pay-per-view pass priced at £6.99. Those planning to follow the entire pre-season schedule have another option: a streaming bundle covering all of Arsenal’s warm-up fixtures.
The early bird rate for that package is £9.99, but it does not stay that way. At 9am BST on matchday, August 1, the price climbs to £14.99.
So the champions step back onto the pitch, the trophy now part of their past rather than their future. The question is no longer whether Arsenal can end a wait. It is whether they can build a dynasty from it.
