Arsenal are back at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday for Arsenal vs Dortmund, a preseason friendly that arrives with Mikel Arteta’s side still carrying the sting of a 3-1 defeat to Real Betis. Arteta said his players were “fuming” after Wednesday’s loss, and the mood around this match is less about exhibition football than about how quickly Arsenal can steady themselves.
That is why the game is drawing attention now. Arsenal had opened the summer with a 4-1 win over Girona, but the visit of Borussia Dortmund lands after a reminder that preseason form can turn quickly and mean very little from one match to the next. Kepa Arrizabalaga was involved in the Betis defeat, and Arsenal return to home supporters for the first time since last season’s Premier League triumph with a chance to show that the setback was a pause, not a pattern.
There is a reason Arsenal are still seen as the side to beat, even if Sunday is far from straightforward. Borussia Dortmund arrive after a run of their own, having played multiple preseason matches in Japan, losing 1-0 to Cerezo Osaka before beating FC Tokyo 1-0. This will be Dortmund’s fifth friendly of the summer, while Arsenal remain without a host of first-team players as they recover from tiring World Cup campaigns. In preseason, those absences matter more than they would in a finished team, because changing personnel can change the shape of a match in minutes.
That is the friction in this fixture. Arsenal may have the home crowd and the stronger billing, but they are not fully stocked and they are coming off a loss they did not need. Preseason remains difficult to predict for that reason: the game plan is only part of the story, and the line between a sharp response and another uneven night can be thin. If Arsenal want Sunday to mean anything beyond another warm-up, they need to turn the anger Arteta described into a cleaner performance in front of their own fans.
Sunday will not settle anything about the season ahead, but it will tell Arsenal whether the Betis defeat was a warning they heard. The next question is simple enough: with Dortmund already sharper from a busier summer and Arsenal still short of several regulars, can Arteta’s team use home ground to reset before the friendlies start to look like something more than preparation?
