I'm surprised people talk about Arsenal 'bottling it' in previous seasons. IMO bottling it means you have the best team and you freeze when it gets to the critical point.
United, City or Chelsea fans taunted Arsenal about being bottlers but if you asked them if they thought Arsenal had a better team than them they would have said LOL no way do you think the likes of Giroud, Diaby, Arteta would get in our first team??
Arsenal have usually been about the 4th strongest squad in the PL and finished about 4th so they have got what they deserved. But they have been slowly getting better since the financial constraints started to ease up. They won two FA Cups and if you look at the calendar year 2013 they were over 38 games the best team in the league.
I think they are getting closer but still there are a couple of gaps that people will bring up if they don't win the league this year:
- central defence, do they have a title winning defence? Is there good cover there?
- central midfield, for years people have said they have never replaced Vieira, have they replaced him yet?
- strikers - every year people say Arsenal need a striker, is Walcott/Giroud good enough?
I think as Chelsea and Man United have gone backwards/treading water, Arsenal have moved from the 4th best to the 2nd best squad but I think City have the best squad still and Arsenal second so Arsenal will be relying on City bottling it, to an extent.