After years of “second again” jibes and doubts about whether Arsenal could finish the job, Mikel Arteta’s players have now given their own answer.
Mark the date and time. On Sunday, 24 May 2026, at Selhurst Park, Martin Odegaard lifted the Premier League trophy as Arsenal won their 14th league championship.
With Aston Villa defeating Manchester City in Pep Guardiola’s final game in charge there, Arsenal have ended the season with a margin of victory, 7 points, we were always heading towards even if it didn’t always feel like it.
So, the title was wrapped up in time for the final game of the season and I got to talk to LBC News about this last week. Like most of you reading this, I’m sure, I had a decision to make about what Jo and I were going to do on Sunday. Now, on one hand, our first Premier League title in 22 years, surely called for the mother of all celebrations in North London. However, there was only one place for me to be on a day like Sunday.
And that was with my Uncle Stevie, Auntie Val and his son Josh.
22 years previously, I had sat in Stevie’s living room with tears in my eyes, bursting with pride as Patrick Vieira lifted that beautiful trophy, not realising, rather than a glorious new beginning, I was watching the end of 8 years work.
Anyway, 22 years later, it made total sense to me to spend the day with Stevie, who the day after City’s draw at Bournemouth had sent me an emotional message talking about how “lovely and cruel” it was he’d passed on his obsession to the next generation. He meant Josh for sure, but I’m pretty sure he meant me too. And maybe even his eldest James, who had somehow contrived to find himself in Bristol, away from everyone, over the weekend.
When I phoned Stevie on Saturday about going over, I asked him if he was coming down off cloud nine yet and he said no, that something like this would take a while to dissipate. And that’s obviously bang on, I mean it clearly is as one week later we’re all still feeling it, right?
But it made me think about the importance of winning and the absolute rampage of endorphins which flooded my body as the final whistle blew in Bournemouth last week. The almost exact opposite reaction to the feelings which had crowded me only eight days previously, before the sweetest of VAR interventions at the London Stadium.
You know, as an Arsenal fan who has watched his team run one of the greatest sides, led by the second greatest manager in Premier League history, so close for two years, you quickly realise you don’t get any credit for being only very good. You don’t get any approbation for nearly winning the league, quite the opposite in fact. My mates in Leeds have made that abundantly clear.
Those “second again” jibes have hurt so much, because they strike at the very notion that, like Sisyphus, we were doomed to forever roll that boulder uphill, getting so close to the top, but never quite able to make it. Pundits like Joe Hart could watch how we’d performed all season compared to City and still say that they expected City to close the deal. Yes, in part because City had done it before, but implied within that judgement, Arsenal do not have the minerals.
Well, we’ve now proved that we do and if this 14th league title win has given me an extra spring in my step, a firmer set to my chest, then you can only imagine what it will have done for these players to finally have piloted that boulder up the hill.
I suppose you don’t even need to imagine it. You could see in the celebrations on Sunday the euphoria of finally confirming Arsenal are not just very good at football, but England’s very best.
Next season, if and when it gets tight, nobody will be looking at us questioning whether we can see it through, they already have the answer. More to the point, the players themselves now know they can do it. Mikel Arteta now knows, he has done it.
Travelling across London over to Stevie’s was a lovely experience, Arsenal shirts everywhere and on our way out to Clapham Junction for a connection to Isleworth, we got chatting to two Gooners who’d taken a punt on buying hospitality tickets at Selhurst Park way back in January. £800 gambles which had paid off handsomely.
When we arrived at Stevie’s I greeted him with a hug and the words “How you doing, champ?”
I – we – have waited such a long time for this.
I’ve also waited such a long time to watch and enjoy a game with Stevie we could be totally relaxed about. I’ll be honest, I don’t think anyone’s expecting different, I couldn’t really tell you anything about this sunshine stroll at Selhurst Park, which passed by on a hazy sea of endless Cruzcampo, Asahi and even some Jubel. Gabi Jesus, on the ground the road to this title really began four years ago, missed a few chances, then he scored one. Madueke scored another.
Some time later, we let one in and then another, but were saved by VAR for one last time.
But this game wasn’t about that, it was only ever about Martin Odegaard, Mikel Arteta and the team getting their hands on the Premier League trophy. And, having waited 22 years for it, Crystal Palace, our otherwise exemplary hosts, made us wait even longer at the end of the game.
Sky’s coverage in that interminable interregnum bafflingly concentrated on Spurs. Boo, they stayed up.
Was it perhaps a bit weird that Stan and Josh got their hands on the trophy first? Maybe, although without their steadfast backing of their manager in the dog days of 2020, who knows where we would be now?
The celebrations, in front of a packed away end were raucous and extended. As they should have been, anyone who has put on the red and white contributed and it was great to see Benny White out there complete with knee brace. As Mikel Arteta, clad in our red and white, was bumped into the blue South London sky by his players, it was hard not to think of Arsene Wenger and how you feared for his safety as he received bumps on the pitch as a sixty-something year-old following 2014’s FA Cup win.
Arsene had done so much to create the club that exists today, but had also created the conditions that led to our fall from grace. Including the increasing disconnection of the football club from the people who sustain it, the fans. It was noticeable that it was Mikel Arteta – a former captain of Arsene’s – who moved Sunday’s celebrations to be as close as possible to the away end.
The players connected back to the fans, just as I have connected back to Stevie. Again, his words at his very first press conference six-and-a-half years ago about connecting the fans back to the players rang loud.
Although not as loudly as that away end as they watched the players cavorting in front of them. I will have to go back and watch it all again at some point, as there was too much to take in but my top three moments I caught were David Raya in his goalkeeping gloves, Declan Rice’s face as Martin Odegaard lifted the trophy and Bukayo Saka’s unrestrained joy as this club, his club, celebrated reaching the summit of English football once more. Everything in its right place.
Whatever these players go onto do now, they will forever be the players who ended our wait to get back there and they have my undying thanks for that. Perhaps they will get their own section on the walls of our stadium one day.
You’d think a maiden Champions League victory in Budapest on Saturday would almost certainly seal that particular deal.
See you at the screening!
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