Bukayo Saka says Arsenal’s critics are “not laughing anymore” after the club ended their 22-year wait for the Premier League title.
Bukayo Saka has delivered the line that will become as immortal as Declan Rice‘s ‘It’s not done’, saying the people who mocked the club’s title challenge are “not laughing anymore” after Mikel Arteta’s side finally ended a 22-year wait for the Premier League.
For three years, Arsenal were accused of “bottling” title races, and after the defeat at Manchester City on 19 April, the old doubts returned quickly enough for many.
The questions were familiar, whether they had the nerve, whether the pressure would break them, whether City would simply do what City had done so often before, fuelled on in 115 different ways.
Instead, Arsenal won their next four league games without conceding a goal. City, however, drew at Everton, then drew again at Bournemouth, and the race was over before the final weekend. Thank you Eli Junior Krupi!
Arsenal’s players and staff gathered at London Colney on Tuesday night to watch City’s 1-1 draw at the Vitality Stadium, a result that left Arsenal four points clear and confirmed them as champions for the first time since 2004.
At Emirates Stadium, tens of thousands of supporters gathered outside to celebrate with fireworks and flares.
Inside the club, the release was just as obvious.
Arteta has installed a blacked-out Premier League trophy at Colney, designed to light up only when Arsenal finally won the title.
In footage posted by Jurrien Timber on Instagram, Saka stood in front of it and told the room exactly what the moment meant.
“Light that up,” Saka said.
“Let me tell you something. Twenty-two years, 22 years. There was laughing, there was joking, they’re not laughing anymore,” the England international added.
“Look, it is going to be shining, it is going to be shining bright.”
Myles Lewis-Skelly, another Hale End graduate, made the same point in his own way on Saka’s Instagram channel, holding a champagne bottle as the celebrations continued.
“They called us bottlers,” said Lewis-Skelly.
“And now we’re holding the bottle.”
Arsenal will lift the Premier League trophy after their final domestic game of the season at Crystal Palace on Sunday.
After that, attention will turn to the Champions League final against Paris Saint-Germain in Budapest on 30 May, where Arteta’s side can still turn a title-winning season into something unimaginably greater.
But this moment belongs to the league. Arsenal have waited since 2004 for another title and endured so much abuse along the way. This group have had to win it with the bastardised memory of previous disappointments constantly being thrown back at them.
Saka’s point was blunt because it deserved to be.
The jokes have stopped and that’s the real reason so many pundits and managers (looking at you, Arne Slot) have been so salty since the title was sealed.
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