Good morning, fans of the Premier League champions!
I’m gonna guess, when all the joy and celebration starts to die down a little (in a few days, a week, three months?!), everyone will have their own story of last night. Where they were when Arsenal won the league, who they were with, what they did.
I had the bright idea of going out for dinner with my family so I could essentially avoid the Man City game. Smart. Real smart. All you have to do is not pick a place with a TV above the table you’re sitting at, and another one to the left. And loads more all over the walls. It was impossible not to watch. Good work, Andrew, idiot.
I ordered way too much food. I tried not to pay too much attention, then Eli Junior Kroupi scored.
“GET IN!”, I exclaimed, as nobody else in the quite busy bar said anything. There seemed to be scant interest in football in the place. Then the bar turned the City game off and put on Chelsea v Sp*rs. I was fine with this, because I didn’t want to watch what was going on elsewhere. Time went by. My phone, after a flurry of ‘COME ONs!’ and ‘OMGs’, and more than a couple of ‘👀s’ stayed quiet. I approved of these no messages.
More time went by. I didn’t dare to look at a live score app because if I did City would score. That’s how this shit works, you all know it. I felt nervous and anxious. I tried to explain to my daughter’s new husband (who I met for the first time a couple of hours previously), what was at stake. I think he understand despite my vague babbling.
Three years went by. Interstellar time. I was desperate to know how long was left but I couldn’t check because if I did City would score. My brother was the first to break the silence:
I was so stressed. Then I got this from Andrew Allen who I love dearly but who I’m going to have to talk to about that ‘Oh my god’, I thought City had scored.
Both my wife and my daughter got some live score stuff on their phones. I heard there were 6 minutes of added time. Then 5. After some years, a mere 4. Three decades later, just 3 minutes. A couple of galactic millennia later I asked them to please stop updating me. I would know when it was over because my phone would start vibrating off the table.
I came then to understand that Man City had scored and how I didn’t dissolve into a gibbering mess, I will never know. I went onto our Discord where our wonderful Patreon members were following the game live, and the first thing I saw were a load of ‘YESSSSS!’ and ‘GET INNNNN’ messages, and I knew. After our win on Monday evening, City had dropped points, and after 22 years Arsenal were title winners again.
My phone started receiving messages, and those messages kept coming and coming, and overnight there were texts and WhatsApps and emails, and I will do my best to reply to all of them in due course, but please bear with me. There are a lot. A LOT.
There were hugs with the family as all the rest of the people in the bar continued not giving a single shit about football. They were still showing Chelsea so they probably wondered why some eejit was skipping around like a damn fool, but who cares about anyone else? Not me, I can tell you.
I don’t care about anyone but us. Arsenal fans have waited so long for this, and at last, after three second placed finishes, immeasurable amounts of pain and frustration, we had gone the distance. People, understandably, had questioned whether Mikel Arteta and this team could get it over the line.
The line is back there. We are over it. The line can eat shit. Along with so many, many others, but today is not about them. We have days and weeks to come to enjoy giving it back to those who spent so long twisting the knife. It was Andrew Allen who, at one point during the season, declared that if we won the title we should be called the Unbearables. The team can have that one, and maybe we, as fans, can become the Insufferables. Stick your bottles up your holes, wankers.
I demand that this Arsenal team be labelled ‘The Unbearables’ once we’ve wrapped up the title.
— @AAllenSport (@aallensport.arseblog.com) 2026-03-05T13:09:51.541Z
First though, stop. Look around. Take stock of our surroundings, and just let that tingle work its way through you right now as you just let yourself enjoy something that we’ve waited so long for. When Arsenal last won the league, I was 32 years of age. Arseblog was a small thing I did on the side from my Barcelona apartment. The team went unbeaten that season in the Premier League, and I don’t want to say I took it granted, but at that point it was almost unimaginable that it would be 22 years before we won it again.
So now, I want to soak it all in. To bask in the warm glow of this achievement. To slather the scars and wounds of three successive second place finishes, and a lot of other stuff down all of those years, with the balm of being Premier League champions. I’ve written something on this website almost every day since we last won the league. 22 years of hope and expectation and disappointment. Some years hurt more than others, obviously. We’ve experienced so much in that time. We’ve lost some friends along the way (I couldn’t help but raise a glass to our old friend Goonerholic last night), but made new ones too.
Leave aside the fans who have waited so long to see this again, there are generations of Arsenal fans who have never seen it at all. The ones who have heard the stories from their mums and dads about what it was like to win the league, the celebrations they enjoyed, and they must have wondered if their time would ever come. It just has. And I think as I stayed up late to see the fans assemble and congregate and celebrate outside the stadium and around North London, you could see just how much it means. Unforgettable, even if I’m sure of what they did last night will be lost in a champagne haze.
Football is the most important unimportant thing in our lives. We commit our lives, our time, our sanity, our patience, our money, our everything, to a team and a manager and players and hope they can make us happy for 90 minutes. Then do it again. And again. It’s all completely out of our hands. That lack of control can drive you mad. We do stupid things to try and make a difference.
Last week we had a question on the podcast about what deals with universe have we done to ensure Arsenal would win, as if anything makes any difference at all. I said I couldn’t answer because I’d undo it. So now I can tell you. It’s stupid, but it gave me comfort over the last few weeks. After we lost to Man City in the league, I had a rage shave. I’m not normally clean shaven at all, but I went upstairs and buzzed everything off my face, then spent a few days recoiling at the mirror every time I saw this weird baldy-faced twat looking back at me.
How absurd. How ridiculous. BUT IT WORKED! I played my part in this success (you don’t have to thank me right away). I guess I can’t shave before Budapest. But what if this beard is just a Premier League beard? Dammit. Now what do I do? I’ll figure it out, I’m sure. Or I won’t. It doesn’t matter. Except when it does. Which is always.
I’m in bits.
“Be patient, it’s coming …”
Last year, Mikel Arteta came to our event at Union Chapel to thank Arsenal fans for raising so much money for the Arsenal Foundation. The parameters of what I was allowed ask him on stage were quite tight, but with the audience in front of me, and people watching the live stream, I felt I had to quiz him on the future just a little bit. I remember a bloke from the crowd shouting out something like ‘We’re gonna do it!’.
A very relaxed Arteta laughed, and told us ‘Be patient, it’s coming …’, and he was true to his word.
Mikel Arteta when he spoke to us at Union Chapel last year.#champions
— arseblog (@arseblog.com) 2026-05-19T21:05:40.038Z
If people doubted him, I can understand it. I had doubts myself. I think anyone who says they didn’t at any point this season is probably spoofing. How weird and chaotic is football that the 2-1 defeat to Bournemouth was probably the moment I doubted our credentials the most, and then that very team were the ones to help us secure the title?!
But Bournemouth didn’t win Arsenal the title. Arsenal did. This team did. This manager did. This club did. Look at the table this morning. No team has won more games, no team has conceded fewer goals. We might not have always had the flair and panache of Arsenal teams of yore, but after 21 years if you asked me if I’d be all right if we bastarded our way to the title, I wouldn’t have hesitated.
Let me also be very clear: I don’t say that to undermine or diminish this team in any way. There’s more than one way to be very good at football, and defensively I don’t think there’s a team as good as us anywhere. I’d love to see us be more effective in the opposition final third so fewer games are a feat of nervous endurance like so many this season were, but let’s not overlook how hard it is to be this good. Nobody else is. We are the best. We are the champions.
I am delighted for these players. As I’ve often said, you can have doubts about aspects of how we play or individual quality, that’s normal. But nobody can ever doubt how much these guys give every time they step onto the pitch. You always hear stuff about how footballers need to represent the badge and the shirt, well these lads do it with aplomb. They’ve put their bodies on the line for this club. They’ve suffered mentally and physically to bring back this kind of success, and they’ve done it. They’ve earned it. They deserve it. Thanks to all these lads, and many of those who played their part along the way, even if they’re not Arsenal players today.
For Arteta and his staff, and everyone at Arsenal who works so hard behind the scenes, this is a culmination of years of hard work and dedication. When he arrived in 2019, this club was a mess. He has been the driving force behind it all, but there are so many others who play their part. People who aren’t public facing but who are vital to achieving something like this. They all deserve their flowers this morning.
We were patient, it came. It feels good. I like it.
I feel like I could keep writing for hours but I can’t because I want to go watch videos of the celebrations and continue to enjoy this. I’m finding it hard to express how happy I am for all of us. The Arsenal fans around the world, and in particular those of you who are part of the Arseblog community. You’ve been here through thick and thin down the years, whether you read the blog or listen to the podcasts or are part of our Patreon community, I want you know to know how much I appreciate you.
22 years of writing and talking about a team that has enjoyed some success, but not the success we all craved. You make it easier for me to deal with the highs and the lows. It’s easy to be around when times are good, but they haven’t always been that way, and yet you’re still here. And I’m still here.
And now Arsenal are champions again. I love you all. I love it all. I don’t know what else to say. Which is a bit of a problem, because we have to record a very special Arsecast Extra in a while, but I’m sure we’ll find the words by then.
Is that enough for this morning? I don’t know. It probably has to be, but if I think of anything else, I can always add another post.
Thank you. Go enjoy. WE DID IT.
WE F*CKING DID IT!
❤️