Arsenal End 22-Year Wait for Premier League Title After Man City Slip

Arsenal did not need to kick a ball.

Manchester City drew 1-1 with Bournemouth at the Vitality Stadium on Tuesday night, leaving Pep Guardiola’s side four points behind with one game left. The title was mathematically over. North London erupted.

Twenty-two years. Three straight runner-up finishes under Mikel Arteta. Done.

The Message

Declan Rice posted a photo from the dressing room with Kai Havertz, Eberechi Eze, William Saliba, Myles Lewis-Skelly, and Bukayo Saka. The caption read: “I told you all.. it’s done.”

That line carries weight if you know what came before it.

On April 19, Arsenal lost 2-1 away to Manchester City. The gap closed to three points, with City holding a game in hand. Most pundits were ready to call the race over again. As the final whistle blew, cameras caught Rice turning to captain Martin Odegaard and saying: “It’s not done.”

Arteta later explained what that moment meant to him: “That was the feeling that, probably without them expressing it in the dressing room, I felt immediately. And that was very powerful.”

Arsenal backed up the words. They won four of their next five league matches without conceding a goal. City, meanwhile, dropped points in a 3-3 draw with Everton before failing to beat Bournemouth when it mattered most.

Junior Kroupi’s first-half strike put City behind at the Vitality Stadium. Erling Haaland equalised in stoppage time, but it came too late to matter.

The Numbers Behind the Title

This was not a smooth run-in. Arsenal led the table for 200 straight days before City briefly nudged them off it on goal difference in late April. The response is what won them the league:

• 19 clean sheets, with David Raya winning the Golden Glove for a third consecutive season
• 26 goals conceded, the fewest in the Premier League
• 25 wins from 37 matches heading into the final round
• 18 goals from corners, a Premier League era record
• Viktor Gyokeres finished as the club’s top scorer in his first season at the club

Martin Odegaard ran the midfield, William Saliba and Gabriel anchored the defence, and contributions from Saka, Eze, Leandro Trossard, and Mikel Merino spread the goalscoring load across the squad.

A 1-0 win over Burnley on the Monday before the title was sealed, finished off by a Havertz header from a Saka corner, summed up the method. Set pieces have been the difference all season, and no side in the competition has been more clinical from dead ball situations.

It is also a rare kind of title win. Arsenal went the entire campaign without conceding a single penalty or picking up a red card, a first in Premier League history. Discipline and control, not flair, carried this squad over the line.

Arteta’s Climb

Mikel Arteta took charge in December 2019 with Arsenal seventh in the table and no real identity. What followed is one of the more complete rebuilding jobs English football has seen in years.

He finished runner-up in 2022/23. Runner-up again in 2023/24, beaten by two points in a race that came down to the final weeks. The title slipped away again in 2024/25 when injuries wrecked the campaign and Liverpool finished ten points clear. Three near misses in a row, each one harder to swallow than the last.

This time, he got it right. Arteta becomes the first former Arsenal player to win the Premier League as the club’s manager, having worn the shirt himself between 2011 and 2016. It is the club’s 14th English top flight title, putting them behind only Liverpool and Manchester United in the all time list.

Arsene Wenger, the last man to deliver this title with the unbeaten Invincibles of 2003/04, sent a video message to the squad: “You did it. Champions go on when others stop. This is your time. Now, go on and enjoy every moment.”

Even Guardiola was gracious in defeat. “Congratulations Arsenal,” he said in his press conference. “Mikel, staff, backroom staff, fans, for this Premier League title. Well deserved.”

Arsenal lift the trophy at Crystal Palace on the final day of the season before turning to Budapest, where they face Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League final on May 30. They go into it unbeaten in Europe this season, having eliminated Bayer Leverkusen, Sporting CP, and Atletico Madrid along the way. The club has never won the competition.

The league is done. Arsenal are champions again, for the first time since the Invincibles.

What happens in Budapest decides whether this becomes the greatest season in the club’s history, or just the most overdue.