Bournemouth 1-1 Manchester C115y…the blue mancs pull a bottle job…
And so, after 22 years ….. years of slow decline laced with financial penury, having our best talent cherry-picked, a promising youth policy aborted by predators, several false dawns, bargain basement signings, competing against financially doped nouveau-riche pretenders, poor appointments to key positions and poor signings on the field generating mind-numbing hurt and frustration but leavened by 4 FA Cup wins that confirmed the core drive was undimmed, and then, with the arrival of an energetic young coach who provided clear evidence of progress with three consecutive second place finishes and good runs in the Champions League ….. we are finally Champions again!
Worthy champions at that ….. no Russian mafia money, no creative accountancy, no injections of Arab petrodollars, just hard work, prudent team building (on and off the field) and shedding of the uncommitted and under-committed. The renaissance of the Arsenal can be attributed to one man whose commitment to the club began in a trolley dash in the dark days of 2011 when he accepted a pay cut to join a club he had long admired to try to revive a faltering giant on the pitch – that man is Mikel Arteta, who returned as a coach to an even bigger shambles than when he arrived as a player but whose ambition, drive, man management skills and tactical nous have inspired his players and won the financial support of the Kroenke family and together they have brought this success to the club.
Thanks to Mikel, the Kroenkes, the coaches and the squad, we are dining at the top table again.
And this is just the beginning….
First.
Champions
So emotional…so happy and proud!!! We are the champions, Dave! ❤️🥹
Congratulations Gooners – this team has done it and done it without creative accounting, Russian mafia money or a nation’s treasury.
And Arteta is a genius!
WE ARE INDEED THE CHAMPIONS.
On to Budapest – via Selhurst Park.
Better than winning the Predictathon.
Congrats to Arteta, and the team. Thanks to everyone here who has been part of this journey that Dave started, above all those who are no longer with us, and the regulars who keep us entertained and informed. And a special shout out to DG! This is what the doctor ordered.
Let’s not forget the support this place has given to Mikel and the players. Our loyalty has been richly rewarded. CHAMPIONS 🏆 And the best bit, my 14 year old son is a Spud.
With my illness ruling out ever getting to the Emirates and my memory issues getting worse I am so bloody happy that this has happened while I can still remember it, I can die happy now, bloody love Arsenal, still not massively keen on Arteta though (Joking geez)
@4 Potsticker
Not wrong at all, Champions!!
Thanks every single one of you!
Raised a glass to Dave earlier! Legend
GSD @38 (from last drinks)
been reading for years.
Not really much of a one for giving any footie expertise….
Can maybe do a ’70s nostalgia’ post if needed during an interlull.
Just saw that my last post contained a rogue *asterisk…..
Maybe a subconscious brainfart from a f*ckin’ Pardew or some other such w*anky c*unt saying if Arsenal win the league, there’ll be an asterisk on it!
(been living in France since ’85, but haven’t forgotten how to speak yer actual English..)
A nice piece by Pedro – go and enjoy yourselves, Gooners!
https://www.le-grove.co.uk/p/arsenal-premier-league-champions
I’ve always been an Arsene man. I’d still run through a wall for him.
This title is due in such immense part to Mikel Arteta. He has put everything he has into this. In my opinion, all Arsenal fans, whatever they have thought about him in the past, should come together in supporting someone who could go on to be the most successful manager in our history.
And I also think it is incredibly fitting that the driving force behind Mikel’s connection to Arsenal is Arsene. Just a wonderful story.
Arsene knew.
Mikel knows.
JML. I gathered from your previous posts that you used to read Dave’s inimitable efforts, and post occasionally. I also saw that you have often read the efforts of this humble establishment setup in his honour, even if you rarely (ever?) posted.
All I’m saying, is that you’ve been posting regularly for about a month and we’ve just won our first league title in 22 years, so please keep posting!
There’s a drink on the bar for you.
DG. Top man.
Just got back from the ground. It was a truly amazing experience. Hornsey Road was utterly packed, as was everywhere round the ground. Took 30 mins to get from Holloway Road tube to the stadium. Policing was light and friendly. Was absolutely no trouble at all. Reminded me of ‘89. Apart from the fact that I am sober and won’t be getting home at 5.30 am.
Bath@3, Potsticker@4, DG@6, JML@8, Dino@10- spot on as ever.
Sunday in N1 will be a proper day/night out.
And then next weekend in Budapest.
I don’t ever want to grow up.
ClockEndRider, aged 60 (nearly).
We will dissect this great season over the next few months but whatever you do ENJOY this, it’s a special moment and what our club has achieved and may go on to achieve further is very special.
I mean imagine hie Sp**s supporters feel about 19th May 2026. Arsenal won the league and they have a tough game to negotiate at the Toilet Bowl to stay up !
And we have Budapest to come .
Thankyou Bournemouth . C100 texted me the score and I started watching. They were superb tonight, a top team who play great football .
But WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS
🥃❤️Bless you Holic and CBA and Chris and Terry and all others who have passed .
This bar is going strong and we’ve had much to admire and enjoy this season !
TTG@14 – well said, Sir.
Great day and it’s only 09:30!
My son work me about 05:10 to tell me it
was 1-0 to Bournemouth with 10 minutes to go.
Watched it through and we were champions!
Great moment and I’ve been talking, texting Arsenal ever since
Great to see BG and DG in the bar 👋👋🥂🍾
Several local gooners already booked in at my house for midnight Sunday
for the Honour Guard, Palace game, trophy presentation and champagne
quaffing…….
You are all invited if you should happen to be in Osaka on Sunday 😃😃
ole ole oleeeerr, ole ole olaaaaaaaa, ole ole oleeeeeeeeee.
we are champions!!!
Good drinks all round. It is a special moment to enjoy, and to remember the Guv’nor who brought us all together.
” And now you’re gonna believe us … we’ve gone and won the league.”
Arteta out.
UTA.
ned, you are so right. thinking about dave and others who have passed sincexx vs we last won the league. hod love them and god bless them.
For those that can access there is a truly great piece
by Amy Lawrence in The Athletic
Champions!
The Guvnor is having a Guinness with a whisky chaser in the sky.
And buying bottles of champagne for all the Goonees in that bar in heaven.
❤️
Ned@20 and those ff – well said. Without The Guv, this place wouldn’t exist. An oasis of respectfulness and sanity in a world so often devoid of both. A pint of nectar on the celestial bar for The Guv. The rest io you will have to make do with a drink of your choosing.
Fantastic.
I’m looking for the blog of the Champions
Have I come to the right place ??😃😃
Hopefully wherever old Gooners go my Dad and his Dad met up with Holic some time ago and watched the game together . Drink would have been taken and much reminiscence would have taken place. Dave Faber – what a great man . Maybe we can get him the Cup with big Ears ..very soon
….and breathe (finally!).
Thank you all so much for your amazing work in producing this week in and week out. I reckon that Dave would be so incredibly proud of what you’ve done, continued and produced. I rely on you for sensible, objective reports and haven’t ever been disappointed and so love to drop in. I can’t offer much but am happy to buy the drinks.
An given that it’s 17:37 in Tasmania I’m having a few drinks to rememeber Dave and all those with him and to celebrate to remember who we are, what we are and who we represent and that we are champions.
Respect to all
The Guv gets a mention on Arseblog this morning.
A very special night. Well done all. Well done whoever rushed to put up this blog. I was too busy drinking whisky and bellowing CHAMPIONS into our street (much to the extreme annoyance of my wife). The hugs of pure joy from my son who first went to Highbury the season after the Invincibles and is my constant companion up and down the motorways and roadworks of England. Well done to CER and 21CG for making the pilgrimage from Winchmore Hill to Holloway.
Somewhere Dave Faber will be so proud. Proud of the club, proud of the team and proud of the way we have all managed to continue his legacy. Our community is far flung, across many countries and time zones. I’m so proud of it.
Haven’t posted on here in a decade but had to this morning.
Someone said to me earlier this week that either you leave football, or football leaves you. It’s a saying I’ve heard a few times before, but this time it rang true, because football has been leaving me for some time now.
Somewhere in amongst all the nation state ownership, the crooked World Cups, the VAR and its accompanying relentless focus on refereeing decisions, the beautiful game – my abiding obsession since I was old enough to kick a ball – began a slow, inexorable drift in a direction I wasn’t really prepared to follow.
The online discourse, the pundits seeking “engagement”, the data analysis and clockwork-precision coaching. The creeping sense that individual genius and expression should be supplanted by collective cohesion, that the emotion in the stands should be kept in check until properly vetted and approved by a team of experts in a van miles away from the stadium.
My favourite sports writer, Eduardo Galeano, once memorably wrote that “the history of soccer is a sad voyage from beauty to duty”, and over the last decade I’ve felt the weight of those words. Not in the playing of the game, which remains as much a joy as ever, but certainly in the watching. My interest has slowly ebbed away, tournament by tournament, until really all that’s been left has been the love of my own club.
I was 8 or 9 years old when a friend’s Dad first took me to Highbury, crouched in the back of his builder’s van. We arrived late, and I remember running along the terraced streets, bewildered that I could hear, but not yet see, the stadium, before turning a corner and being suddenly confronted by Highbury in full swing and under lights. One of the greatest sights in all of football. It was love at first glance – I don’t remember who we played or what the score was, I just remember how the stadium felt.
A couple of years later came Anfield. And as the winner hit the net and Michael Thomas headspun on the turf, unable to physically express the explosion occurring within him, I staged my own impromptu celebration; dashing to the front door before my parents could stop me and sprinting, whooping, down the street in my pyjamas, detonating as I went. I can still remember how that run felt; my bare feet on the road, the incredible release of shouting at the top of my lungs, the sensation of cutting through the air as I went. Faster, faster. A ball of chain lightning unleashed.
As clear as the memory remains, I hadn’t really thought about that moment, that sprint down the road, in a long time, until last night.
I’ve lead a charmed life in football terms. I got to watch Diego Maradona with Argentinian blood in my veins, and then Wenger’s Arsenal side with Highbury in my heart. Beautiful football, played the right way. Poetry on turf. By the time the Invincibles won the title in 2004 it felt like this stuff was simply mine by birthright; as if I would always show up at just the right moment to enjoy the good stuff, because I was simply that blessed. A notion not always borne out by the years that followed.
I didn’t watch the City game last night, although I was quite certain they wouldn’t win it. Didn’t want to jinx the situation. But I made sure I was near enough the stadium nonetheless.
Within fifteen minutes of the result coming in I was being dropped off by a taxi at Highbury Corner, and sprinting down the Holloway Road as fast as my legs would carry me. Compelled to get to the Emirates as swiftly as humanly possible, a ball of lightning once again, taken back to that time when I first loved the game and when all my romantic misconceptions were still intact. Whooping and sprinting and this time joined by hundreds of others in a cacophony of car horns and chanting as the crowds made their way home.
As I ran, I passed the street my wife and I bought our first flat on. The venues where mates once held their birthday parties when we were all still young and free. The house share I used to live in, where I made some of my favourite mates. The pubs I’ve spent a thousand hours in with the pals I’ve made through Arsenal down the years. The roads I used to push my oldest round in a pram before we moved away in search of more suburban environs.
It’s hard to put into words how completely and jubilantly alive it all felt last night. How good it was to spend several hours in a crowd of delighted Gooners, on those streets, around that stadium – finally (finally) home after all these years, that one missing piece now firmly in place. Dancing, singing, beating drums, setting off flares. Fireworks overhead and smiles on every face – the old neighbourhood transformed into a rolling carnival. I hugged a hundred strangers. I bounced and yelled and shouted exultations to the heavens. I even had a little cry.
Somewhere along the way I managed to link up with mates who’d felt the same impulse – who’d jumped in cabs and beelined for the stadium before the City game had even ended. Them and half of North London – the city awash with people waving scarves and honking car horns. With the cry of Arsenal over and over again. The party it sometimes felt might never happen.
There’s a lot I could write here about what’s actually happened on the pitch. About the team and what’s worked and what hasn’t. About that one massive game still left to play.
But today’s not really the day for all that, because instead I’ve found myself thinking about all the people I’ve met through football. About all the hours shared talking bollocks and making jokes and trading daft conspiracy theories about that ref that clearly hates us.
About the way we all know we were a better side to watch two years back, but that wasn’t our moment and this is. About my mate’s Dad loading me into that van, and the sight of that grand old stadium and the impact it had on me way back then. Of the joy of later living a stone’s throw from it, in that glorious community with a football club right at its centre. Of all those thousands of people last night, so fucking happy.
And in the context of all that, the football itself seems far, far less important than the people. The destination so much less important than the fellow travellers.
So now I’m sat here. On the back of absolutely no sleep at all and feeling like I might actually never need to sleep again. With all those 40 odd years of football memories swirling away in the background, and the sneaking sense that maybe the game is indeed leaving me, but I might still get to keep whatever it was that I took from it before the rift occurred.
Because the true beauty of football isn’t in the people who play it, or coach it, or explain it for a living. It isn’t in the newspaper columns or the podcasts, and it certainly isn’t to be found on Sky. It isn’t a well coached side and it isn’t a well implemented set piece. The true beauty of football is in the people who watch the game. Who live and breathe it, who give it its animus and all its slightly feral beauty. It’s the mates I’ve made and with whom I’ve shared all the ups and downs, and with some of whom I’ve celebrated this evening. It’s all those thousands of people dropping everything and rushing to that stadium to be together as one.
There was a moment last night, stood amidst the madness, where I closed my eyes and just listened. And in that moment I heard the sound of old Highbury all over again, the same as the first time. That low rumble of many voices making one, pinging down those tree lined streets. That old, beloved sound I’ve not heard in a quarter of a century. And goddammit if I didn’t fall in love a little, all over again.
So this morning I wanted to come here. To the only Arsenal blog I ever posted on, and where I first met a bunch of people who have become a regular part of my life down the years, and whose friendship has made watching the Arsenal even better than it ever was before. People with whom I’ve argued and commiserated and celebrated. People who’ve made me laugh and think and occasionally tear my hair out. And I guess I wanted to say two things.
The first is thank you to the man who set this whole thing in motion, and who I hope was watching those scenes last night with a smile on his face, wherever he may be. Some legacy, all this.
The second is fuck off Man City, you pack of cheating, sportswashing, two bob, oil swilling, ugly ass centre forward having bottlejobs. I hope it was as painful for you as it was joyful for us.
COYG
Utterly superlative post N7 Gooner. Beautifully written.
N7
We’ve had some great posts over the years from Holic and others but that is assuredly the finest post we’ve ever had. It expresses all the irrational emotion, the nostalgia , the joy and the frustration of following our great club .
Thankyou for posting
Please return regularly, you are most welcome
Thanks N7. That brought a tear to my eye: simply the best thing I’ve read in a long time.
You’ve been missed here.
Hopefully it won’t be another decade until you’re back. There’s always a drink behind the bar for you.
@30 Superb. I’ve missed you!
Thanks for dropping in, N7. That’s just beautiful. We’ve missed you.
N7 – you said it all. Brilliantly. Beautifully. For heaven’s sake, don’t be a stranger.
N7 thank you for your post – just superlative.
Tim Stillman also remembers Dave
Lovely piece by Amy Lawrence. Free to read.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7291035/2026/05/19/arsenal-premier-league-title-22-years/
Splendid bonus piece from Tim Stillman at arseblog too, with another mention and thanks to Dave.
I see my page hadn’t refreshed , so yes @ 38 indeed!
Hearing reports that Christian Norgaard has more Premier League titles than Steven Gerrard. More as we get it.
*applauds N7’s blog post within the drinks*
Those are superb pieces by Tim and Amy, up there with N7 @30! Thanks for linking, C100.
Love this image:
N7@30: Masterful. As Louis Dunford sings, the manor might be changing, but the people still remain.
C100@39: Thanks for the link. That piece, except for the final sentence, was pre-written, Amy Lawrence mentions in the comments, but it is shot through with the affection that can only come from a true daughter of N5. A lovely read.
Kudos, too, to arseblog and Tim Stillman for remembering the Guv’nor.
There’s a champion’s half-ton for grabs.
*obtains corner kick*
Rises, salmon-like at the near post to head on for….
In other silverware news: The GHF Predictathon has only one week to go. Is Potsticker closing in on back-to-back titles, or will TTG or Dino peg him back at the death? The Matchweek 37 leaderboard and five-week form guide have been posted. Some late moves from the middle of the pack and a change in the relegation zone. You know where to find the details…
Doffs cap to the crowd and acknowledges CER’s assist of champions.
What a great community!
Champions again!
Never a doubt!
Budapest next.
COYG
Days since winning the League :
Arsenal 1
Liverpool 388
Man City 730
Chelsea 3,295
Man Utd 4,778
Aston Villa 16,454
Tottenham 23,774
Newcastle 36,180
Clery:
Well in Ned!
Thanks for the kind words, all. I will try to drop by more often in future, particularly now that we have so much to celebrate together!
🍷❤️🍷❤️🍷❤️🍷😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀❤️🍷❤️🍷❤️🍷
Well deserved Mikel and all the players. Andrea Berta and the owners for signing enough top players last summer to fill out our squad so we were able to get to this point. Without Eze, Madueke, Hincapie and Mosquera for instance I don’t know if we could have managed it. Another drink is on the bar for all who’s still here. 🍷❤️🍷❤️🍷❤️🍷❤️
And well in N7. Now let’s see that you stay in! 😀
Mike McDonald sums it all up.
C100@53: A quick flick of the abacus reveals that all those days since Newcastle won the league add up to 99 seasons. Plus, there are six Premier League clubs that have never won a top-flight title.
We are the champions!!
Some wonderful drinks above. Thank you everyone here for keeping this community flourishing, and continuing to bring together so many of us from disparate corners of the world, unified by our love of Arsenal.
Magnificent achievement by the club. Mikel, his team of coaches and physios and therapists and analysts, the players, the staff at every level, the management hierarchy and the supportive owners, the recruitment teams, the academy … while this is a well-deserved result of a relentless pursuit of excellence since Mikel joined the club, it must also be the beginning of a sustained era of success on the field.
To me, this is also a time to remember some stalwarts of this community who would have led us in the joyous celebrations if they were here today: Goonerholic himself, GoonerTerry from Jamaica, CBA, Oscar from Australia (his dog was named Oscar, which he had chosen for his moniker),…
I would also like to thank the contribution of some ex-players who helped Mikel enormously in his early days at the helm, who helped set the standards, and to create the ethos. And who remains Gunners at heart. Especially Xhaka, Elneny, Bellerin, Zinchenko, Ramsdale,… None of them are likely good enough to play in the current team as Mikel has continued to move the collective standards relentlessly forward, but they helped him significantly by their professionalism and dedication…
Celebrating with my son — who just entered his teenage years wearing Arsenal gears at every stage of his life and becoming a much more feverishly dedicated fan than I ever was , and knowing more about Arsenal history than most football pundits — his first experience of Arsenal winning the league has been one of the greatest moments of my football following life, and cathartic in the intensity of the emotional release. Far away from the manic euphoria unfolding on the streets of London, in this quiet and dignified corner of Boston where the old Puritanism of not expressing yourself too loudly is still considered an essential civic virtue, two of us screamed and shouted loud enough only to be overpowered by a ferocious thunderstorm following a tropical heatwave that had earlier stunned everyone.
Back in 2004, even the unpredictable New England weather wasn’t this unpredictable. We live in the oblivion of our own metamorphosis, as I believe Eluard had once written. The world of our have indeed changed beyond recognition since 2004. But what this club means for many of us remains a magnificent, mysterious, life-affirming immutable, invariant truth that we can always reach out to.
Victoria Concordia Crescit!
As I walked the pooch round the village this afternoon, I became aware of a newly acquired deep sense of peace and calmness. A weight, of which I had not been aware, has been lifted from my shoulders by last night’s events – the accumulated slings and arrows of the past 22 years, only partially assuaged by the FA Cup wins. Although lifting each of those five cups was great and I celebrated each vigorously, there remained a nagging sense that we weren’t competing for, let alone winning, the big prize. Despite the nervous tension in each of this seasons league games, I had been unaware of the background pressure. Its release is very therapeutic. It’s akin to that sense of release that comes with the passing of a major exam or the acquisition of a critical professional qualification.
Although none of our current squad bear those 22 years of scars, most of them have had to live with heavy media criticism in recent years, the pressure of having finished second for three consecutive seasons (actually a hell of an achievement that will be evident to football historians in 20 years time!), those “bottlers” slurs from simple-minded pundits and those awful chants from opposition fans of “second again!” I expect our players to have a similar awareness of a weight being lifted from their shoulders and a new sense of freedom. This makes me very optimistic that we may see something spectacular in Budapest.
“We live in the oblivion of our own metamorphosis, as I believe Eluard had once written,” recalls Dr. F @61. Where else in the footballing universe, save for this fine establishment, would one find such a sentence? And what a perfect choice. It opens a poem in a collection titled, Le dur désir de durer — The Dire Desire To Endure — which seems a perfect description of this season.
A great piece by Tim Stillman on the Arseblog site includes a shout out to Dave Faber our founder, aka Goonerholic. ❤️
Andew talks nicely about Dave on today’s Arsecast.
Unaccountably late in today, I have missed the opportunity to compliment N7 on his heartfelt and beautifully written piece waaaay up above in a timely way. It was superlatively evocative and higher quality writing than much available in the press. Congratulations and thank you.
n7, welcome back. beautiful piece…
dg, hang in there, and ENJOY THIS!
baff, that weight of which you speak…understand completely. once i stop feeling hung over from last night’s celebrations i’m sure it will be with a lightness of spirit i haven’t felt for a long, long time.
my one spurs-loving friend is crying bitterness into my cups today, and i must say, it has a delicious mouthfeel.
WE ARE CHAMPIONS OF ENGLAND!!!!
This is the Premier League’s team of the season, according to CIES Football Observatory, a Swiss sports performance research institute. We provide nearly all the defence and almost half the team.
Mate of mine asked if I was enjoying dishing out the schadenfreude in industrial portions to fans of lesser clubs. Which this season is by definition everyone. I answered that I’m not interested. Two of the best friends of mine to get in touch were a West Ham supporting former colleague and a life-long N5 Sp*rs mate of mine. Both of him I would call on if push came to touch. I have no animus against those who don’t support us. Many are called, few are chosen. Most of those who criticise us are not what I would call proper fans. Rather they are easily manipulated, low critical faculty possessing people. They are more to be pitied than blamed. The scum media are the ones who draw my ire.
In a season where Havertz was out most of the season and Saka and Odegaard were clearly injured for large portions
@67 sharing that hungover feeling this morning scruz,
Celebrated well but not wisely last night 😃
Still who cares about wisdom when we are the champions!
@68 thanks Ned. Personally I’m not sure about Cherki in that team, but he’s a good player and I can see the argument, Doku is just a No to me. Done ok the last few weeks but is either better than Semenyo this season?
Zubi was great for 75% of the season and I would, biasedly perhaps , put him in front
of Casemiro every time.
Thanks C100, NBN for the links and others for some truly great posts.
It was nice to see The Guvnor being remembered by so many here and
elsewhere, raised my own heartfelt glass to him and all of us here last night
🍶🍶 As I think Mike McDonald is saying in his great piece “there’s nae like us”
Clery was clever as ever, a truly unbiased eye.
OM@72: I think Saka missed too much football to have had a shot at making the CIES team, but, fully fit, he would walk into the team ahead of Cherki in my book. I agree with you on Zubi over Casemiro, too.
It was heartwarming to see the Guv’nor being so widely remembered. I think that is because he was the embodiment of the Arsenal fan that our best selves would want to be.
so this happened today. hung over and wrung out as i still am, i decided to join some friends playing pickup basketball after work.
I walk up to the court, and they had started 3v3 already. as i approached one player had on a long-sleeved 2024 arsenal jersey. i was in my 1971 yellow double top, so i started singing “north london forever” as i walked up…
guy looks at me funny, then looks at his shirt and says “oh yeah, i’m not an arsenal fan, i’m liverpool. i got the shirt cheap at a thrift…” 🤣
best part? we enjoyed playing against each other, and when he left he gave me the shirt because it was right to be in the hands of a champion. really nice of him.
@76 😂😂 great ending!
Great article in The Athletic, putting Arsenal’s 22 year wait for a title in context
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7275697/2026/05/20/arsenal-title-drought-in-numbers/
The other big game this Sunday will be the HolicsRopeyLeague Cup Final!
This year will I believe see the double chasing Monks take on the Order of the Bath
Best of luck to you both gentlemen!
C100@78: Thanks for that link. Builds on what you had already posted @53.
The most interesting chart was the one showing total points won since the 2004-05 season. Converting that into points per game gives: City 1.97, United 1.95, Chelsea 1.94, and Liverpool and ourselves 1.93. I wouldn’t expect that degree of parity over two decades among the top clubs in any of the other main European leagues, which would be one measure that the PL is the hardest league for a big club to win.
Jamie Carragher on the global reaction to Arsenal F.C. winning the Premier League
🗣️ “I finally realised why nobody wanted Arsenal to win the league…” 👀
Carragher admitted the scale of Arsenal’s celebrations worldwide has been unlike anything he has seen in modern football 🌍🏆
🗣️ “The fans are unbelievably loyal and crazy passionate.”
🗣️ “Show me another team that won a trophy and had celebrations like Arsenal did — streets packed everywhere, social media exploding all over the world.” 🤯🔴⚪️
🗣️ “The world was always afraid of this.” 🔥
Oh yes!
C100@82: What? No Mikel?
Stay humble
Cheers all!
CHAMPIONS!
evening all,
high as a kite since Tuesday night, and don’t ever wanna come down….
I’m sure many of us feel the same…
The Bro and three of his mates got tickets for the final.
All second generation Irish! All his other matchgoing mates are going there, just to be there. Talk about ‘luck of the Irish’ !!
Was tempted to ge there too. Thirteen hour drive (if not needing a shite, piss, food or rest)
but playing a gig on Monday 1st.
Bring on QSG!
Will be watching with some French mates…
Got 50€ on the table with one of them!
Jamie Carragher- the king of the village idiots. There must be a country with no conurbations of more than 2000 people. Can we not parachute Carragher in there, like some CIA Black Op, and bring about a coup?
Max Dowman, who took a GCSE exam today, has more PL winners medals than Jamie Carragher and Stevie fucking Gerrard put together!
My apologies for not putting a ‘fucking’ between ‘Jamie’ and ‘Carragher’ …..
Four Gunners in the England Squad including two Hale End graduates!
I can’t count. Five Gunners.
Myles, Declan, Noni, Bukayo, Ebi.
A Spud friend of mine for many years has contacted me to buy me a celebratory lunch . He lives in Camden and was a little perplexed that cars were racing around his local area all night until, 5 am . In fact it brought home to him just how big a club Arsenal is. The size and sheer ecstasy of the spontaneous celebration on Tuesday night has surprised even Gooners who have supported the club for many years . Jacob Hawley said ‘ we just shut down North London ‘ and it happened without a prearranged plan. Imagine what the formal parade will be like and imagine if we can bring the Cup with Big Ears to it too!
I was sorry to have missed it but I’m so glad CER was there on our behalf . It was the Fever Pitch celebration to the power of n . I’ve got clips of huge parades in Africa and stories of global celebrations. We have no excuse for failing to maximise the sales potential of the Arsenal brand . We are huge – finding that out was exactly what the Arsenal dreaders feared . Let’s be as humble as Erling Haaland
Congrats to Mikel, the staff, the team, the fans. 22 years in the wilderness. Happy for everyone on this blog and Gunner fans worldwide.
Can’t wait to see the team get the trophy on Sunday and even more celebrations.
I firmly believe we will beat PSG and that this team will be even better next year. I don’t see Mikel and the owners resting on their laurels. COYG!
Mark your diaries/calendars: the new season kicks off on August 16 with a trip to Cardiff to take on Man City for the Community Shield. League football resumes on the 22nd.
Been watching this today
Good times and the odd dodgy moment through the season.
Felt a lot calmer watching some of that this time 😃
And Max’s goal still made the hairs stand up….
Really pleased for Noni and MLS that they made the
World Cup Squad.
Oh, I may have misread the article and been a bit precipitate
with my congratulations there
JML @ 89 – they are also known as “Spitty” & “Slippy” respectively.
Ned @ 94 – all of our WC players will need a holiday after they finish – what sort of pre-season will they have and how many will be ready for the new season?
……..and a ton suddenly beckons. A corner is drilled into the box for the on rushing…….
Me Me Me
With grateful thanks to Uply for an amiable assist
Looks like Myles didn’t make the official squad. Must have been misinformation. Just the four Gooners.
DJed Spence gets the last place which last night was being assumed to be Myles. Currently on Sky various talking heads are bemoaning the absence of Foden, Palmer, TAA and Maguire.
Finally made it.
I’m finding all this, surprisingly, quite hard to process after so many years of struggle, chaos and lack of direction in the club. The optimism of the new stadium and regret at leaving the old. The sad souring of the atmosphere at the Emirates as the reality of the club’s position hit home and a lot of fans turned on the greatest manager in Arsene Wenger we had ever had.
Renewed optimism followed the appointment of a new young manager who clearly had formed a deep bond with the club and had a vision for its renewal. Frustration followed at the hands of an oil state run club that has cheated its way to unrivalled success for over a decade.
And then, finally, hard hard work, meticulous planning, patience, adaptability and pure guts wins the ultimate prize.
I didn’t actually jump up and down, or shout and scream – I dropped back into my seat, where I had only been brave enough to watch Bournemouth beat City in short intermittent bursts, and smiled. Relief. It was finally done. Done despite everything that had been aimed at this club, this team and this manager. Honestly and fairly done.
I think I maybe still can’t quite believe it. The magnificent sight of endless thousands of fans in the streets who appeared like magic because it was done.
Done like the Amazon series said “Against All Odds.”
It’s 60 hours later now and I haven’t had a waking moment since without North London Forever ringing in my head. This game does crazy, terrible, wonderful , unbelievable things to people – and it is the people who are all a part of it that make it what it is.
I, we, are lucky that a wonderful fella set this place up out of his love for the club, and we have it to come to and share our thoughts about the club we all love.
Cheers, Dave !
N7 – truly wonderful stuff. Thank you ! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Well in for the ton, OM.
As for the England WC squad selection, Gooners, if anyone, should agree with Tuchel that, ‘Teams win championships; it is as simple as that. What we are trying to achieve in the summer can only be achieved as a team.’
C100@103: If Tuchel had made other choices, Sky’s talking heads would have been bemoaning with equal, er, sincerity the absence of Bellingham, Rogers, Livramento and Stones.
I also note that Tuchel says he wants England to be a strong set-piece team, and, of course, he has selected the two best corner-takers in the PL plus Toney to do Big Gabby impressions. Can we look forward to the Sky pundits accusing England of being anti-football and suggesting that if England wins the tournament, there should be an asterisk against it?
Uply@98: The same is true for City. Both clubs will have to field lots of yoofs.
It is madness that the game is less than a month after the World Cup final, and the new season starts a week later. With more and bigger summer competitions, FIFA and the leagues must start making adjustments to their calendars to allow star players both a reasonable off-season rest and a decent pre-season.
It is also crazy that there will then be an interlull from September 21 to October 6. Surely, it would have been better for players’ welfare to scrap that and push the start of leagues back by a fortnight. The likes of Rice and Saka probably shouldn’t be playing competitively again until mid-September — and then they have to go off on international duty again? Really?
How the big clubs manage team selection in the early weeks of the league — there are five matchweeks until the first interlull — is going to have a huge impact on which players they have left fit and standing at the end of it, and thus a significant influence on the outcome of the league.
OM@79. I was defending the Ropey League Cup this year, and tooky my cup defence much more seriously than my league challenge. Unfortunately, I lost to Ned and the monks in the semifinal. Well played to them.
However, and I promise I’m not bitter, Marco Silva can do one. When choosing my team, I had a look at NBN’s, and it turned out they were almost identical. The only 2 differences were that I had O’Reilly to his Guehi. And he had Dewsbury-Hall where I had Harry Wilson. Assuming that the 2 Man City defenders might well end up with the same score and that there was little to be done if one nicked it, I reckoned the tie would boil down to Dewsbury-Hall (playing against Sunderland) versus Wilson (playing against Wolves). I quite fancied Wilson in that match up, so I didn’t make any changes.
Only Marco sodding Silva inexplicably decided to leave Wilson (his best and most creative player and nailed-on starter) on the bench, only bringing him on with 10 minutes to go, and with not enough time to prevent his side drawing against the bottom team. Dewsbury-Hall played over 60 minutes (doing nothing of note as Everton lost) got 2 points to Wilson’s 1, and Ned went through by that solitary point.
So, Marco Silva is not popular in my house. My only consolation is that when O’Reilly went through 1 v 1 against Petrovic on Tuesday night, with a chance to equalise for City and, presumably, win me the tie against Ned, even in that split second I found myself thinking “Miss! Just miss, you fool.” Thankfully, his shot was saved, and all was well in the world of football. So, it all worked out in the end.
So, what did I miss? 😎
@109 that is a sickener Dino, a valiant effort thwarted. Funnily enough in the other semi-final, as far as I can see, it hinged on a c130y player too, this time Haaland, who by scoring right at the death ensured the Master of Sheep would go down in flames.
GSD@109: You ran the monks damn close, Dino. That single point could have gone either way. As a last-minute benching of Virgil for Tarkowski cost a net 11 points, I can’t even claim it was down to tactical genius, just dumb luck.
ZICO! Hallorerrpal. Lungo tempo ci non vediamo!
A barrel of Guinness is sitting on the bar with a tap on it for you to suckle as a small aperitif.
Some very illustrious alums of the original bar in. Welcome to the new digs one and all.
Doctor Feelgood @110. What did you miss? What did WE miss?
Some of your various wares would have been mighty handy to make it through the last few weeks. Or years.
There’s another barrel of the black stuff next to Baff’s offering, which I assume you’ve already made short work of. Cheers.
Ned. I consoled myself that but for your Van Dyke benching I’d have lost by a much greater margin. That made it easier to take. Well, that, and, y’know… Arsenal are champions!
Still find it hard to post here because I miss Dave’s level headed common sense and moderation, which always kept me out of fights I was too stupid to see coming.
But since there’s free Guinness I might add this spot to my regular crawl of the internet.
Is it too late to say, Fuck Off Pep?
Hello Zico 👋
Never too late for a tootle pip Pep, off you pop you Cheaty pup
welcome back, zico. the keys to the medicine cabinet on the happy train are hanging from the peg behind the bar. it’s freshly restocked from california and other far-flung pharmacopoeia, and the happy train itself has had an overhaul and is fuelled and waiting for everyone to hop on board…
also, welcome to tasgooner, whose nice post at #28 got caught in our post filter net… a drink for you on the other end of the bar from zico, only because he’ll drink it if it strays too close…
Good spot, scruz @121!
Welcome to this fine hostelry, Tasgooner! We look forward to seeing you again soon. A large glass of your favourite tipple awaits you on the bar.
Meanwhile, our regular stock order from Guinness has been doubled in the anticipation of occasional sightings of young Zico.
For those with a subscription to The Athletic, who may have overlooked this excellent article by James McNicholas in the tsunami of videos and clips relating to the title victory, subsequent celebrations and the plethora of interviews, as I did, this is a fascinating analysis of how this title triumph was engineered off the pitch, over 6 years:
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7291434/2026/05/19/inside-arsenal-premier-league-title-win/
Bravo!
Nice one, Tasgooner.
As someone who lurked in Dave’s bar for many years before I joined in the drinks, I always remember how much I loved his site and the commenters even before I began to contribute myself. It’s always nice to hear from someone who has been reading along, sitting quietly in the corner of the bar. Don’t be a stranger. And have a drink on me.
Arsenal are champions. I can’t get enough of saying that!
Just checked the PL table again and
we are still champions 😀
Now for the tricky decisions like what
champagne to buy for tomorrow’s
trophy presentation……
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>