I feel like a dandelion floating on the wind, still high in the sky, but a little closer to the grass this evening.
My word, just reread that. What a terrible opener. Gonna leave it in there so you know AI doesn’t right this mess of a blog (write, I jest).
I’ve consumed about 300 hours’ worth of Arsenal content since we found out Arsenal were going to be crowned Champions this Sunday. The evil algorithms were as overwhelmed as the streets of London and Nairobi were with Arsenal fans… they took more strain than the back of the African guy carrying a goat with an Arsenal shirt on through the streets (power move of the season)… it was all Arsenal, I haven’t seen a LONDON IS BURNING post all week on Twitter.
The Arteta stuff has been superb. This is a man who genuinely sacrificed a part of himself to take Arsenal back to the top, actually showing something close to emotion in interviews about the moment, his family, and how he maintained the energy to deliver on his promise.
All very beautiful.
It’s been a weird week for me emotionally. I’ve felt flatlined at times. Like, I’m mourning the death of a dream I never thought would be realized. Is that weird? Feeling lost in the swirl. When you’re so laser-focused on the thing and then the thing lands, it’s hard to pivot the thinking. It’s still a bit of an unreality. I’m talking like I was on the pitch. But you get what I mean.
… then I realise, it’s not even over yet. We haven’t seen the Premier League trophy yet. We still have a historic Champions League final in Budapest. This moment could actually get better.
I’m lost in a good way. Just thinking about all the crazy moments we’ve all had together over the past 22 years. Near misses, false dawns, devastating collapses, embarrassments on and off the pitch, and that dreadful feeling of apathy, wondering why we didn’t strike the jackpot with an ownership group that cared.
This Premier League win will be written about as one of the greatest from an Arsenal perspective. The story arc of an ex-captain returning to save the club from itself is truly beautiful. He didn’t come back because the money was better or because he’d get an unlimited war chest… he came back because he loved the club and knew, deep down, it could be restored to greatness.
We live in a highly connected world. But deeper than that, it’s a world where every move is documented, recorded, and stored for future weaponization. The kids don’t dance in clubs now because they fear someone might be filming. The world conforms to an algorithm crafted by tasteless nerds. We read about the blandification of fashion and art. The kids fear they’ve all become boring conformist NPCs, shaped by mass social media slop. We all watch the same things, behave the same way, and everything can seem a little vanilla. So when a young rookie manager steps out of the seat next to Pep Guardiola to tell the world he’s taking Arsenal back to the top, you have to take notice of the cajones. The fearlessness to go on the press room dance floor and cut some Napoleon Dynamite dance moves and not fear the consequences because you know in years to come, those moves will be appreciated.
Arteta landed a big job at Arsenal. He didn’t have the credentials. But he arrived understanding the business, where the dead bodies were, he’d witnessed greatness under Pep, and he had an unshakeable belief he could return Arsenal to the top.
It was kind of crazy how long it took certain parts of the fan base to warm to him. Even this season, we’ve had mini bouts of Arteta OUT. But I’ve come to learn that this is part and parcel of the modern fandom. The Mourinho years of spending with no competition convinced people that there was always an easy fix to problems. Chelsea singlehandedly convinced the world that sacking fast was a sign of elite mentality. We were conditioned to believe that patience was for cowards. Process? Loser talk. Even though most of you reading this now understand that building anything successful in life rarely comes easy (or fast).
We also don’t want to experience pain when we watch sport because there’s too much of it in our personal lives. So when Arteta came with his 5-phased plan for dominance, people weren’t really having it.
Mad when you consider how many of the basic bitch Arsenal fan problems he fixed…
Sign big players
Sign a good goalkeeper who can pass and catch crosses
Get players to press
Sign players who revel in the dark arts
Do fine margins things
Be tactically flexible
Don’t worry about arty aesthetics if it hinders winning
Build from the back
Be a manager who shows some passion from the dugout
Be a manager who bangs the table for money
Be a manager who gets the money, then asks for more
Be a manager who gets the fans onside
Get us back into the top four
Get us competing with the very best
Be ruthless, even with the players we love
Be a winner at all costs
Make Arsenal hard to beat and scary to play
Learn from your mistakes
Be relentless about making Arsenal the best
But now we’re here, at the gates of the promised land, we should be proud of the journey. Arsenal did it properly. No shortcuts. We had to work harder than other clubs, with less money. We had to be better behaved in front of refs. We had to play by the rules. We had to pretend other clubs didn’t have massive unfair advantages over us.
… and isn’t that, oddly, one of the most satisfying parts about our success this season? We beat the best there ever was, trying his absolute hardest. He spent £600m trying to best us. He broke the emergency glass in January and spent another £100m and put another £31m on wages. £151m more in wages a year after January… 12 Bukayo Saka’s extra wiggle room in their squad… and we still beat him. There’s still time to beat the other nation-state club from France. A massively overpowered team by Premier League standards, but their secret sauce is the league is so bad over there, they don’t have to play their star players.
Don’t let anyone underplay the job that has been done at Arsenal. The class it has been delivered with. Arsenal are the best team in the world, and judging by the fans on the streets, we’re the biggest club in the world full stop. Who else shuts down the streets like Arsenal? No one in Birmingham or Manchester, that’s for sure. You can still buy general sale tickets for City’s farewell party for Pep Guardiola, a little sad, you have to say. Arsenal is struggling with resellers for a watch party and it’ll cost you about £100,000 to get a flight, hotel, and a ticket to Budapest… and people will pay it.
The job still isn’t done for the season and as much as I’d love to see Win the dog at full back with Gunnersaurus in the mixer from setpieces, the Palace game still means something. It’s the chance to max out the season with more points than Liverpool took last season. We can still use the game to explore starting 11s, help players recover form, and get minutes in the legs of those that haven’t had them.
Palace are in a Conference final in 3 days time, they won’t be putting any pressure on their first teamers. Arsenal will have 6 days until the Champions League final, I’d be hard pushed to imagine Arteta is going to go too crazy with his favored players, though we’ll have to see a chunk of them because they’re lifting the Premier League title that day.
Mikel Merino will be in the squad, which is fabulous news. He’s been an underrated star for Arsenal, and you never want to see someone lose out on a World Cup spot at 29 years old. He could be such an asset to bring on late in the game at PSG. Timber likely won’t make the squad, though the player is making rumblings that he wants to be ready for the final. I’m a touch torn here… love him, but would the club really put a 60% fit player up against one of the most brutal attackers in world football? I’m not so sure the answer is a simple on here.
Arsenal have earned the right to take it easy in this game. Freshness is a crucial factor heading into the final next week. I’ve banged the drum on that all season, some people even suggesting that I cut back on it… but as you know as a longtime reader, I rarely bark up a tree unless I know there’s a bird in it, and this story from Miguel Delaney hopefully gives you all you need to know there.
A growing problem at that point was not just psychological, though. It was physical. Arsenal’s players looked and felt exhausted.
That was partly because of the schedule, but also Arteta’s own training demands. The Basque’s response to any setback was to work even harder on the training ground. It was an ethic that could be construed as admirable in other circumstances, but not with finely tuned athletes. The effects could be seen in the injury crises endured every April.
So, Eberechi Eze, one of the newer players who was also among the most laid-back, went up to his boss. In so many words, he told Arteta, we can do this, but we need a bit of space.
The manager listened.
I started the season saying the biggest weakness of Arteta is how he manages the load of players; it nearly cost us again this season, but the story of Eze’s leadership above gives me hope.
We all see the laid-back guy who takes football in his stride, something I didn’t think I’d be writing about is how one man’s intervention might have saved our season from going off the rails. This intervention also only happens if you have experienced names in your squad. Are we getting that intervention if we signed Cherki? Probably not.
But we must salute Eze. It takes guts to deliver a message like that to a manager who is extremely focused and dogmatic in his beliefs. It’s one thing to say, trust us. It’s another to make sure that trust isn’t breached with a collapse in results. Eze took all that responsibility on his back, and it worked. Arsenal haven’t looked back since Bournemouth, and now we’re Premier League Champions. Sometimes, less is more… I dearly hope that lesson is taken into next season.
Also, Eze, god bless you. This is the funniest thing on the internet right now.
I just can’t imagine having to wake up every day knowing my biggest moment in life was becoming a point of ridicule for Arsenal fans and players. This home and away City fan, as dedicated to a club as a man can be, will be forever known as the guy who fueled an Arsenal title win. I’m not sure how I’d handle that. But god bless schadenfreude when it lands like that.
Also, god bless Kai Havertz winner, and Kroupi doing a number on City this week. Unai Emery’s Aston Villa butchered Freiburg and, as I predicted with clarity, his team went out on the piss after… Emery, looking ravaged by Jaeger shots, said this.
It makes me so happy he can’t hurt us this weekend. So, so happy.
Not as happy as I am to see Pep Guardiola leave Man City. The greatest there ever was is being replaced by a coach I’m not quite sure I’d class as an A-lister. It wouldn’t matter if it was, no one can match Pep Guardiola and there will be a dip there next season. Bernado is out, Rodri has been twerking for Madrid, and I suspect others might bang the table to leave now the king of managers has tapped out.
Arsenal winning the Premier League at this point really does feel quite meaningful. Chelsea are still in a messy rebuild with shaky foundations. Man City have rebuilt but they have a new coach. Liverpool and Slot do not look on solid ground. Newcastle are nowhere. United did a deal with Carrick, even though underlying numbers were worse than they were under Amorin. If we keep our best players, add some real quality, why can’t we have more season like this?
A question to ponder another day… I’ll be back before the Palace game. Enjoy the members before the whistle right now! x