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Champions of England · 2025-26
Twenty-five men ended a twenty-two-year wait. This is for them.
It happened the way these things sometimes do. Quietly, on a Sunday, with most of us not watching the right match.
Arsenal beat Burnley on the Saturday. Havertz, in the eighty-first. Nothing about it felt like a coronation. The next afternoon, Manchester City played Bournemouth at the Vitality and could only draw, and somewhere in the run of normal play, in a stadium nobody at the Emirates was inside, Arsenal won the league. We won it without kicking a ball.
The Banter Years had a name because they had a tone. Three runners-up finishes in a row. The 3-0 at Spurs in April 2022 that lost us the top four. The 8-2. The 5-1. Welbeck missing at Anfield. Eboue going off at Spurs. We made the jokes about ourselves before anyone else could because that was the only deal still on the table.
The point of this page is to write the names down. Not as a roll call. As a marker. The men who showed up six years in a row, and were told the project was too slow, and then weren't.
Twenty-five men. Fourteen countries. The squad has the shape a squad has when one manager has spent six years building it. Half the spine came up through Hale End. Half came from somewhere else nobody was paying attention to until they were. Tommy Setford was born in Haarlem to English parents and spent eleven years in Ajax's academy before Arsenal signed him at eighteen. Max Dowman was born on the last day of 2009 and is the only player in this team from the 2010s. Myles Lewis-Skelly chose the shirt number 49 as a deliberate tribute to Wenger's unbeaten Invincibles run, a record set before he was born.
Gabriel Magalhães cried on the Sunday night, on a video everyone is sharing. Declan Rice, released by Chelsea's academy at fourteen, captioned his Instagram I told you all… it's done. Bukayo Saka, who came through Hale End at seven and started his first Premier League match at seventeen, said the line all of us needed someone to say: twenty-two years, they were laughing and joking. They're not laughing anymore.
Arsène Wenger, the manager who lifted it last, sent the squad a video the same night. You did it. Champions go on when others stop. This is your time. Now go on, and enjoy the moment.
Thank you. For all of it.
Arsenal's table position, week by week, across every Premier League season since 2003-04. The first and last lines, flat at the top, are the seasons we won it. The twenty-one between are the wait. Click any season.
Y-axis · 1st at the top, 20th at the bottom · 38 matchweeks left to right · data via football-data.co.uk
Twenty-two years, they were laughing and joking. They're not laughing anymore.
Hover any face. Click for the path to Arsenal.
Saka came in 2008. Gyökeres landed seventeen years later. Hale End academy graduates in red. Hover any dot.
Arsène Wenger, the manager who lifted the trophy the last time, sent the squad a video the same night.
You did it. Champions go on when others stop. This is your time. Now go on, and enjoy the moment.
Thank you, Arsenal.
Bonus · the numbers behind the title
Arsenal are Premier League champions for the first time since 2003-04. Twenty-two seasons since the Invincibles. Mikel Arteta lifted the trophy at the Emirates. The squad is the youngest title-winning team in the club's modern history, with eleven of the twenty-five men twenty-three or younger, and a spine half-built from Hale End graduates Bukayo Saka, Ethan Nwaneri, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Max Dowman, and Reiss Nelson.
Arsenal won the 2025-26 Premier League title with games to spare after Manchester City drew 1-1 at Bournemouth on Sunday 18 May 2026. The result mathematically ended a title race the Gunners had led from matchweek two. The trophy lift is scheduled for the final home game of the season, with the open-top bus parade through Islington the morning after the Champions League final.
Goalkeepers: David Raya, Karl Hein, Tommy Setford. Defenders: William Saliba, Cristhian Mosquera, Ben White, Piero Hincapié, Gabriel Magalhães, Jurriën Timber, Jakub Kiwior, Riccardo Calafiori, Myles Lewis-Skelly. Midfielders: Bukayo Saka, Martin Ødegaard, Christian Nørgaard, Ethan Nwaneri, Mikel Merino, Martín Zubimendi, Declan Rice. Forwards: Gabriel Jesus, Eberechi Eze, Gabriel Martinelli, Viktor Gyökeres, Leandro Trossard, Noni Madueke, Reiss Nelson, Kai Havertz, Max Dowman.
A data-led tribute to the Arsenal title-winning squad. Every Premier League season since 2003-04 charted week by week. A clickable squad of all twenty-five players with their route to Arsenal. A tenure timeline showing how Arteta built this team one signing at a time. Plus the full match-by-match position data for 873 Premier League games, season modals you can scrub through, the official Arsenal Football Club celebration video, and the schedule for trophy lift, Champions League final, and the parade.
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