For two decades, Arsenal supporters had grown accustomed to a particular kind of pain. Eight runner-up finishes since their last Premier League title in 2004, three of them under Mikel Arteta himself, including the 89-point campaign of 2022-23 that ended with Manchester City lifting the trophy by five points. On Sunday afternoon at the Emirates, that ended. A 2-0 win over Newcastle, goals from Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard, sealed a 17-point gap at the top and a first league title in 22 years. But the story of how Arteta dragged Arsenal across the line was not written on Sunday. It was written on a boat off the Costa del Sol, in a hotel function room set briefly on fire, and to the soundtrack of a TikTok song nobody at the club can stop singing.
The reset on the water
The turning point, according to those inside London Colney, came in early August during a four-day pre-season training camp in Marbella. After last season’s collapse — Arsenal led the table on April 5 before winning two of their final seven games and finishing second to City by two points — Arteta scrapped the planned tactical sessions on day two. Instead, he chartered a 40-metre catamaran, took his entire first-team squad out into the Mediterranean, and asked each player to stand up and say what had gone wrong.
Declan Rice spoke first. Saka, who had played through a hamstring injury for the final six weeks of the previous campaign, went last and was reported to have broken down. Gabriel Magalhaes, Ben White and Jurrian Timber all addressed the group. Arteta himself, according to two senior players, accepted responsibility for “overcoaching” the run-in and promised to loosen his grip in the final third. By the time the boat returned to port, the squad had agreed three non-negotiables for the season: zero excuses on set-pieces, no public criticism of referees, and a collective fine system for late arrivals that funded a season-ending party.
Fire, fines and a viral chant
The fire came three weeks later. At a team dinner in a private room at a Mayfair hotel, Gabriel Jesus attempted to light a sparkler on a cake celebrating Kai Havertz’s 26th birthday and ignited the table runner. The blaze was extinguished within seconds by a quick-thinking Oleksandr Zinchenko and a jug of water, but the photographs — leaked weeks later by a waiter — became a touchstone for a squad that had spent two seasons being described as too serious, too brittle, too Arteta.
The other catalyst was musical. In September, midfielder Myles Lewis-Skelly, 19, played a sped-up edit of a Central Cee track on the team bus heading to Tottenham. Arsenal won 1-0. The same song was played before every away win that followed. By March it had been adopted by the supporters’ end at the Emirates, racked up 47 million TikTok views under the hashtag #GunnerSeason, and Arteta had given Lewis-Skelly permission to DJ the dressing room before every game.
- Points total: 92, equalling the club’s Premier League record set in 2003-04
- Goals conceded: 24, the lowest in the division by seven
- Set-piece goals: 21, more than any side in Europe’s top five leagues
- Average squad age: 24.9, the youngest title-winning side since Manchester United in 1995-96
What it means now
This title resets the Premier League’s gravitational centre. City, champions in six of the past seven seasons, finished third on 75 points, their lowest total under Pep Guardiola. Liverpool, second on 82, sacked Arne Slot in April. Arsenal have done it with a wage bill £180m lower than City’s and a squad in which seven regular starters are 23 or younger.
The Champions League, where Arsenal were eliminated in the quarter-finals by Real Madrid for a second consecutive year, is now the obvious next frontier. Arteta has already told the board he wants two signings: a left-sided forward to share Saka’s burden, and a deep-lying midfielder to allow Rice to push higher. Both are expected before the squad reconvenes in July — on the same boat, in the same harbour, with the same song playing.
For now, the open-top bus rolls through Islington on Wednesday. The wait, finally, is over.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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