Updated May 20, 2026, 10:41 a.m. ET
It didn’t have to be like this.
Arsenal could have won this Premier League championship in peace.
Instead, the Gunners’ long climb to the summit was met with years of unhinged vitriol towards Mikel Arteta and his team – devolving into a full-on moral panic this season about how the game should be played.
Thought Arsenal and its fans were annoying before? When they hadn’t won anything since 2004?
Well, they’re going to be absolutely insufferable now – and deservedly so.
Through years of having its joy regulated by the “Celebration Police,” Arsenal finally has the unarguable comeback: a Premier League trophy that no amount of performative outrage can diminish.
And “The Process” came to completion, rivals inflicted themselves with “Arsenal Derangement Syndrome,” to the point that pundits have literally fantasized on air about assaulting Arteta.
This team has been accused of ruining football because it scores on corner kicks and has the best defense in Europe. Arteta is regularly painted as some sort of dark magician who wants to suck the life out of the game.
Would it have been nice to see Arsenal’s extremely talented players play a prettier brand of ball? Sure.
But the goalposts keep moving and this level of vitriol directed at Arsenal is because the team stopped being a punchline.
For the better part of the past two decades, Arsenal was laughed at for defensive mishaps and lack of spine. But in six years, Arteta built the best center-back pairing in the world, which has held Premier League opponents scoreless in the majority of this season’s games.
And of course, Arsenal has also committed the greatest sin of all: they started scoring a ridiculous amount of goals from corner kicks.
Ultimately, it all reveals that others aren’t actually offended by Arsenal’s methods. Rivals are terrified of the Gunners’ success.
The world has had a few years to reckon that this day might come – with Arsenal finishing runner-up the past three years – but it seems nothing could prepare everybody for it actually happening.
So with the trophy heading to North London, the “Celebration Police” can hand out citations at the parade. The receipts are being cashed, and Arsenal has earned its arrogance.
