Mikel Arteta ended Arsenal’s 22-year wait for a league championship on Sunday, guiding the club to the 2025/26 Premier League title and becoming the first former Arsenal player to lead the team to a top-flight crown as manager.
The 44-year-old did it with 25 league wins this campaign, and his triumph arrived after a path that looked nothing like a straight line when he took charge in December 2019. Arsenal finished eighth in his first few months in charge, then eighth again in 2020/21, before climbing to fifth 12 months later and finishing as Premier League runners-up in each of the three seasons after that. By the time the title was sealed, Arteta had managed 351 games, built a win ratio above 60% and become the youngest Gunners boss to win the league championship at 44 years and 54 days old.
The scale of the achievement sits inside Arsenal’s own history as much as this season’s numbers. The club had gone 22 years without winning the league championship, had claimed 14 in total before this breakthrough, and had never before been led to Europe’s top prize by a manager from within its own playing past. That makes Arteta’s title run both a personal milestone and a rare moment in a 139-year history that has seen many near misses, but no previous Arsenal manager deliver the club to become champions of Europe.
Arsenal’s season also carries a wider significance because the title came with the club already set to play Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League final for Europe’s premier club trophy. That gave Arteta’s side a chance to turn a domestic breakthrough into a double of the kind Arsenal have spent decades chasing, while also testing whether this team’s rise is complete or still only halfway told.
The tension now is not about whether Arsenal have finally ended the drought. It is about how far Arteta can take a team that has gone from eighth to the top of England under one manager, and whether this title becomes the start of a sustained era rather than the peak of a remarkable climb. For supporters who waited 22 years, the answer will matter just as much as the celebration.
