Arsenal’s title party spilled into the early hours in Mayfair on Tuesday night, with Eberechi Eze among the players seen celebrating at Tape after Bournemouth’s draw with Manchester City sealed the club’s first championship since 2004.
Daniel Bull, a 22-year-old Arsenal fan, said he and two friends paid what he called a “not the cheapest” entry fee to get into the exclusive nightclub, then found themselves as the only supporters in the room while most of Mikel Arteta’s squad gathered in a private area upstairs. “I was thinking what the hell is going on?” Bull said. “I had just heard a whisper.”
Bull had been at every Arsenal away game in Europe this season and had planned to travel to Budapest for the Champions League final against Paris Saint-Germain, but Tuesday night gave him a different kind of ticket. He said he and his friends were inside for “about two or three hours” before the scale of the celebration became clear. “I couldn’t believe what was happening,” he said. “It’s a very, very exclusive nightclub and we were the only Arsenal fans in there.”
From the lower part of the club, Bull said he could see Noni Madueke on the microphone for much of the night. Madueke had returned home before immediately announcing, “I’m going out.” Bull said, “It was only about five steps from the lower part of the club and we could see that Madueke was on the mic for most of the night; he was basically the MC.” He added: “He was rapping the whole night.” A video of Arteta telling the crowd “champions of England” later spread across social media.
Bull said he spoke to Myles Lewis-Skelly and Ethan Nwaneri, describing both as friendly, and added that his friend chatted with Christian Nørgaard because he is Norwegian. “Because my mate’s Norwegian he was chatting to Christian Nørgaard, which was quite cool,” Bull said. He also said: “You shook Eze’s hand!” as he recalled the evening. Declan Rice, Bukayo Saka, Jurriën Timber, Viktor Gyökeres, Arteta and Eze were all seen at the club.
The celebration did not end there. Rice, Saka, Timber and Eze were later spotted wandering around the Emirates at 5am, with Bull describing the night as “carnage.” After a few hours’ sleep, Rice went off to play nine holes of golf. For Arsenal, the title was already secured by the time the party started. For the fans who happened to be inside Tape, the distance from the dance floor to the trophy moment was measured in minutes, not seasons.
