Arsenal are Premier League champions for the first time since the Invincibles. They finished on 85 points, seven clear of Manchester City, and wrapped it up with a game still to play. It is their 14th English title and the first since 2004.

The gap is the part worth sitting with. Twenty-two seasons is long enough that a supporter who was ten the last time is thirty-two now. Long enough for three rebuilds, four permanent managers, and a stadium move that was meant to pay for a squad and instead paid for itself.

The version of the story that gets told is about belief and a young squad turning a corner. The version the table tells is duller and more useful. They lost five matches. That is the whole thing. City scored nearly as many and conceded about as few, and finished seven back because they dropped points in games nobody remembers.

Titles are usually described as something a team wins in April. Mostly they are lost in November, in the fixtures that look free.

Three things that transfer out of football and into anything with a long season.

• Consistency beats peaks. Erling Haaland scored 27 and took the Golden Boot. His team finished second.
• The unremarkable games decide it. Nobody builds a plan around a Tuesday. The Tuesdays add up anyway.
• A gap that long is never one problem. Twenty-two years of not-quite is a sequence of different failures that happen to share a scoreboard.

The Premier League confirmed it here: Arsenal end 22-year wait for the title

How the table finishedCopy anchor linkCopied

Arsenal 85, City 78, United 71. Haaland's 27 goals won the Golden Boot and nothing else. Tottenham survived by two points. West Ham, Burnley and Wolves went down. See the full final table

What the club saidCopy anchor linkCopied

Arsenal published their own account on the day it was confirmed, and it is worth reading for the tone as much as the detail. Arsenal crowned 2025/26 champions

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