Stood on the Emirates Stadium pitch at the end of the final home game of the 2024–25 season, a teary-eyed Mikel Arteta addressed a crowd reeling from a third year in second place.“We had a dream, and it was to be here today or in a week’s time and to bring a trophies to you guys,” he said with a voice beginning to croak with emotion. “Unfortunately we haven’t been able to do it for many circumstances ... but make sure that chasing a dream doesn’t get blurry.” For large chunks of the 2025–26 campaign, it looked like Arsenal would once again lose their way amid the fog of pressure and expectation. At the end of a winding road, they finally realized that dream. Arteta always believed. “This group of players,” he declared 12 months ago, “I’m telling you, they have the hunger, they have the quality, they have the talent and we’re gonna make it happen.” Here’s how they did it.Summer Tone SettersArsenal had a very tough start to the season. | David Price/Arsenal FC/Getty Images“The competition in the league now is like nothing we’ve seen before,” Arteta warned heading into the new season. Arsenal would have no chance to ease into this vicious setting, traveling to the homes of Manchester United, Liverpool and Newcastle United while also hosting Manchester City before the end of September.The Gunners took seven points from these four games which set the template for Arteta’s approach to high-profile head-to-heads: proceed with caution. Manchester United were comfortably the better side only to be undone by the first of Arsenal’s record-breaking number of corner goals.It took late strikes to avoid defeat against City and Newcastle while Liverpool were there for the taking at Anfield, yet the visitors’ reticence to test the cracks that were already forming in the defending champions left them vulnerable to Dominik Szoboszlai’s moment of magic.By the start of October, Arsenal were second to Liverpool and only two points above a Tottenham Hotspur side enjoying Thomas Frank’s honeymoon period.Key FixturesDefend ‘Our House’Gabriel and William Saliba (right) have been rock solid. | Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC/Getty ImagesIn the absence of any attacking fluency, Arsenal leaned upon solidity. The defensive supremacy of the Premier League’s tightest rearguard peaked in autumn when the Gunners strung together eight consecutive matches across all competitions without conceding a single goal. Often, David Raya didn’t even have a shot to save.“We call [the Emirates] our house,” Myles Lewis-Skelly noted at the time, “and nothing comes in our house—our goal. We take pride in keeping clean sheets, stopping shots and crosses because we don’t want anyone scoring.” Given the failings of those in front of Arsenal’s defense, that pride in parsimony would prove to be pivotal.Arsenal’s Autumnal Defensive RecordStatValueTime SpanOct. 1, 2025–Nov. 4, 2025 (34 days)Games (All Comps)8Goals Conceded0Games Without a Shot on Target Faced3Consecutive Minutes Without Conceding812Striker ConcernsMikel Merino had to lead the line for Arsenal. | Marc Atkins/Getty ImagesShortly before he joined Arsenal after a protracted summer saga of release clauses, broken promises and blackmail threats, Viktor Gyökeres warned: “You haven’t seen the best of Gyökeres yet.” We had.Following an outrageous two-year burst of 97 goals in 102 appearances for Sporting CP, Gyökeres has made heavy weather of his debut season at Arsenal. The Swedish forward had to wait until November to score his first away goal for the Gunners yet conspired to injury himself in the process. Without Gyökeres or the sidelined Kai Havertz, Arteta had to once again turn to midfielder Mikel Merino as an emergency striker.“I’m not a classic No. 9 and I’m not born as a No. 9,” the Spaniard conceded. But he played like one. Across six consecutive appearances at center forward as November bled into December, Merino directly contributed to five Premier League goals. “It’s a joy to have him,” Arteta, who turned to his compatriot even after Gyökeres had returned to fitness, gushed.Viktor Gyökeres’s Arsenal SeasonStatistic2025–26 Premier LeagueTotal Games35Total Goals14Total Non-Penalty Goals11Non-Penalty Goals vs. Top 90Appearances Without a Shot12Living on the EdgeVAR has bailed out Arsenal. | Chris Brunskill/Fantasista/Getty ImagesAs many as 25 of Arsenal’s Premier League matches this season have been decided by a single goal. The Gunners wobbled along this tightrope most violently in the month before Christmas as a roster riddled with injuries and run into the ground by fixture congestion just about managed to keep their head above water. They rode their luck along the way—most notably benefiting from an erroneous VAR review to escape from Everton with a win—and it wasn’t a spell without its setbacks; draws to Sunderland and Chelsea were compounded by the dagger of a late loss to Aston Villa. But Arteta constantly turned to the “spirit and will” of his players. “It’s so incredible that we will overcome everything,” he promised.Declan Rice embodied that do-or-die attitude during this sequence. One week after standing out as the best player on the pitch in his first ever Premier League start as a right back against Brighton, Rice single-handedly dragged Arsenal to all three points away at Bournemouth with a midfield domination for the ages. Yet, this iteration of the Gunners is not defined by any individual—right in the middle of those two stellar performances from Rice, Arsenal hosted a royally in-form Aston Villa without their talismanic midfielder. They won 4–1.Arsenal’s Most Common Premier League Scorelines in 2025–26ResultFrequency1–0 Win82–1 Win42–0 Win41–1 Draw3Bottle Job Brigade Out in ForceWho are the bottlers now? | Catherine Ivill/AMA/Getty ImagesAfter teetering on the edge for so long, Arsenal eventually fell off. The Gunners were held to goalless draws by Liverpool and Nottingham Forest before tumbling to a helter-skelter 3–2 loss at home to Manchester United across three consecutive matches in January.Brief respite was swiftly undermined by successive draws with Brentford and relegation-doomed Wolverhampton Wanderers, who came from 2–0 down to rip open old wounds.A lead over Manchester City which could have stood at nine points was suddenly scythed down to two. It was at this point that every setback became an opening for widespread pontificating over Arsenal’s mental fortitude. After three straight years of near misses, would they “bottle it” again?The commentary became so vociferous that Arteta was confronted with the tag of “bottlers” in a press conference. “It’s not part of my vocabulary,” he curtly replied.Culture WarsFabian Hürzeler had a major issue with Arsenal. | Darren Staples/AFP/Getty ImagesPushed up against the wall, Arteta and Arsenal had to fall back upon their gritty fundamentals. As the Gunners returned to winning ways, the manner of these victories inspired widespread backlash.Liverpool boss Arne Slot set the fuse for the culture war against Arsenal’s overt physicality. “Here, you can almost hit a goalkeeper in the face and the referee still says, ‘Play on,’” the Dutch aesthete moaned.“My heart as a former player does not like it.”Arne SlotBrighton’s Fabian Hürzeler poured gasoline on the flames of this debate before Arsenal’s trip to the south coast in March, lamenting how long the Gunners take over set pieces.He had a point. At the time of his gripe, it would have been quicker to drive from London to Brighton (one hour, 56 minutes) than watch a supercut of Arsenal’s preparations for corner kicks over the course of the entire season (two hours, five minutes).Arsenal battled out a grim 1–0 win against the Seagulls with an overt focus on eking out every restart. “Only one team tried to play football,” Hürzeler wailed in vain. Pressure On and Off the Pitch Becomes Too MuchArsenal suffered Carabao Cup final disappointment. | James Gill/Danehouse/Getty ImagesArteta emphatically didn’t care about the criticism of Arsenal’s style. When faced with teams who so often sit back in a stubborn low block, relying upon set pieces proved to be the most effective way for this group of limited technicians to find the breakthrough. It clearly worked.Heading into the Carabao Cup final, Arsenal still had the chance of attempting an unprecedented quadruple. No team’s defensive rearguard could continuously keep them out, so Pep Guardiola tried a new tactic: attack.Manchester City muzzled the Gunners with a four-man press at Wembley which Southampton then replicated to knock the Londoners out of the FA Cup. Bournemouth twisted the knife by taking this suffocation to the Premier League, romping to a deserved 2–1 win at the Emirates which put the title back into Manchester City’s hands. Guardiola’s side took their opportunity by getting the better of their closest rivals at the Etihad Stadium, yet it was that defeat, counterintuitively, which represented the final positive twist in Arsenal’s season. With Eberechi Eze and Martin Ødegaard back fit, soon to be joined by Bukayo Saka, the Gunners suddenly had players capable of operating in tight spaces once again. Rather than panic, cautious positivity washed across the red streets of north London.Slumped on the pitch in east Manchester while Erling Haaland sauntered around singing along to a jubilant atmosphere, Rice told his teammates: “It’s not done.” He was right.Digging InArsenal’s season has been defined by set pieces. | Catherine Ivill-AMA/Getty ImagesFour straight league wins after that defeat to Manchester City proved enough for Arsenal to win the title. While Guardiola’s entertainers stumbled, Arteta’s battlers dug in. One impressive showing against a Fulham team struck down with a training ground virus aside, it was a torturous series of staggers to get over the line. Fortuitous misses, controversial VAR reviews and a timely rise of short corner routines eventually forced Arsenal to 12 more points.“I thought the amount of hair I have is never going to go away,” Arteta laughed after a tense 1–0 win over already relegated Burnley on Monday night, “but this job is going to test it to the limit.”The sturdily coiffured head was a little thicker at the start of the season when Arteta reflected on his team’s travails. “You keep digging, digging, digging,” he said, “and you have to be digging because one day the gold is going to be there.” Finally, Arsenal have found their way to the treasure.Arsenal’s Response to Etihad SetbackREAD THE LATEST ARSENAL NEWS, ANALYSIS AND INSIGHT FROM SI FCAdd us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow