Patience, and the willingness to do the right thing, will get you there, reckons
JOSHUA J. OMOJUWA
By the time the referee blew the final whistle as Bournemouth and Manchester City battled each other to a 1-1 draw, I felt grateful for the journey it took to get to that moment. Because I had believed so strongly that this was going to be Arsenal’s league title to win, that moment felt like a déjà vu. Except that it wasn’t. That result meant that Arsenal had become the Champions of England for the first time since 2004.
Arsenal have waited 22 years for this. Their last title was the Invincibles season of 2003/04 under Arsène Wenger. That campaign was so complete, so historically perfect, that it simultaneously became the club’s greatest achievement and its longest shadow. Everything that followed happened under that shadow. The declining years of Wenger’s tenure. The chaos of the post-Wenger period. Unai Emery’s messy tenure. Incidentally, Emery himself won yet another Europa Cup this week with Aston Villa. The Kroenke era had evolved into a squad with a Champions League wage bill on a Europa League budget. The protests. The near-misses.
And then, quietly, something changed.
