At times like this, it is hard to single out one person over the collective. Each member of Arsenal’s Premier League-winning squad played some part in that success, but a decision has to be made.Objectively, there are three frontrunners to be our choice as the club’s 2025-26 player of the season.William Saliba may not be as loud and visible as fellow centre-back Gabriel alongside him, but his constant calm has been a key factor in Arsenal finally becoming champions again. Declan Rice has been the figurehead of the run-in since his “It’s not done” declaration after April’s defeat at title rivals Manchester City, and has been the engine beneath the well-oiled machine that finally got over the line.Both these players are likely to get The Athletic articles dedicated to them in the near future, but if you’re looking for the embodiment of the consistency that brought Arsenal their first league title in 22 years, look no further than David Raya.He has become just the fourth player to win the Premier League Golden Glove for three successive seasons, with clean sheets in 51.4 per cent of his league appearances (19 in 37). So committed to not letting anything slip out of his grasp, the 30-year-old even wore his goalie gloves to lift the Premier League trophy, despite being rested against Crystal Palace yesterday.His save at 0-0 against West Ham two weeks earlier will be the moment Raya is remembered for this season, but his consistency has shone through this campaign since the visit to Manchester United on its opening Sunday in August.Raya’s crucial save from Mateus Fernandes will surely go down as the most memorable moment of his season (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)As first days back at work go, this one was particularly busy for the Spain international. He made seven saves, the most in the Premier League that weekend, with an excellent reaction stop, low down with his left hand to deny Matheus Cunha, that even he could not explain afterwards the pick of the bunch.There was another side to his game that day which illustrated his importance to Arsenal.Big shock, but the only goal came from an Arsenal corner as Riccardo Calafiori headed in a Rice delivery that was fumbled by Altay Bayindir (6ft 6in; 198cm). Raya has always been considered short for a goalkeeper at just 6ft (183cm), but dealing with crosses has been a standout strength since his days at previous club Brentford, and he dealt with similar moments with an authority that singles him out as the league’s best at his position.Reflecting on Raya’s performance in these situations, Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta said in September: “David is very big here (pointing to his head), and he’s very brave. You cannot be the tallest, but you have the will and the courage to go for this kind of balls. That’s a massive attribute.”Raya pictured at Old Trafford in Arsenal’s first game of the season, in which he made seven saves (Michael Regan/Getty Images)That ability to calmly claim crosses when coming through a bunch of bodies has been evident throughout this season, but the major theme that has underpinned Raya’s consistency is concentration.He ranks 19th in the Premier League for total saves made this season (60, less than half the highest amount — 127), but his contributions require more understanding than that bare number. Considering Arsenal were fourth in the league for possession (56.3 per cent) and conceded the fewest shots on target (90 — three of which came yesterday, when he wasn’t playing), the emphasis is not on the quantity of the saves Raya makes, but the quality.Even then, quality is not talking about just how impressive a stop looks, but how important it is in the moment.Many of Raya’s best saves this season came at critical moments for Arsenal, either when they were level in games or had a one-goal lead.In the second match of the season, another reaction save, from a corner, kept the score 0-0 at home against Leeds. Jurrien Timber then scored Arsenal’s opener, from a corner of their own, 15 minutes later. Similar moments have come against Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa, Brighton, Chelsea and Everton over the course of the campaign.One stop that went under the radar at a critical point in the season was in the eventual 4-1 win away to Tottenham in February. The teams went in at the break level at 1-1, and Xavi Simons then struck the ball powerfully towards the Arsenal goal just 19 seconds into the second half. Raya was cat-like in his reactions, springing into a full-stretch immediately and getting two hands on the shot while fully extended.Just over a minute later, Viktor Gyokeres blasted the ball into the Spurs net from a similar spot to where Simons had made his attempt at the other end of the pitch.That win came four days after the 2-2 draw away to relegation-bound Wolves that many Arsenal players have since cited as a low point in their season.Had that Simons shot gone in, putting Tottenham ahead, even though Arsenal had been the better team in the first half, the rest of that game could have had a very different complexion. Instead, Raya came to the rescue. As he so often does — especially in the Champions League, where, with the final still to come on Saturday, he has kept a record nine clean sheets for a single season and saved 33 (89.2 per cent) of the 37 shots on target he’s faced.Credit must be shared with Arsenal’s whole defensive unit for the number of teams they have shut-out this season, as they collectively helped equal a 122-year-old club record of eight consecutive clean sheets across October and early November, but this is an opportunity to appreciate the man between the sticks.He may be smiling with wavy locks now, but like many of his team-mates, he has had to grind to get to this point.Raya left his hometown of Barcelona as a 16-year-old to join Blackburn Rovers’ academy in 2012, the summer their first team were relegated from the Premier League. He had a character-building loan spell in non-League football with Southport aged 18.Having moved to fellow second-tier side Brentford in summer 2019, he could have helped them earn promotion to the Premier League in his first season, but was caught out of position for a long-range free-kick goal in the Championship play-off final and became the butt of many a joke after his team lost that match 2-1 to Fulham.Arsenal were already interested in him at that point, with their existing backup Emiliano Martinez set to join Aston Villa ahead of the 2020-21 season, but they had to wait three years to finally give Arteta the goalkeeper he wanted in place of the much-loved Aaron Ramsdale, initially on loan, in August 2023.As they had to wait three years for him, so he has had to wait three years to lift the Premier League trophy with Arsenal, but the moments of struggle have made it all the more worth it.Raya in League One action for Blackburn in 2017 (Pete Norton/Getty Images)“His journey is incredible,” Arteta said recently. “The way he has matured, the way he had to earn things. I think that shows you his mentality now. It has to. It’s something that has been growing on him.“When you have to really earn it, and you value certain things, it is a bit different not only for him but for his family, his friends, his agent and his parents. They all know how much you have to do to arrive here (with his current status in the game) and how hard it is to maintain yourself at that level.“What David has done for us in the past few years has been incredible.”