Stood on the Emirates Stadium pitch after a third successive second-place finish, Mikel Arteta’s belief set the tone for 2025\u201326. \u201cThis group of players,\u201d he declared 12 months ago, \u201cI\u2019m telling you, they have the hunger, they have the quality, they have the talent and we\u2019re gonna make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
The season opened against the sharpest rivals: trips to Manchester United, Liverpool and Newcastle United and a home game with Manchester City before the end of September. Arsenal took seven points from those four fixtures and adopted a cautious approach to high-profile head-to-heads. Manchester United were comfortably the better side only to be undone by the first of Arsenal\u2019s record-breaking number of corner goals. Late strikes avoided defeat against City and Newcastle while Dominik Szoboszlai supplied a decisive moment at Anfield.<\/p>\n
When attacking fluency waned, Arsenal leaned on defence. Between Oct. 1, 2025 and Nov. 4, 2025 (34 days) the team went eight consecutive matches across all competitions without conceding a goal. Across that run Arsenal conceded 0 goals, faced no shot on target in three games and amassed 812 consecutive minutes without conceding. \u201cWe call [the Emirates] our house,\u201d Myles Lewis-Skelly noted at the time, \u201cand nothing comes in our house\u2014our goal. We take pride in keeping clean sheets, stopping shots and crosses because we don\u2019t want anyone scoring.\u201d<\/p>\n
New arrival Viktor Gy\u00f6keres had warned, \u201cYou haven\u2019t seen the best of Gy\u00f6keres yet.\u201d After a two-year spell of 97 goals in 102 appearances for Sporting CP, his debut season was difficult. Injuries and absences to Gy\u00f6keres and Kai Havertz forced Arteta to use Mikel Merino up front. \u201cI\u2019m not a classic No. 9 and I\u2019m not born as a No. 9,\u201d the Spaniard conceded. \u201cIt\u2019s a joy to have him,\u201d Arteta said of Merino\u2019s contribution.<\/p>\n
The campaign was tight: 25 Premier League games decided by a single goal, narrow escapes and contentious VAR reviews, plus a run that included goalless draws and home defeats in January that cut a nine-point advantage to two. Arteta dismissed the \u201cbottlers\u201d tag. \u201cIt\u2019s not part of my vocabulary,\u201d he curtly replied.<\/p>\n
After setbacks in cup finals and the Etihad defeat, returns from injury for Eberechi Eze, Martin \u00d8degaard and Bukayo Saka helped revive Arsenal. Declan Rice rallied teammates with three simple words: \u201cIt\u2019s not done.\u201d Four straight league victories after Manchester City delivered the margin Arsenal needed to clinch the title. Fortuitous misses, controversial VAR reviews and a timely rise of short corner routines provided the final 12 points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After a season of clean sheets, late goals and set-piece routines, Arsenal sealed the 2025-26 title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13935,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,172],"tags":[1505,1081,1162],"class_list":["post-13936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-epl","tag-accountability","tag-adaptation","tag-analytics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}