Piero Hincapie was ready to aim a dig at Manchester City fans as Arsenal won the Premier League title on Tuesday night.
Manchester City needed to win at Bournemouth to keep the title race alive but were held to a 1-1 draw by the Cherries.
That results saw the Gunners crowned champions for the first time since 2004, with Mikel Arteta’s men holding a four-point lead going into the final weekend of the season.
The Arsenal players were gathered at their training centre to watch the game at the Vitality Stadium together and unsurprisingly went wild at the final whistle.
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Bottles of beer were opened to celebrate the title victory, but it was another bottle which raised more eyebrows as Hincapie took aim at the Gunners’ title rivals.
During Manchester City’s 3-0 win at Chelsea in April, when it seemed they were in a strong position in the title race, a City fan memorably drank from an Arsenal bottle, caught on the Sky Sports cameras.
It suggested that Arsenal were bottling the title race, but Hincapie took his chance to suggest it was Manchester City that have done just that, by swigging from a very similar bottle while front and centre of the celebrations.
Bukayo Saka posted a video on social media which saw Myles Lewis-Skelly grasping a bottle of bubbly and saying: ‘ They called us bottlers. They called us bottlers. And now we’re holding the bottle!’
The Arsenal players will have to wait until Sunday to get their hands on the Premier League trophy when they go to Selhurst Park to play Crystal Palace.
Instead they celebrated with a cardboard cut-out of the famous piece of silverware on Tuesday night.
Arsenal star Declan Rice posted on Instagram during the celebrations, sharing a selfie alongside Kai Havertz, Eberechi Eze, Lewis-Skelly, Saka and William Saliba, captioning the post: ‘I told you all, it’s done.’
Rice’s words were in reference to the viral clip of him mouthing ‘it’s not done’ following Arsenal’s defeat at Manchester City in April.
That afternoon, Arsenal’s fate was briefly taken out of their own hands with City appearing to taken the upper hand in the battle for first place.
Rice has been proven right and Arsenal fans have joined their players in wildly celebrating the success.
Thousands surrounded the Emirates as the title glory was confirmed, including club legend Ian Wright who partied alongside supporters.
After the crucial dropped points at Bournemouth, Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola congratulated his friend and former colleague Arteta.
‘On behalf of Man City, congratulations to Arsenal, Mikel and all the backroom staff on the Premier League that they deserve,’ said Guardiola.
‘He put a lot of effort and work. Congratulations to him.’