The morning after the night before north London had been rendered a sea of red and white delirium, it is impossible not to cast the mind back to one of the bleakest days in Arsenal’s modern history, one that ultimately represented the catalyst for the seismic changes that have eventually yielded a first Premier League title in 22 years.
On a freezing cold December evening six-and-a-half years ago, Arsenal, without a manager having dispensed with Unai Emery, were cut to ribbons by a Manchester City side who were operating in a different stratosphere.
Three goals inside 40 of the most one-sided minutes imaginable were played out in front of a passionless, disengaged Emirates Stadium and neatly encapsulated the state of disrepair one of English football’s most famous clubs had fallen into.
Where most saw carnage, apathy and rank unprofessionalism, one man saw opportunity; his name was Mikel Arteta.
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Within days of having been sat in the dugout next to Pep Guardiola watching City toy with this sad incarnation of Arsenal, Arteta waltzed into the Gunners’ training ground declaring himself the man best qualified to mastermind the rebuilding job, talking of culture shifts and asking if the club used drones to film training sessions.
The confidence he exuded may well have in part been founded in the knowledge that by sticking to your principles and maintaining a clear vision, change can be enacted faster than any disbeliever could imagine.
After all, the mess he inherited was not dissimilar to the chaos Arsene Wenger was overseeing when he brought Arteta to the club as a player in the summer of 2011. Arsenal’s team of waifs and strays, which had just been forced to sell two star players in Samir Nasri and Cesc Fabregas, had been annihilated 8-2 at Old Trafford.
A scattergun late transfer window trolley dash ensued, a new side emerged and delivered relative success in the shape of consistent Champions League qualification, before belated investment arrived and several FA Cup triumphs followed.
Despite lacking the support his rivals at the time benefited from, Wenger stuck steadfastly to his principles with various squads that were in no way comparable to the title-winning monsters he built earlier in his reign. It would have left a lasting impression on Arteta and his former teammate Per Mertesacker, who leaves Arsenal this summer having turned the club’s academy into one of Europe’s great star-making production lines.
While the brand of football under Arteta has evolved into something less in keeping with what he would have envisioned at the start of his reign, the unflinching commitment and dedication he demands from every single employee at the club has not.
Ultimately, it is that slavish devotion to every facet of running a football club and demanding nothing short of perfection that has helped Arsenal get over the line and end an interminable 22-year wait.
The setbacks along the way, and there have been many agonising ones, have only strengthened his resolve while others, including I must confess myself, have grown increasingly sceptical he was capable of turning challengers into winners.
Maintaining faith has been anything but straightforward, especially this season when there has been an expectation, rather than a hope, that this would be Arsenal’s time.
An unprecedented summer of spending coincided with deep, irreparable cracks emerging at City and Liverpool that presented Arsenal with a once in a generation opportunity and Arteta with a squad that covered almost every base.
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Rather than seize their moment by exhibiting the adventurous brand of football which characterised the team that decorated the 2022/23 Premier League campaign but fell away in the home straight, Arsenal have become the sort of grizzled mean machine they were once the antithesis of.
Every game has been rendered something of an endurance test, a nerve-shredding experience that has done little to ease the collective blood pressure of a fanbase who believe there is more to come from this group of players.
‘You might not love me, which breaks my heart, but you will respect me,’ was a line delivered with chilling venom by Tony Soprano in the direction of his wayward nephew and heir apparent after one particularly ill-advised act of defiance, but it could equally be uttered by Arteta in the direction of his detractors now he has the silverware to justify his methods.
Nineteen clean sheets is a remarkable achievement in itself, while the succession of narrow 1-0 victories in the run-in stands as a testament to the bottle this group can now lay claim to possessing, having so often been mercilessly ridiculed for lacking resolve.
This Arsenal team may have struggled to garner the affection that was bestowed on their predecessors and only in time will they be held in the same esteem. The detractors will focus on their pragmatic nature, reliance on set-pieces and mechanical, at times turgid, football.
Ultimately, however, Arsenal are winners again and that, as Arteta will rightly point out after a succession of painstaking near misses, is really all that counts.