Not only have soccer fans heard the word surrounding Arsenal by now, they’ve surely heard it hundreds of times.
“Bottle.” As in, to fumble away a golden opportunity through your own incompetence. “Choke” being the closest analog in American sports parlance.
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The Gunners finished second the past three seasons in a row, allowing Manchester City to hunt them down the first two and then floundering as Liverpool took the crown many expected to be theirs last season. It almost became intrinsic to Arsenal, in the minds of soccer fans and media and maybe even players themselves, this idea that what bottlecapped Mikel Arteta’s project was not down to talent or resources, but to mentality and weakness in the most pressure-packed of moments.
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It sure seemed headed that way again in late April when Arsenal lost at City, failing to win for a fifth time in six games across all competitions. City erased a nine-point gap in the table on Arsenal in just over a month. The Gunners were bottling it again.
Midfielder Declan Rice, arguably Arsenal’s best player, was glimpsed moments after the loss telling teammates “it’s not done.” At the time, it seemed like he was trying to convince himself the inevitable wouldn’t happen.
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As of Tuesday, it proved prophetic.
City drew 1-1 at Bournemouth to render Arsenal mathematically uncatchable atop the Premier League table heading into the final weekend, and giving Arsenal its long-awaited first league title in 22 years.
Arsenal’s evolution spurred by Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City
Since that loss to City, Arsenal has won four in a row in the league and advanced to the Champions League final for the first time in 20 years, dispatching Atlético Madrid over two legs. Moreover, the Gunners conceded just once over those six games, a penalty at the cauldron-like Wanda Metropolitano in Madrid.
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That’s a distinct element of the Arsenal that Arteta yearned to build ever since his appointment as manager in December 2019 — and one that was in direct response to City’s outgoing manager, Pep Guardiola.
Guardiola spent a decade changing the face of the Premier League through expansive, innovative tactics and expensive, intense team-building. He was constantly evolving City, with players popping up in different spots and serving different roles and driving the rest of the league up the wall trying to defend it. Arteta saw it firsthand, spending over three years as Guardiola’s chief assistant before taking the top job at Arsenal, where he played the final five seasons of his career.
Mikel Arteta won the Premier League with Arsenal after years of trying to dispatch Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City.
(Visionhaus via Getty Images)
City won the league six times in seven seasons under Guardiola with unconscionable point totals (three for a win, one for a draw, none for a loss). Its 100 points to win the title in 2017-18 remain a record to this day, while Liverpool’s 97 a year later (City had 98) are by far the most ever by a league runner-up. For reference, the maximum number of points a Premier League team can earn is 114.
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There was unconscionable financial backing, too, that comes with a caveat. City is still facing an unprecedented 115 charges of breaching FIFA’s financial fair play (FFP) rules from 2009-2018, and while the details are somewhat convoluted, the simple allegations accuse City of false accounting and improper disclosure of financial figures that helped it spend much more money on players than other clubs. Scores of clubs have been punished with point deductions and such for related but far lesser offenses, while City’s case has been stuck in limbo for over three years.
That won’t be re-litigated in this space, because as it directly relates to Arsenal’s Premier League title this season, the task of unseating Guardiola’s City was simple. And staggering, even for a super-rich club like Arsenal.
How Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal endeavored to return to the top of the Premier League
Instead of trying to beat City at its own game, Arteta sought to constrict the game. It would be both wrong and unfair to characterize Arteta’s tactics over the years as negative soccer, or dark arts-y in totality. But they certainly desired to control possession, build chances through intricate passing sequences, and master rest defense (i.e. when you’re out of possession).
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Look at three of Arsenal’s last four Premier League victories, all 1-0s that perhaps belied how much the Gunners were really in control each time. It wouldn’t always be pretty and free-flowing and forward-minded, but it would be effective.
It’s a far cry from the mess Arteta inherited, with Arsenal trending toward mid-table finishes on an annual basis and wholly unfit to challenge for the two biggest trophies on offer to English clubs, the Premier League and Champions League, which Arsenal will try to win for the first time on May 30. A former Arsenal captain himself, Arteta made the most out of his limited abilities through work rate and smarts, and he sought to imprint such qualities on his sides.
Kai Havertz (29)scored the decisive goal as Arsenal beat Burnley on Monday, points that proved critical to winning the Premier League.
(Stuart MacFarlane via Getty Images)
First, he needed the squad to do it, and Arsenal underwent a series of key changes in that regard. Together with club sporting directors Edu and Andrea Berta — the former the first ever in the club’s history — as well as academy director Per Mertesacker, a longtime Arsenal defender who joined the club on the same day as Arteta in late August 2011, Arteta identified the players needed to contend, and Arsenal’s ownership opened up the checkbook.
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Nobody can realistically outspend City, but Stan Kroenke, who owns the Gunners in addition to the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams, NBA’s Denver Nuggets, NHL’s Colorado Avalanche and MLS’ Colorado Rapids, has smashed club transfer records the past few years. With Kroenke’s son Josh helping guide the club as co-chair, 12 of Arsenal’s 20 most expensive signings ever play for the 2025-26 team, including seven of the top 10 and four of the top five. So through player development and shrewd transfer market spending, Arsenal built a squad capable of restoring glory.
Arsenal doesn’t win the Premier League this season without failure
That took time, probably more time than is typically allotted to projects nowadays in major club soccer, and didn’t begin yielding true dividends until the 2022-23 campaign, when a number of promising youngsters came of age. Arsenal’s youth showed late, winning just three times in its final nine league matches and ceding the title to City despite having spent 30 of 38 matchweeks in first place.
The following campaign, Arsenal finished on an absolute tear, winning 16 times in its last 18 games, picking up 49 of a possible 54 points from late January on. It finished second again, as City didn’t lose any of its final 23 matches.
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Last season, injuries piled up at a ridiculous clip, and Liverpool’s veteran stars turned back the clock to cruise relatively unencumbered to a second Premier League title in five years. Arsenal finished second once again.
Call all that “bottling” if you’d like. More accurately, it’s just the scars you have to earn before the trophies come.
Winning the Premier League takes a mixture of talent, planning, timing and good fortune. It’s not about beating all the other best teams — indeed, Arsenal’s record against the other clubs at the top of the table this season isn’t as sterling as it’s been in recent years — or catching fire over a single postseason.
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It’s about 38 battles played out over nearly 10 months, home and away at every club in the league, the same points available to everyone else, with their attendant ups and downs and triumphs and setbacks and navigation of both the outside noise and the inside nerves.
After their meeting in April, Arsenal negotiated it all better than City, which suffered two critical draws to help the Gunners get over the finish line.
Arsenal may not have done it in a style that appeases neutrals, and certainly not with City’s flair. But it has done it nonetheless, the culmination of a yearslong project, the “bottler” label now bottled up forever.
