So, there will be something joyous playing out in the London sunshine, this time. A title celebration, at Crystal Palace, rendered even sweeter by the dull ache they have felt at the Emirates in the past two years, as Mikel Arteta has taken the microphone under blue skies and sent the faithful off for the summer with the assurance that next time would be different for the runners-up.
The haters and the cynics will be full of whataboutery, of course. That VAR intervention at West Ham. The grappling at corners. ‘Set piece FC,’ as Chris Sutton called them.
The mere act of suggesting Arsenal’s mentality has seemed different this time – more robust – carried a knowledge of the sneering taunts in return at every fleeting setback this season.
‘We’re gonna have a party when Arsenal f*** it up,’ fans of Chelsea, the most scandalously run club in the Premier League, have become fond of singing. Knock yourself out, boys.
But it’s not just a new narrative that we can take some pleasure in today – the English title claimed by a club lacking either the petro-dollars of a sovereign wealth fund or, to quote John W Henry when he first walked into Anfield, an owner with ‘Sheikh’ before his name – but the knowledge that success has been achieved with the utmost transparency. The champions of England do not have the number ‘115’ lurking in the margins.
Arsenal’s players watch Manchester City drop points on Tuesday night, handing them the Premier League title
Winger Leandro Trossard celebrates his crucial winner against West Ham earlier this month
There have been plenty of moments during the latter years of Pep Guardiola’s glorious decade, when those charges of financial impropriety have seemed a minor inconvenience, gradually vanishing into the mists of time.
Erling Haaland signing a new nine-year deal on £400,000 a week. The £500million net transfer spend since 2024. The £97m outlay on Marc Guehi and Antoine Semenyo this January alone. Guardiola signing off with a seventh title, wrapped up in a domestic treble, while ‘the 115’ is haggled to death, would have surely felt like more of the same.
Instead, we have a very different story of success. A club, in Arsenal, who have not felt the need to stretch the financial sustainability rules to breaking point or indulge in opaque fiscal chicanery. A club who, unlike Manchester City, have not taken us deep into the nuances of ‘related party transactions’ and, unlike Chelsea, have not sold its own women’s football team to ‘itself’ and claim the transaction puts it in profit.
In the coming days, we will surely hear the thoughts of Arsene Wenger, whose observations about the ‘kind of doping’ he detested in the sugar-daddy clubs like Chelsea and City was mocked by many as outdated at the time.
Wenger had accepted the loss of money from his transfer pot to invest in a new stadium and manfully suffered because of it. When Arsenal eventually parade the trophy in that beautiful trailblazing home of theirs he will surely feel a vindication.
We may never know how Guardiola actually feels about the controversy and the question marks he has been lumbered with by City and Abu Dhabi executives whose work has been under Premier League investigation for eight years.
Nor whether the realisation that a verdict in the 115 must come soon has informed his decision to leave. ‘If we are relegated, I will be here,’ he said a few years back. It didn’t come to pass.
City’s Manchester-based Spanish chief executive Ferran Soriano has not once materialised to answer public questions about the allegations, which City deny so vehemently that you imagine he would be comfortable about doing so.
Instead, it has been Guardiola left to uphold the club’s dignity. His tone was not measured when the journalist Rob Harris, then of the Associated Press, asked Guardiola who paid his wages, at the press conference following City’s 2019 FA Cup final hammering of Watford. The question was intended to establish whether he had been paid a separate fee by City to artificially reduce the club’s wage bill, in the way that the Premier League now alleges Roberto Mancini was.
Harris asked City, in writing, in November 2018, whether Guardiola was being paid in this way. If not, then ‘no’ would have been an extremely simple answer, protecting the manager from the indignity of having to answer for himself at Wembley. No reply was forthcoming from City. It was not a pretty look.
Arsenal have had detractors, made mistakes, spent wildly and badly at times, yet it has been a sustainable route back to the top, 22 years after their last title.
There have been moments when the charges of financial impropriety against City have seemed a minor inconvenience, such as the £97m outlay on Marc Guehi and Antoine Semenyo (above) this January alone
We may never know how Pep Guardiola actually feels about the question marks he has been lumbered with by City and Abu Dhabi executives whose work has been under Premier League investigation for eight years
Yes, American owner Stan Kroenke has increased his investment in the past five years and now sits among the top five investors among the roster of Premier League club owners.
But a recent Swiss Ramble study of the club’s 2024-25 financial results related how Arsenal’s record revenues saw them effectively break even last year, with £1m loss, at a time when Chelsea were drowning in red ink: an English record £355m loss.
Data published earlier this year revealed that since the Premier League’s launch in 1992, its clubs had lost a mind-blowing £4.99billion between them, with Chelsea racking up £1.2 bn worth of red ink and City and the Abu Dhabis registering nearly £600m of losses according to their officially published accounts. Arsenal had commanded an overall profit of £132.4m.
They’ve done the hard yards on Hornsey Road, overhauling the commercial side of the business, shifting international focus from China to the US to immense financial effect.
Ian Wright is among those baffled by City’s capacity to spend in a way that Arsenal have not. ‘We’re chasing down a City side where we’re still talking about charges. How have they got to this? How have they done that? They’re able to buy these great players – Semenyo, Guehi. Arsenal can’t construct their team the way that they can.’
Yet for all that, a trophy with red and white ribbons will be paraded this weekend. It will be one of football’s better days.
