When it actually happened - when the agony and the anger and the tension finally drained out of the body and Arsenal became champions - everything changed.
All the years of runners-up medals and near-chokes were no longer painful memories but part of a glorious path to the top.
The Emirates, once the great white elephant of the Arsene Wenger wilderness years, suddenly becomes the iconic backdrop where crowds had gathered under fireworks, a sheen that will now forever be imprinted on the façade. The stadium, the players, and Mikel Arteta are cast in a new light.
That’s what history does. It flattens events, makes stories seem like they were fated, and completely rewrites how they felt in the present. Which brings us onto the final day, no longer enjoying its title-race headline but nevertheless loaded with potential significance.
By the end of Sunday the 2025/26 Premier League season will be over, consolidating into one final form for posterity.
Many people will have you believe the year will be remembered for a revival of long throws and as one of the dullest campaigns in years. It won’t be.
For starters, that kind of football might have defined Arsenal for a portion of this campaign but even Arteta’s side won’t actually be remembered that way. Nobody recalls how champions won, just that they did. The images of Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka, and of those corner routines, will register, but it won’t gain prominence above the story of the five-year arc.
More importantly Arsenal are the only club who can really be accused of regressing towards safer defensive football. Man City have never had so many entertaining attackers under Pep Guardiola, Manchester United were anything but dull, Liverpool haven’t tried to be cautious, and Aston Villa, Bournemouth, and Brighton have been great to watch.
No, what this campaign will be remembered for is the flatness of the league and a playing field more level than at any other point this century.
Truly any team could beat any other, which led to a kind of madness; Man Utd and Liverpool collapsing, Bournemouth and Sunderland rising improbably, and, most importantly, the highest-profile relegation battle in history.
It is a direct consequence of the league’s strength that on Sunday the final relegation place will go to a club with a 60,000+ stadium and memories of a Europa League triumph in the last three years.
If it’s Tottenham Hotspur, then the retrospective view of 2025/26 is easy to see. When the nitty gritty of each matchweek fades away to leave the headlines, this will not be remembered as a dud. Far from it. This will be the year of north London, when Arsenal won their first title in 22 years and Spurs pulled off a reverse-Leicester City, a true miracle.
But this remains an unlikely outcome. West Ham have lost their last three matches and must somehow rouse themselves to beat Leeds United, a team on an eight-match unbeaten streak in the Premier League. And even if Nuno Espirito Santo’s side pull it off they need to hope Tottenham don’t scrape a draw against Everton.
Ever since Roberto De Zerbi’s appointment the narrative weight has been in Tottenham’s favour. But what could be more Spursy than a final-day twist, than David Moyes keeping West Ham up with a shock win in north London?
That’s the kind of moment that would really give the 2025/26 campaign its definitive meaning, turning a confused and confusing nine-month journey into one long set-up for the ultimate punchline.
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