'Toxic' to title: Inside Arsenal's first Premier League for 22 years and how they nailed their 'win window'

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The first-team squad gathered at their London Colney training ground on Tuesday to watch Bournemouth’s draw with Manchester City, handing the north London club their long-awaited 14th domestic championship. The story of Arsenal’s 2025-26 triumph is relatively unusual in modern football. Yes, it has some of the classic components: an exceptional team, a coaching guru and the obligatory enormous expenditure on transfers. But it is distinct because it is a tale of persistence and continuity. This title is the result of a true long-term plan, crafted with unusual patience and forensic detail. After three straight years finishing as runners-up, Arsenal have forced their way over the line this time. Two decades on from being Invincible, Arsenal have become Undeniable. Years before Arsenal would become champions again, the club’s decision-makers identified what they believed could be a rare opportunity in the Premier League’s competitive cycle. After a rigorous analysis of rival squads, contract lengths, age profiles and managerial timelines, they projected a “win window” between 2023 and 2027 — a period in which Manchester City and Liverpool, winners of the past eight titles between them, might finally loosen the grip on the division. Everything Arsenal subsequently did was built around that calculation. In the winter of 2020, with Mikel Arteta under significant pressure and the team drifting in mid-table, Arsenal’s manager flew to Denver in the United States, alongside then non-executive director Tim Lewis, to meet the club’s owner Stan Kroenke. Together, Arteta and Lewis presented a long-term strategy designed to restore Arsenal as both a modern super-club and an elite football team. Behind the scenes at London Colney, the project was already taking shape. Edu’s arrival as technical director in summer 2019 triggered a radical restructuring of Arsenal’s football operation. Large sections of the scouting department were dismantled and replaced by a newly-formed Football Intelligence unit. This innovative team were tasked with building a detailed picture of English football’s future — and Arsenal’s place in it. That department mapped the possible decline of rival sides years in advance. Arsenal anticipated potential managerial changes at rival clubs, foreseeing the departure of Jurgen Klopp from Liverpool, among others. They projected the age curves for players such as Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk at Liverpool and Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne. It wasn’t a perfectly accurate prediction, but it provided the hierarchy with a framework. Player recruitment was then aligned to these forecasts, enabling Arsenal to assemble a squad designed to peak just as their rivals started to fade. Naturally, tweaks and adjustments have been required. There were near misses. Those three consecutive second-place finishes between 2023 and 2025 suggested they were close, but needed more. With Arsenal’s projected opportunity narrowing, the appointment of Andrea Berta as sporting director last March brought about a more aggressive final push in the transfer market. Ultimately, Arsenal delivered on the plan they had set in motion years earlier. This title was not simply won on the pitch. It was engineered. To tell the full story, those consulted by The Athletic for this article spoke anonymously to protect relationships. The vision the Arsenal delegation presented to Stan Kroenke had been intricately mapped out within the corridors of London Colney. Summer 2020 was perhaps the pivotal moment. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Arsenal were drifting. According to sources close to the Arsenal hierarchy, Kroenke felt he needed more insight and information about the inner workings of the club. To provide that, he turned to Lewis — a trusted lawyer who had advised the American family throughout their piecemeal purchase of Arsenal. Kroenke may have got more than he bargained for, with Lewis driving a thorough cleansing of the club. Out went head of football Raul Sanllehi, and with him the transfer policy that brought in the likes of Nicolas Pepe, David Luiz and Cedric Soares. A raft of redundancies saw the scouting department reborn as the Football Intelligence unit. Analyst Jason Ayto stepped up to help reshape this leaner team, with key contributions from the likes of Ben Knapper, Mark Curtis and, later, James Ellis. Arsenal developed a defined approach to the market: moving forward, they would seek to sign players who were aged 23 or under and cost €40million (£34.6m/$46.4m at the current rates) or less. Lewis endorsed this strategy and the Kroenkes, Stan and son Josh, approved it. The Football Intelligence staff ensured scouting, data and relationships with agents were all attuned to those clear parameters. In the summer of 2021, Arsenal set their stall out by making six first-team signings, almost all of whom met the above criteria. While not every deal worked out, that initial influx of talent included Martin Odegaard and Ben White, who would become cornerstones of the project. Arsenal knew their strategy was unlikely to bear fruit for several years. In the interim, there was a painful process of purging the squad, moving on from ageing, well-paid players including Mesut Ozil and Luiz. Contract terminations for Pepe, Hector Bellerin and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang made the club the subject of ridicule — but they were determined to embrace radical change. New signings were added to a core that included younger players such as Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Martinelli and Emile Smith Rowe, often graduates of the club’s academy. After Arteta’s initial doubts about him, William Saliba was eventually reintegrated. Arsenal purposefully recruited a group born within a few years of each other, who could mature together. That has resulted in a squad with strong social bonds. In their downtime, and when travelling, many play cards, or the Spanish board game Parchis. Many of the players are also linked by faith, with a strong Christian contingent in the group. The project showed early promise, with Arsenal returning to European football and then the elite Champions League ahead of schedule. The recruitment strategy evolved, with players acquired closer to prime-years age to allow them to fit seamlessly into a developing squad. That necessitated a loosening of the purse-strings, and achieving regular Champions League football made that a possibility. Arsenal targeted specific profiles including Jurrien Timber, David Raya and their club-record signing Declan Rice. The club had built an impressive squad. But to win, they needed a special coach, too. Arteta’s FA Cup win in summer 2020 was an early demonstration of his potential. He did not ask for his subsequent promotion from ‘head coach’ to ‘manager’. Arsenal did it to bring the Spaniard into senior strategic conversations. Suddenly, he had access to key business data and metrics. It helped him understand that the club were making themselves competitive on the pitch as rapidly as the game’s regulatory landscape and their commercial growth permitted. That was vital: it engendered both trust and loyalty. Those traits would sustain the relationship between club and manager through difficult periods — including successive eighth-place finishes, external mockery of his methods and some supporters’ own doubts over whether Arsenal were now destined to be perennial bridesmaids. It was often in those moments of adversity that Arsenal’s confidence in Arteta grew. After losing the opening three league games of the 2021-22 season, documentary cameras captured Josh Kroenke in conversation with Arteta. “The only people you can trust are the ones in the room with you right now,” Arsenal’s co-owner reassured him. “Trust me, I believe in you.” The club’s faith in their manager has been unwavering; their conviction absolute. Arteta is the third-longest serving manager or head coach in England’s top four divisions this season, behind Simon Weaver of League Two’s Harrogate Town and his former mentor Pep Guardiola at Manchester City (who will leave that club this summer after 10 seasons). Even this year, Arsenal signalled their intention to discuss a new contract before the campaign’s outcome was known. The degree of trust is understandable: Arteta is an outstanding coach, with a level of attention to detail unlike anything Arsenal have known. This season, that has been particularly evident in their proficiency at set pieces. Is it any surprise an Arteta team have excelled in one of the game’s more coachable, controllable moments? One of his assistants, Nicolas Jover, is a dead-ball-situations specialist and even has a bonus in his contract tied to set-piece goals. These kinds of bonuses are not unusual at Arsenal. The club have left no stone unturned in their attempts to find a competitive advantage at corner kicks. They have been proactive in dialogue with Howard Webb and the PGMO match officials’ body, road-testing ideas and trying to set, define and exploit the margins of what is permissible within the laws of the game. Faced with the Manchester City juggernaut, Arteta and Arsenal have found another way to win. They have borrowed elements from the Guardiola model, but with an even greater emphasis on control and security. Arsenal’s open-play threat does not match that of City, but their set-piece efficiency provides an alternative weapon. The architecture of this team is remarkably durable. But Arteta is more than merely a coach — he is an ideological leader. There is huge emphasis on messaging. Arteta has been known to enlist everything from pickpockets to a naked flame to help convey his ideas to his players. Arsenal have a history of innovative managers, from Herbert Chapman through to Arsene Wenger, and Arteta is another in that tradition. When Arsenal beat neighbours Tottenham Hotspur 4-1 in the north London derby last November, the players were pictured wearing scarves bearing the phrase, “Make it happen”. The same slogan has appeared on tifos and dressing-room walls. It has become a mantra for Arteta’s Arsenal. Without explanation, everyone affiliated with the club understood it implicitly: deliver success, bring us glory again. Arteta’s interest in sports psychology is all-consuming — this season, Arsenal adjusted the layout of the away dressing room at their Emirates Stadium, making it less spacious and welcoming for opposition teams. He has worked tirelessly on the club culture. When Arteta was first appointed in December 2019, he enlisted a trusted confidante to spend three months surveying staff across various roles. The question was simple: how would they describe working at Arsenal? Their feedback was assembled into a word cloud, with one dominant descriptor: “Toxic”. Since then, he has fought to transform that culture, based around his three core values of respect, commitment and passion. In the heat of competition, the first-team environment has become a sanctuary for Arteta’s players. In the final few weeks of this season’s run-in, the manager arranged regular barbecues at the training ground — an opportunity for players and other staff to mix in a more relaxed setting. And they need that. While Arteta is hugely respected by his players, he is not always an easy person to work for. He burns with an intensity and desire to win. His response to adversity has typically been to do more, to train harder, and work longer hours. His standards are high — and several star players have fallen foul of his infamous ‘non-negotiables’. Those public disputes with the likes of Ozil and Aubameyang were painful, but they laid the cultural foundations for the Arteta project. Crucially, the club’s top brass have stood by their man throughout. That granted a young coach the authority he needed to drive through the rebuild. Arteta is fiercely protective of information and eager to avoid granting the opposing team any pre-game advantage. His evasiveness around injury news has become a trademark — but it’s not only the media who are left in the dark. This season, sources close to the squad say it has been commonplace for Arsenal’s players to discover the line-up for a match just a few hours before kick-off. In recent weeks, Arteta has even stopped circulating his chosen team early among club staff, waiting until the last possible moment to declare his starting XI. He has sought to harness the power of the Emirates’ crowd and turn Arsenal’s home ground into a fortress. The club have worked closely with supporters’ groups to improve the atmosphere at matches, culminating in some of the most electric nights in the stadium’s 20-year history. The scenes of thousands of fans congregating to welcome the team bus on arrival are emblematic of the transformation. The last time so many supporters assembled on that stretch of Hornsey Road was in 2021, when they were protesting against Arsenal’s owners and their involvement in the soon-scrapped European Super League. It has taken time, but those wounds now appear to have healed. While Arsenal’s success this season has been a collective effort, there is no doubt that Arteta is their central protagonist — their frontman, figurehead and standard bearer. The club strategy was contingent on having the right coach in charge — one not only with the tactical acumen to lead the team, but who bought into the wider approach. It is fitting that Arteta’s 2020 audience with Stan Kroenke in Denver should have fired the starter’s gun for this project — that relationship between manager and ownership has been key, providing Arteta with reassurance that the club match his fierce ambition. He now enjoys a direct relationship with Josh Kroenke, and the pair maintained regular contact through the final stretch of this season. The younger Kroenke has been supportive of Arteta’s plans, and has intervened to help push through deals for Rice, Piero Hincapie and others. The Spaniard was left frustrated when Arsenal failed to make a signing in the winter window of 2025. Ownership resolved then that they would redouble their efforts to provide Arteta with what he needed. Though Arteta was in alignment with Arsenal’s approach, it is his nature to demand more. He has been an agitator and a firebrand, always pushing the club to extend their ambition. When the thorny issue of football’s financial regulations has reared its head, Arteta has urged the club to push the boundaries. As with his tactical work, he is eager to exploit every possible margin. Many of his closest collaborators have moved on. The likes of Edu, Lewis, Ayto and Ellis have departed. Two of Arteta’s trusted assistants, Steve Round and then Carlos Cuesta, also left the club — yet he remains. He is the constant. Predecessor Wenger frequently speaks of the importance of “consistency” or “stamina” in motivation: desire alone is not enough — it must be sustained. Arteta is the engine-room of that motivation at Arsenal, the one who stokes and tends to the project’s ambition, whose uncompromising standards drive everyone to perform better. He is the necessary friction that has helped force them over the line. He has been the face of this project. No individual at Arsenal has faced more criticism over the past six years — and none deserves more praise for delivering. For Arteta, winning this Premier League title — beating his mentor Guardiola into second place in the process — is the ultimate vindication. The departure of Edu in November 2024 sent shockwaves through Arsenal. His partnership with Arteta was the strategic core of the sporting project. But the need for a new sporting director also provided the club with an opportunity. They needed to transition out of that building phase and start winning. As Arteta’s power at Arsenal grew, so did his influence on transfers. He now needed a ‘closer’ — someone who could deliver him the squad he desired. Former Atletico Madrid executive Andrea Berta was the man identified to recruit the missing pieces in the manager’s jigsaw. Arsenal’s 2024-25 season was ravaged by injuries, and their primary objective afterwards was to reinforce the squad with a formidable degree of depth. That meant persuading Arteta to relinquish his ambitions of signing Newcastle striker Alexander Isak, and perhaps even RB Leipzig counterpart Benjamin Sesko. There was an acceptance that Arsenal did need a new centre-forward — but deals at the financial level needed for those players would have restricted their capacity to also strengthen in other areas. While champions Liverpool spent big on elite talents in Isak and Florian Wirtz, Arsenal chose to distribute resources over multiple positions. They wanted a complete squad more than one built around marquee names. In the end, they made a total of eight first-team signings in that window. There was an emphasis on bringing in players at prime age, ready to contribute immediately. Viktor Gyokeres was the man chosen at centre-forward, with an initial cost of just £54.8million. Arsenal completed a deal for Martin Zubimendi, the broad terms of which had been hammered out almost a full year prior. Kepa Arrizabalaga arrived from Chelsea and Cristhian Mosquera from Valencia. Arsenal opted for Noni Madueke to supplement Saka on the right wing, and structured an ingenious deal for Hincapie that enabled them to defer payment until this coming summer. That window was not without controversy. Arsenal had initially explored the possibility of keeping Thomas Partey to supplement newcomer Zubimendi at the base of the midfield. In those negotiations, they sought to include clauses which protected them against the possibility of Partey being prosecuted. In the end, they were unable to reach an agreement and his contract expired at the end of June — a matter of days later, he was charged with five counts of rape and one of sexual assault. Partey has pleaded not guilty to all charges. When versatile attacker Kai Havertz suffered a knee injury on the Premier League’s opening weekend, Arsenal knew they needed to act. Berta initially proposed signing another striker, with Inter’s rising star Francesco Pio Esposito one of the names floated. Instead, they pivoted to sign a different kind of match-winner, snatching Eberechi Eze of Crystal Palace away from rivals Tottenham. Arsenal worked tirelessly to complete the necessary paperwork that enabled them to parade Eze ahead of the next Premier League fixture against Leeds. While their contracts specialist James King was dealing with the small print, Eze circled the Emirates in a car waiting for the green light. In the end, of course, it all worked out. The work Arsenal undertook last summer has sustained them throughout the season. In mid-March, they were still involved in all four competitions. When Mikel Merino fractured his foot against Manchester United in late January, Arsenal explored potential loan signings. They made a late enquiry for Leon Goretzka of Bayern Munich, but ultimately could not find an appropriate candidate and chose to stick with the players they had. The club’s broad approach to squad-building should not be mistaken for frugality: those eight signings last summer came at a cost of around £250million, and pushed the limits of what was possible within UEFA’s financial rules. Arsenal’s owners unlocked the budget to help the club get over the line. It was a calculated roll of the dice. Arsenal bet the house on red — and they have won. The prize money accumulated in the Premier League and by reaching the Champions League final has eased concerns over regulatory compliance. Arsenal’s manager and squad appear to have arrived at maturity together. The likes of Rice, Gabriel and Raya have produced outstanding individual seasons — but this team’s strength has been in the collective. There has been evolution from Arteta over the season. He has embraced his instincts, trusting his gut with big calls such as the reintegration of Myles Lewis-Skelly. In the final weeks of the campaign, Lewis-Skelly has transitioned from being third-choice left-back to first-choice central midfielder. Arteta has trusted youth in big moments, fielding 16-year-old Max Dowman 12 times across the campaign. Dowman’s spectacular goal against Everton in March helped take Arsenal 10 points clear, on one of the most euphoric nights of their season. While many of his more senior team-mates stayed on at the Emirates that Saturday evening to watch City’s subsequent 1-1 draw at West Ham, Dowman went home to see it from the comfort of the sofa with friends and family. The impacts of teenagers Dowman and Lewis-Skelly are a testament to Arsenal’s academy’s continued productivity. This summer sees Per Mertesacker step down as its manager, bringing to an end a partnership with Arteta that stems back to them joining the club as players on transfer deadline day in August 2011. The addition of former Argentina international Gabriel Heinze, a close friend over many years, as assistant coach has provided Arteta with an additional sounding board and pressure valve. The pair have enjoyed post-match meals with family and friends, including at La Patagonia, an Argentine restaurant in north London. Arteta has learned when to let the players speak up and when to take matters into their own hands. When Arsenal surrendered a two-goal lead to draw 2-2 at relegation-bound Wolves in February, according to sources close to the squad, it was the voices of Rice and Odegaard that rang loudest in the away dressing room. When Arsenal were beaten by City at the Etihad in April, Rice’s on-field cry of “It’s not done” was echoed behind the scenes. Arteta has understood when to let leaders lead. Injuries have continued to plague Arsenal. With so much at stake, the tension between the coaching staff and medical department has been one of the major subplots of their season. Multiple sources close to the situation suggest that at one stage the disputes verged upon “civil war”. Spanish physio Joaquin Acedo, a long-term Arteta associate, was brought in to help review Arsenal’s processes around player fitness and injuries. But the squad the club have built, with Berta’s refinements added to Edu’s foundations, has sustained them. Arteta’s training methods remain intense, but he has also recognised the importance of rest, granting the players two days off several times during the frenetic run-in. Footballers tend to be superstitious, and Arsenal’s players have been wary of jinxing a potential title. In March, Riccardo Calafiori refused to sign a picture of the Premier League trophy. When they played away to West Ham at the London Stadium in early May, television broadcasters wanted the champions’ trophy at pitchside — Arsenal preferred it to be out of sight. They will wait to receive it at Selhurst Park on Sunday — when it is rightfully theirs. With the Premier League settled, Arsenal’s focus is now trained on the Champions League final against Paris Saint-Germain on May 30. They have the opportunity to complete a historic double, and also to win their first trophy in the men’s version of European football’s premier club competition. But what comes after that? Arsenal have been built to win. Having now done so, what follows? While many of the architects of their rise have moved on, in the background the work continues. Richard Garlick, who worked alongside Edu on much of the early recruitment work, now leads the club as chief executive. Garlick and chief commercial officer Juliet Slot are overseeing record revenues, allowing the club to keep investing in the team. Arsenal are determined to remain compliant with financial rules and ensure their success is responsibly and sustainably attained. King, Garlick’s successor as director of football operations, is credited with vital work in securing the long-term futures of prospects such as Dowman and Marli Salmon, also 16. Josh Kroenke now takes a more prominent role, and has a place on the football leadership team. After adopting a short-term view to expedite winning the title, Arsenal are now stepping up their efforts to recruit the next generation of stars, who will help them to remain competitive over the coming years. The signing of 16-year-old Ecuadorian twins Edin and Holger Quintero, both tracked by Real Madrid, is a statement of intent. They also continue to invest in their Football Intelligence unit, now led by Mark Curtis. He has overseen an internal revamp of Arsenal’s analytics department and increased the club’s presence in South American markets. Arteta and Berta, meanwhile, are pushing for substantial investment at first-team level. With many of England’s other big clubs entering a period of transition, they feel now is the moment to capitalise. “Wherever this month of May takes us, there will be no standing still when the season ends,” wrote Stan and Josh Kroenke in their programme notes for the season’s final home match against Burnley. “We are always forward in our approach, taking the learnings as we go and relentless in the pursuit of progress. “We remain focused on raising the standard, creating the best possible environment for our players and people to succeed, and elevating the unity that exists between club and community.” The “win window” the club’s analysts projected back in 2020 remains open. This season’s title has been secured. The mission now is to deliver sustained success. 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