Arsenal conquers Premier League for the first time in 22 years, edging out City.

By ART DE ROCHÉ / THE ATHLETIC

For the first time in 22 years, Arsenal is the Premier League champion.

The title race looked poised to come down to the Premier League’s final day Sunday. But after Arsenal beat Burnley 1-0 on Monday, Manchester City needed to beat Bournemouth on Tuesday to keep pace. Instead, City could manage only a draw.

Arsenal’s win Monday gave it 82 points; after Tuesday’s result, the highest tally City can reach is 81.

Arsenal had led the Premier League standings nearly the entire season. The team has won 25 of its 37 league matches, drawing seven and losing five, with the final match to come Sunday against Crystal Palace.

After a 2-1 defeat to City at Etihad Stadium in April, which put City 3 points behind Arsenal with a game in hand, Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta said: “It’s a new league now. They have a game in hand. We have 3 points of advantage and five games to play, so everything is still to play for. So we know how much we want it, and we’re not going to stop and we’re going to go again, that’s for sure.”

Arsenal won its next four league games without conceding a goal (with three of these matches ending at 1-0), while City’s 3-3 draw away to Everton this month was a major blow to its title hopes.

Pep Guardiola is now set to leave Manchester City at the end of the season, and without having won the Premier League in each of the past two seasons, as Liverpool was crowned the champion in the 2024-25 campaign.

Arteta is waiting until the season’s full conclusion to negotiate a new contract with Arsenal, though early talks between his representatives and Arsenal have begun. His current deal expires in 2027.

At 44 years and 54 days old, the Spaniard Arteta becomes the third-youngest manager to win the Premier League, after Jose Mourinho, who won the league at the ages of 42 and 43 for Chelsea, in 2005 and 2006.

Arteta first took charge of Arsenal in December 2019, initially named head coach before a title change to manager in August 2020. This is still his first job as a senior soccer manager.

This moment may stand as one of the biggest collective sighs of relief in Arsenal’s history.

Three successive second-place finishes only heightened the expectation, intensity and stress of the club.

Its finish was a surprise in the 2022-23 season, but Arsenal showed consistency in each year since then. It has spent 557 days on top of the league across the past four seasons (at least 200 more than any other club), and has earned 329 points in that time, tied with City for the most of any Premier League club.

It is important to note that Arteta and Arsenal have had to evolve to finally get over the line. This month, he cited “resilience” and “adaptability” as key to the finish, and for all involved to be rewarded for those qualities at long last will earn them special places in the history books of Arsenal.

Arsenal still has a chance for another title this month, in the Champions League final May 30 against Paris St.-Germain, which eliminated Arsenal in last season’s semifinals.