All posts tagged: arsenal

Arsenal’s Premier League curse ends: Mikel Arteta’s rebuild ends 22 years of heartbreak

Arsenal’s Premier League curse ends: Mikel Arteta’s rebuild ends 22 years of heartbreak

Published by Parlour News

Arsenal ended a 22-year Premier League wait on Tuesday after Manchester City’s 1-1 draw at Bournemouth confirmed Mikel Arteta’s side as champions with one match still to play. Arsenal supporters gather to celebrate after Arsenal won the Premier League title after 22 years. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali) City needed to win to take the title race into the final weekend after Arsenal’s 1-0 victory over Burnley had moved them to the brink. Bournemouth struck first through Eli Junior Kroupi, and although Erling Haaland equalised in stoppage time, City could not force the winner that would have kept the race alive. The draw left Arsenal four points clear, making the final league match against Crystal Palace a trophy-lift occasion rather than a title decider. How Arsenal finally turned control into a title The title is Arsenal’s first since the 2003-04 Invincibles season and their 14th English top-flight crown. It also ends a long sequence of frustration under Arteta, whose side had finished second in each of the previous three Premier League seasons before finally crossing the line …

Arsenal end 22-year wait — and this one was earned the hard way

Arsenal end 22-year wait — and this one was earned the hard way

Published by Webster

When the final whistle blew at the Vitality Stadium in Bournemouth, the hosts pegging Manchester City to a 1-1 draw, North London erupted. Arsenal were champions — after a wait of 22 years. Long not only in its length, but in its pain. The endless cycles of near misses burned like an open wound. Happy tidings of a dynasty loomed when they raised the trophy in 2004, the season they went without dropping a game. But fate wrote the script differently. The construction of a new stadium — a necessity, not greed — bore its brunt on wages and transfer policy. The talismans left. Around them rose clubs muscled with petrodollars; their visionary vice-president and co-owner David Dein sold his shares and departed; football itself forsook the romantic ideals of the peak Wenger years. In the years that followed, they watched Alex Ferguson — once Wenger’s equal — scale luminous heights. They endured the insults Jose Mourinho spat at their manager. They glanced covetously at Pep Guardiola raising an empire, Jurgen Klopp a kingdom, Leicester …

Declan Rice after club enters Champions League final

Declan Rice after club enters Champions League final

Published by Parlour News

3 min readUpdated: May 6, 2026 08:38 AM IST Arsenal may still be one game away from winning their first ever Champions League trophy but the players and the fans celebrated their second leg semi-final victory over Atletico Madrid at the Emirates Stadium on Tuesday night with full gusto. Arsenal midfielder Declan Rice has defended the vociferous celebrations. The club is in the Champions League final for the first time in 20 years. The London club overcame a spirited second-leg challenge from Atletico Madrid at the Emirates Stadium. With both teams locked at 1-1 after the first leg in Spain, it took a first half goal from Bukayo Saka to help Mikel Arteta’s men secure a spot in the final. This is only the second time in their history that Arsenal have made it to the Champions League final. Their last time, 20 years ago, had ended in heartbreak at the hands of Barcelona. This time around, they will face the winner of the second semi-final between Bayern Munich and Paris Saint Germain on Wednesday …

The man Arsenal must stop: What a new documentary reveals about Diego Simeone | Football News

The man Arsenal must stop: What a new documentary reveals about Diego Simeone | Football News

Published by Webster

5 min readMay 4, 2026 10:48 AM IST The firm, fiery eyes of Diego Simeone welled up towards the end of the first episode of a documentary on him, Living Match by Match. He was recounting a chat with his four-year-old daughter. “I told her football was my life, and she corrected, ‘No, we are your life’.” The eyes welling up again, he nodded and said: “But she was right.” The Amazon Prime documentary deconstructs the raging man in pitch-black coat prancing up and down the Atletico Madrid touchline and separates the man from the manager, stitching together his more humane, likeable side, his fears and fragilities. He smiles more often than most during games; he cries often too, especially when paying tribute to his idol Diego Maradona. He wears turtlenecks and round-necks of more coloured textures. There are warm nuggets into his managing style. When his team was wobbling in the title race in the 2020-21 season, he hung childhood photos of every player next to their shelf in the locker room. The players …

Diego Simeone’s antics during VAR check vs Arsenal comes under scrutiny: ‘That’s why people don’t like the dark arts, don’t like Atletico Madrid’ | Football News

Diego Simeone’s antics during VAR check vs Arsenal comes under scrutiny: ‘That’s why people don’t like the dark arts, don’t like Atletico Madrid’ | Football News

Published by Webster

3 min readApr 30, 2026 10:29 AM IST Atletico Madrid coach Diego Simeone came under scrutiny after his antics during a VAR check on an Arsenal penalty decision in their UEFA Champions League semifinal 1st leg tie at the Metropolitano Stadium on Wednesday night. The incident happened when referee Danny Makkelie was studying the sideline monitor to check if Arsenal’s Eberechi Eze was fouled in the penalty box by David Hancko. Simeone was seen animatedly talking to the referee and then waving his arms wildly as Makkelie ultimately overturned the penalty decision. The match ended at 1-1 with both teams’ goals coming from respective spot kicks. “As the referee’s coming over, before he’s even looked at the screen, Simeone’s in his face, he’s waving his arms,” Steven Gerrard said on TNT. “Then he’s in his ear when he’s at the screen. It’s a performance and he’s the best at doing it,” he added. Diego Simeone was seen leaving his technical area to protest loudly at the referee while VAR was being checked, before the decision …

On a knife edge – With Manchester City and Arsenal level on points and goal difference, the last five matches filled with intrigue and possibility

On a knife edge – With Manchester City and Arsenal level on points and goal difference, the last five matches filled with intrigue and possibility

Published by Webster

4 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Apr 23, 2026 08:03 PM IST Two teams, five games, 15 points — the math looks simple for Manchester City and Arsenal, level on points and goal difference after 33 matches in the English Premier League title race. It is a classic who-blinks-first narrative, intrigued by the possibility that neither might flinch yet see the title slip through the fingers. Weave in pressure, history, calendar and form, and the climax looks mouthwatering. City on top The Burnley scrape shot Manchester City to the top of the pile by virtue of the three goals they have netted more than Arsenal. It is one of the five differentials that decide the champion if teams are locked on the same number of points and goal difference at the end of the season. So rare is the possibility that there has been only one precedent of goals scored determining the winner in the English top division’s 136-year-old existence. It should please Arsenal, as they pipped Liverpool to the title in 1988/89 by virtue of having …

Pep Guardiola said what Mikel Arteta couldn’t: Arsenal are still in this | Football News

Pep Guardiola said what Mikel Arteta couldn’t: Arsenal are still in this | Football News

Published by Webster

5 min readApr 21, 2026 06:46 PM IST Pep Guardiola uttered the reassuring words every Arsenal fan wanted to hear from Mikel Arterta. “Who is top of the league?” the Manchester City manager asked the press brigade after his team shaved off three points from Arsenal’s lead. “We are not!” he emphasised. “In goal difference, who is better?” ‘They are.” The victory over leaders, he stressed, “gives us just hope.” Time permitting, he could have added: Who has the meanest defence? Who has scored the most goals? Who are the most prolific converters of the dead ball? When the myopic angst dissipates, the City defeat would feel perhaps lighter. The sense of fatalism, the hyperventilating fans would realise, is a mere history-driven panic attack. It’s not hope that flutters, but belief that swirls. It’s the game they lost, but one that could stir them to greater feats. It could unburden them in the sense that their last formidable game is over. It was a game in which they found clarity and relief. The defeat to …

Rayan Cherki’s inventiveness, Erling Haaland’s redemption script Manchester City’s seismic win over Arsenal

Rayan Cherki’s inventiveness, Erling Haaland’s redemption script Manchester City’s seismic win over Arsenal

Published by Parlour News

When the whistle blew at the Etihad, the emotions of the managers were so spent that they could emote no more. The victorious Pep Guardiola, after a fleeting hug and a whisper in his defeated rival Mikel Arteta’s ears, rushed to greet his troops with a warm smile. Arteta, hiding his grief inside a defiant face, staggered back into the tunnel. Emotions had run them ragged. Guardiola had leapt, sunk to the touchline turf and copped a yellow card for his revolting, the old rebellious spirit seizing him. Arteta slumped and performed half a roll on the ground in the angst of Kai Havertz stoppage-time header speeding over the crossbar, Arsenal’s golden chance to draw level in the game that ended 2-1, preened and pirouetted. His men would leave Etihad top of the table, but with a crushing numbness. Arsenal had offered everything they could, defended stoutly as the meanest backline in the league is meant to do, attacked vigorously and showed more creative energy than they had in the previous weeks. But they know …

Who is the player making Pep Guardiola’s heart go “…pff” ahead of Man City-Arsenal decider? | Football News

Who is the player making Pep Guardiola’s heart go “…pff” ahead of Man City-Arsenal decider? | Football News

Published by Webster

There are Arsenal’s highly controlled, clockwork, almost Teutonic setpieces. And then there’s the free-flowing, mind-of-his-own Man City playmaker, Rayan Cherki. Ahead of the big Premier League showdown against Arsenal, Man City coach Pep Guardiola, was trying to contain and channel the effervescence of his young French midfielder, who tends to do his own thing but is highly effective for the team. Cherki had got Guardiola confessing that he was loosening some of his controlling strings ahead of the Chelsea game last week. “Rayan is a special, special player. He is a little bit of a free soul. I am a manager who likes control, we know this. So sometimes, on the touchline, it is so, so tough to watch. My heart… pff,” he was quoted as saying by Goal.com. City have Haaland and they have a bunch of others who he has tried to fit into his patterns. But Cherki has left Guardiola reconsidering his own beliefs. ALSO READ | Arteta vs Guardiola, master vs protege: A title decider 25 years in making “He gets …