Arsenal’s quest to shake off the shackles of their 2004 ‘Invincibles’ team ended when they lifted the Premier League trophy last season.
The 22-year gap wait to win the title dominated Arsenal news headlines for most of the campaign, but they eventually got the job done.
Arsenal’s evolution since their 2003/04 success has been one of the most fascinating stories in the Premier League. Read on as we take a closer look.
Wenger and the stadium factor
Having guided Arsenal to the title without losing a game, manager Arsene Wenger looked set to oversee a period of dominance in the Premier League.
However, the club’s move to the Emirates Stadium in 2006 ultimately scuppered Wenger’s hopes of delivering more success to the club.
The sale of star players to pay back sizeable loan debt weakened Arsenal’s squad and resulted in them falling behind their main Premier League rivals.
The Frenchman subsequently described his experiences from 2006 onwards as the most difficult period of his life.
“We had restricted finances, we had to pay back a huge amount of money and we had to sell our best players,” Wenger told BT Sport (h/t London Standard).
“We had to stay in the top, to stay in the Champions League and at least to make 54,000 people [attend]. There are many debates when you start building a stadium, how big can it be? It’s quite simple.
“At the time it was £4,000 a seat. You multiply that by 60,000 it’s £240million. Plus, we had to buy the soil, all the businesses we had to buy out. It went to over £420m.
“We had to pay a huge amount of money back every year. That’s why we had to stay in the Champions League.”
Cruelly dubbed a ‘specialist in failure’ by former Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho in 2014, Wenger left the Gunners four years later without another title success on his CV.
Unai Emery subsequently failed to transform Arsenal’s fortunes, with a run to the 2018/19 Europa League final as good as it got for him.
Arteta’s ‘trust the process’ mantra eventually delivers
Five days before he was appointed as manager in 2019, Mikel Arteta watched Manchester City dismantle Arsenal at the Emirates.
The fans had understandably grown tired of the club’s on-field failures and Arteta’s initial task was to restore some belief in them.
Winning the FA Cup at the end of his first season was a welcome bonus for Arteta, buying him the time he needed to keep the fans onside.
The Spaniard repeatedly urged supporters to ‘trust the process’ while he set about instilling an elite-level culture across the club.
After failing to adequately back Wenger and Emery in the transfer market, Arsenal’s board finally let the brakes off when Arteta came on board.
A €1 billion spend on new players over the past five years ultimately gave Arteta a squad that was capable of getting the job done in the Premier League.
With at least two top-class players in every position, achieving domestic dominance is not beyond the realms of possibility for the Gunners.
However, Arsenal’s defeat against Paris Saint-Germain in last season’s Champions League highlighted that they still have work to do.
Winning the Premier League title has eased the pressure on Arteta, but he must now demonstrate that he can guide them to success in Europe.
