Arsenal: So Close

The Premier League season has come to an end. Arsenal beat Everton, 2-1 at the Emirates Stadium in North London, but needed not only that, but for one of Manchester City's last 2 opponents to hold them to no more than a draw.

Arsenal's nearby arch-rivals, Tottenham Hotspur, played like garbage on Tuesday, and City beat them, 2-0. The "Spurs" fans cheered their own defeat, knowing it meant Arsenal wouldn't win the title, but also knowing it meant their own team would not qualify for the next season's UEFA Champions League.

At least West Ham United, the pride of London's East End, showed up at Man City's home, the Etihad Stadium, yesterday. They did their best, closed to within 2-1, and for a moment seemed to have closed to within 3-2. But it was not to be.

I guess it was too much to ask a team managed by David Moyes to match a team backed by billions of dollars from a corrupt slaveholding oil-based monarchy, already known to have committed 115 rule violations, and may yet end up having this league title stripped from them.

Certainly, it was too much to ask Tottenham, the biggest joke franchise in sports, any sport, any country, to show up. Their idiot fans call their team "The Pride of North London," but neither the team nor the fans showed any pride.

Arsenal have come so far from the brief dark period, from the sacrificing of manager Arsène Wenger on the altar of "It's the title or failure" erected by a few loud and stupid man-boys, to the firing of Unai Emery and his replacement by Mikel Arteta. We have won the 2020 FA Cup, once again qualified for the Champions League, gotten to its Quarterfinals, and now have back-to-back 2nd-place finishes behind "the best team in the world."

Arsenal won 28 League games this season, more than in any season except the 1971 "Double" team, which won 29 -- but that was in a 22-team Football League Division One, with 42 League games instead of the current 38. Even "The Invincibles" of 2004 won "only" 26. They finished with 89 points, 1 off the Invincibles' team record, and 2 more than the 2002 Double team.

(The 1998 Double team won the League with just 78 points. The 1971 Double came at a time when a win was still 2 points instead of 3, and they finished with 65; under the current system, they would have finished with 94.)

Several times since the founding of the Premier League in 1992, the title has still not been decided going into the final day. But the last time the team going into the final day in 2nd place finished 1st was in 1989, under the old Division One, when Arsenal famously had to not only beat Liverpool at Anfield, but do it by 2 goals, in order to tie them on points (76), at which point the tiebreaker favored them. And they did win, with Michael Thomas scoring the winner in the 92nd minute, what would have been, had he not scored it, the last minute of the season.

Under Mikel Arteta, Arsenal have restored their place in the PL's elite that they had before Chelsea (which can no longer afford to do so), and later Man City, began spending gobs of energy money on star players (and possibly bribes for referees), breaking the hammerlock that Arsenal and Manchester United had had on the title between them for a few years.

From 1989 to 2004, the League Champion was either Arsenal or Manchester United in 13 out of 16 seasons -- and, in 5 of those 13 seasons, the other finished 2nd. Chelsea began spending the big bucks in 2003, and, from 2005 to 2011, they and Man United were the only League winners. Man City began spending the big bucks in 2010, and they've won 8 of the last 13 League titles, including the last 4, something never done before. (Doing 3 in a row had been done a few times, including Arsenal in 1933-35, and Man United in 2007-09.)

Arsenal have paid off the debt from building the Emirates Stadium in 2006. They have reorganized, with Arteta managing in the method of his former manager, Wenger. Equally importantly, changes in ownership have led to United and Chelsea dropping off. And, with the departure of manager Jürgen Klopp leaving Liverpool with a big question mark, it appears that Arsenal and Man City are now prepared to duel for the League title for years to come.

Unless the Football Association, or UEFA, or FIFA decide to actually punish City for their rule violations. In which case, it will be Arsenal against the world.

As it always is: Many admire Arsenal, but refuse to admit it.

Well, let it be a lesson to all who do not support this team. It took one hundred and fifteen rule violations, and a couple of referees who refused to accept what VAR told them, to beat us, and we never cheered when our own team lost.

We are The Arsenal. We are Herbert Chapman's team, which won 5 League titles and 2 FA Cups in 9 seasons from 1930 to 1938, despite Chapman's death in the middle of it. We Tom Whittaker's team, winning the 1948 and 1953 League titles and the 1950 FA Cup.

We are Bertie Mee's and Don Howe's team, as Howe assisted Mee in building the team that won the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup (which is now the UEFA Europa League) in 1970 and the Football League and the FA Cup in 1971. We are Terry Neill's and Don Howe's team, as Howe returned after a few years away, and helped Neill manage the 1979 FA Cup winners.

We are George Graham's team, which, over 8 seasons from 1987 to 1994, won 2 League titles, an FA Cup, 2 League Cups and a European Cup Winners' Cup (a tournament now defunct). We are Arsène Wenger's team, which won 2 Doubles, 2 other FA Cups, became the only team to go through a Premier League season as unbeaten Champions, and reached a Champions League Final; then, after a few years of coming close to trophies, won 3 FA Cups in 4 years. And we are Mikel Arteta's team.

Talent and class are not the same thing, but we are the only team in the Premier League that truly embraces both. Unlike the Manchester teams and Chelsea -- and, let's face it, Liverpool and Leicester City would not have won their lone PL titles had it not been for the diving of Mohamed Salah and Jamie Vardy, respectively -- we don't want to win in the worst way, we want to win in the best way.

Arteta himself said, after yesterday's game, "Don’t be satisfied. We want much more than that, and we are gonna get it."

The bastards who smeared Wenger don't know what to make of this. Mikel is showing the "ambition" they demanded, but he's one of Wenger's men, playing Wenger's way, which they can't stand.

Go get it, Mikel.