What happened next, after the last time Arsenal won the title

And this is worth doing because it can remind us that no matter how good a team might be one season in the league, that is no guarantee of what happens next, not least because every club wants to beat last season’s champions.

Now it is quite possible that we can, to some extent at least, become used to the club that wins the league one year, doing the same the next year, and the next and….  Indeed, as you may have noticed, Manchester City won the league six times in seven seasons up to 2024.   You may also have noted that they were subsequently found guilty of over 100 breaches of the league’s financial rules – but as of the time of writing (July 2026) have not even had a punishment suggested by officialdom, let alone implemented.  

This lack of activity, of course, gives all of us a bit of a concern, since we have a situation in which a club can (at this moment at least) be charged and found guilty of a vast array of offences but then… nothing.  A bit like being found guilty of nicking £100 million from a bank, but then the judge says, “You are certainly guilty, but I don’t know if this really warrants any punishment.”   Such a response doesn’t really suggest a balanced system of monitoring and running the league, but rather a culture of, “you can do what you can get away with, but we’d appreciate it if you didn’t do it again.  If you do, try and make sure no one notices.”

But still, we all know that not only did Arsenal win the league in 2004, that was also the greatest of seasons – the Unbeaten Season – and I know that having got through that season I was concerned that once we had the inevitable defeat that was certain to come one day, it could be followed by another and another.  And a defeat certainly came – in the first Champs League knockout round by Bayern Munich.

I also don’t think most of us noticed that 2004/5 was the 79th consecutive season in the top league.  Indeed, I am not sure anyone ever contemplated what it would be like to get to 100 consecutive seasons (as we have just done – although the club itself refused to celebrate the fact, so we did it for them).

But that refusal to celebrate that this last season was the club’s 100th consecutive season in the top league makes me wonder what else the club will refuse to celebrate.  Or perhaps maybe not notice, and then later come back with the excuse that they knew about it all the time, but really didn’t want to bother us supporters with the news, since we had enough to think about already.

But the oddness of the start of next season doesn’t just stop with Arsenal not wanting to recognise that the club won the League in its 100th consecutive season in the top division.   No, there is also the oddness of the start of the new season for the Charity Shield (now called the Community Shield because the FA forgot to comply with the regulations of the Charity Commission in all the previous years of the game) won’t be played at Wembley but at Cardiff, even though neither club has any relationship with Wales.

Apparently the FA forgot to book Wembley in time, and couldn’t find anywhere else to play the game.   I really don’t think one could make it all up.

But to go back to the headline about what happened last time Arsenal won the league title.   Arsene Wenger was of course, the manager, and we were still at Highbury.  Arsenal didn’t retain the title – coming second – but they did win the FA Cup the following year.

We went out of the European Cup in the round of 16, and our top scorer was Thierry Henry, of course, with 36 goals (25 of them in the league). Highbury was still the ground but was restricted to a capacity of just over 38,000.

So we enter the new season having won the league 12 times and been runners-up 14 times.  And I am rather sure that Mr Arteta would love to take Arsenal on a continuing journey in which the club wins the league three times in a row – for the second time.