Arsenal’s long wait for a Premier League crown ended in the most modern of ways: not with a final whistle at the Emirates, but with players huddled around screens at the training ground, watching another team decide their fate.

When Manchester City’s draw with Bournemouth confirmed Arsenal as champions, the room erupted. Staff and players surged from their seats, flares of red light from phones capturing every embrace, every roar, every tear. It was the club’s first league title in more than two decades, and the release of tension was instant and total.

The celebrations did not stay behind closed doors for long. As the night bled into morning, a small group of players made a pilgrimage to the Emirates itself. Declan Rice, Bukayo Saka, Eberechi Eze and Jurrien Timber were filmed outside the stadium at around 5am, wandering the concourses like awestruck tourists in their own home.

A handful of supporters, still awake and unwilling to let the night end, greeted them with songs and camera flashes. The players posed for photos, signed shirts and filmed their own clips, panning across the illuminated stadium exterior that had so often been a backdrop to frustration, now finally a monument to triumph.

Hours earlier, Eze had posted a clip that instantly went viral: captain Martin Odegaard, grinning, drinking from an Arsenal-branded water bottle. It was a pointed nod to a viral image from April, when a Manchester City fan was seen sipping from a similar bottle as City beat Chelsea. Back then, City’s win had tightened the title race and revived old doubts about Arsenal’s nerve.

This time, the symbolism was reversed. The bottle belonged to Arsenal.

That theme ran through the night. For years, rivals had mocked the club for “bottling” title challenges. Now the players leaned into the joke. In one Instagram story, Saka filmed young midfielder Myles Lewis-Skelly clutching a champagne bottle. “They called us bottlers,” Lewis-Skelly said, laughing, “but now we’ve got the bottle in our hands.”

Rice, who had urged calm after a damaging defeat to City earlier in the season, posted a simple message: “I told you all… it’s done.” It was less a taunt than a statement of vindication, the final word on a narrative that had shadowed Arsenal for years.