This weekend Liverpool will be Champions of England…
And so certain was I of the script — so profoundly convinced that fate had already cast its leading men and marked its moments — that I began penning these thoughts on Thursday morning, in the immediate wreckage of Arsenal’s draw with Crystal Palace. There I sat, amid the detritus of dropped points and distant dreams, wondering what Sunday might bring.
Would Tottenham — this pallid, stuttering version of themselves — summon any semblance of resistance? Could they, at Anfield, interrupt the coronation that was surely to come?
But the truth announced itself quietly, then all at once: it would be Spurs. It would be that Tottenham — on that pitch, an April afternoon — as Liverpool danced to the crescendo of a title long foretold. And so I wrote. I wrote to exorcise frustration. To release the inevitability already stirring in my bones. For there was, I felt, no force on this Earth — nor the heavens above — that could inspire in Tottenham Hotspur the kind of defiance required to halt this red juggernaut.
For now — we must, whether with clenched teeth or quiet reverence — acknowledge them. Liverpool. Champions once more. With ruthlessness, with authority, with something bordering on the divine. The numbers speak loudest: the points, the goals, the clean sheets. Alisson Becker, a sentry among goalkeepers. Virgil van Dijk, still that towering sentinel. And Mohamed Salah — oh, Mohamed Salah — a footballer of such enduring magnificence that even the Ballon d’Or must now look his way with honesty.
We talk often of legacy. Well, here is a man who has painted one — not in splashes or bursts — but in great, sweeping brushstrokes across the canvases of Anfield, Cairo, and Europe beyond. Ignore him no longer. He has earned the golden orb not just with boots, but with soul.
Arne Slot, too, deserves a stanza. From the lowlands of Dutch football to the glare and gravity of Merseyside. A league title in his debut campaign — a poetic defiance of pressure and of expectation. Yes, there were missteps in the cups, but history will forgive those. It will remember the moment he stepped from Klopp’s looming shadow and cast one of his own. Liverpool have embraced him, and he, them. There is something stirring there. Something new.
But forgive me. For this is, after all, an Arsenal voice — and to linger too long on their triumphs is to risk misplacing our own longing. Yet, even as a rival, it is only just — only fair — to lift a glass, however grudgingly, and toast a team that has earned its crown. That the crown will be worn amidst fans, not facemasks, only deepens its resonance.
To the decent majority of Liverpool’s faithful — relish this. Bathe in it. For this time, it is whole. But as for the minority — those who spit venom and parade arrogance — well… perhaps hold those tongues. Arsenal may have their own poetry to write.
And so we return—to Arsenal.
To the place where dreams are spun and splintered.
To a theatre draped in red, heavy with expectation, trembling under the weight of what could have been.
I had intended, you see, a piece about sliding doors. About those cruel, capricious moments where fate chose another path. But in truth, do we not already know them? We have lived them.
We do not require a dossier of despair—we remember.
We remember the sendings off, the squandered leads, the aching what-ifs.
And in those recollections, we can carve this season into three solemn acts.
Act One: Chaos and Consequence.
The opening chapter, where the tone was set not by Arsenal, but by those who govern the laws of the game.
Declan Rice—red carded amongst confusion.
Leandro Trossard—dismissed for a delay.
Saliba, at Bournemouth, cast the villain, usually a pillar of calm.
And yes, even young Myles Lewis-Skelly at Wolves—barely a man, already carrying the scars of inconsistency in officiating.
These were not excuses. These were facts. And they bled into our form, poisoned our rhythm, cost us points in games we should have claimed.
Act Two: The Anatomy of Absence.
Then came the wounds.
Not to pride or purpose, but to bodies.
Odegaard—missing just long enough to upset the rhythm.
Jesus—our chaos in the box—absent again.
Saka—our edge, our electricity—dulled by the gods of wear and tear.
Kai Havertz, reimagined, revitalised… reduced once more to a name on an injury report.
And all the while, our full-backs spun like roulette.
Tomiyasu—perennially sidelined.
Calafiori—a worry.
Even Ben White—stoic Ben White—felt the strain.
We were robbed of fluency, of familiarity.
Kieran Tierney, once exiled, returned to the fray—football’s own prodigal son, not by design, but by necessity.
And in that chaos, we fought.
We endured.
We adapted.
We became, for a moment, Set-Piece FC.
Not out of shame, but necessity.
Stoke? No. This was not brute force. This was ingenuity. This was adaptation.
But even in our guile, we drew ire.
Dark Arts FC, they whispered.
For daring to protect a lead with ten men against the most suffocating side in world football.
City celebrated that draw like it was survival.
Haaland’s shout of “stay humble” rang in our ears.
And yet later—oh, the poetic bite of karma—how humble they were made, how soundly they were silenced in North London.
An afternoon to remember. A balm for bruises.
Act Three: The Fine Margins. The Bitter End.
This is where titles are won and lost.
Not in grand gestures, but in inches.
In draws that could have been wins.
Brentford, Brighton, Palace…
Had we claimed six—even four–more wins from those thirteen draws, we would not be chasing.
We would be challenging.
We would be believing.
But belief, cruelly, has been siphoned out week by week, through a drip feed of frustration.
Liverpool, by contrast, have danced through the season largely untouched.
Their king, Salah, has stood unbowed, unbroken, omnipresent.
They found a way to win sometimes when they were not worthy.
We, when we were not at our best, fell.
And now, as we peer into the final act, we do so with the ache of nearly.
Of might-have-beens.
Of a campaign not defined by collapse, but by imperfection.
It was not a failure.
But neither was it enough.
And so the curtain begins to fall.
Not with disgrace, but with disappointment.
With the knowledge that the script might yet be rewritten—on a grander stage, in the Champions League.
Where hope still breathes.
Where Arsenal—this Arsenal—might yet find its defining scene.
A strange twilight where we were still marching through Europe’s elite,
but every step in the Champions League seemed to come
with a Premier League stumble.
And when the historians look back,
they’ll see Liverpool cruised.
But we’ll know.
We’ll remember the tightrope we walked.
The sacrifices made for glory elsewhere.
The gamble of preserving greatness for a different battlefield.
Do I regret it?
Not really.
Those European nights have felt sacred.
And with PSG up next, we’re still in the ring, gloves on, swinging.
But it stings, doesn’t it?
Because this felt like the moment.
City were vulnerable. Not broken – never that – but bruised.
And we were best placed to be the vultures circling.
Instead, we blinked. We hesitated.
And when you hesitate at this level,
someone else eats your dinner.