It's still slightly surreal to remember that Arsenal are the defending champions of England.
Not contenders. Not challengers. Not the team the pundits politely include in title conversations before inevitably pivoting back to the usual suspects by November.
Champions.
You can say it out loud if you want. It still sounds good.
The downside, of course, is that football immediately demands you do it all over again—no grace period. No honeymoon. No opportunity to spend six months pointing at the league table from May and smiling nostalgically.
The fixtures are out. Pre-season is around the corner. The title defence begins now.
First up comes the annual summer ritual where we all collectively agree that pre-season results don't matter before immediately panicking if we lose to Girona and declaring the quadruple is on if we beat Dortmund.
The schedule looks like this:
- 1 August: Girona FC away in Spain.
- 5 August: Real Betis in Dublin.
- 9 August: Borussia Dortmund at the Emirates (Emirates Cup).
- 16 August: Community Shield against Manchester City in Cardiff.
- 21 August: Coventry City at home as the defence of the Premier League title officially begins.
Simple enough. Well, apart from the transfer window.
Because somewhere between now and Girona away, Arsenal supporters will convince themselves that signing one more midfielder turns us into an unstoppable machine, while simultaneously believing that not signing one more midfielder means eighth place and societal collapse.
There will be links. There will be updates. There will be updates on updates. Someone will be "advancing in negotiations". Someone else will be "monitoring the situation". And at least one journalist will tell us a deal is simultaneously close, complicated, progressing well, and in danger of collapse. Normal summer behaviour.
From a football perspective, though, the questions are fascinating. What does version four or five of this Arteta team actually look like? Does the press become even more aggressive? Will Arsenal continue with the positional rotations that made life miserable for opposition midfields last season?
Is there another evolution coming in possession structures? Does the left side finally achieve footballing enlightenment and operate with the telepathic understanding of a hive mind? And perhaps most importantly: who is this season's player that suddenly turns into an absolute monster? Every title-winning team needs one. Someone who goes from "very good player" to "oh dear God, how do you stop him?"
Maybe it's one of the established stars finding another level. Maybe it's a new signing. Maybe it's the academy kid who spends pre-season nutmegging senior internationals and forcing all of us to make wildly irresponsible predictions by the second week of August. Football needs dreamers. We Arsenal supporters specialise in them. Naturally, lurking beneath all the excitement is the familiar Arsenal fan condition that no amount of success appears capable of curing. Existential dread. One injury and we're studying squad depth charts like forensic accountants. One draw away from home, and we're calculating points-per-game projections in early September. One rival signing and suddenly everyone's asking whether we've done enough. The scars run deep. Years of living through chaos don't disappear because somebody handed us a trophy in May.
Maybe that's part of the fun, though. Maybe supporting Arsenal is supposed to feel slightly irrational. Maybe optimism and anxiety are not opposing emotions but long-term companions. Because the truth is, this squad has earned trust. They climbed the mountain. Now comes the part where they try to stay there. The rest of the league will improve. Manchester City will still exist, unfortunately. Liverpool won't disappear. Chelsea will probably spend the GDP of a small nation.
Everybody will want a piece of the champions. Good. That's exactly how it should be. We spent years chasing. Now we are the ones being chased. It's a different pressure. A better pressure. The kind of pressure that means you've already made it to the place everybody else is trying to reach. So enjoy pre-season. Enjoy the transfer madness. Enjoy overanalysing a Borussia Dortmund friendly as if it's the Champions League final.
And above all else, enjoy this sentence while it still feels new: Arsenal begin the 2026/27 season as Champions of England. Not bad, that. Right then. Again.
COYG.
