Published: 17:00, 29 October 2025 | Updated: 17:00, 29 October 2025

For two decades – in fact for the 21 years since they last won the Premier League title – the criticism aimed at Arsenal for their attempts to play beautiful football has been so withering it turned some players into stone and left them broken and in ruins.

Everyone has had fun ripping them to shreds and mocking them for the emptiness that was said to be at their heart.

They had the skill but they did not have the character and they did not have the fight. And they have been damned for that time after time after time.

They have been mocked and derided. A lot of people have had a lot of fun at their expense. They have been called spineless and gutless. They have been told they lack the right stuff. They have been told surrender was in their DNA.

Troy Deeney probably aimed the most famous criticism at them after Arsenal fell to a defeat at Watford in 2017.

‘There's a reason they lost and it wasn't because...