Shubi Arun
Dec 30, 2025, 08:06 AM
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It's been a year of two halves for Arsenal. The first six months of 2025 was marked by disappointment for the Gunners following the meek manner in which they fell away in the Premier League title race and finished as runners-up for a third-successive season.
Their run in the Champions League infused their season with purpose. The manner in which they knocked out holders Real Madrid in the quarterfinals fueled mass hysteria but it proved short-lived after they were defeated in the semifinals by Paris Saint-Germain.
A busy summer of transfer business reinvigorated the club and at the time of writing, the Gunners sit atop both the Premier League and Champions League. Of course only hindsight will tell us if their stellar start to the 2025-26 campaign was them laying the foundation for eventual silverware, or if it was the inflection point of their season.
As has often been the case with Arsenal in recent years, 2025 too was a rollercoaster. Here, ESPN takes a look back at their journey over the past 12 months.
Best moment
(Photo by Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
Eberechi Eze's hat trick in the north London derby this season and the 5-1 thrashing of Manchester City in February deserve honorable mentions. But there's an obvious winner for Arsenal's best moment of 2025 -- the Declan Rice free-kicks against Real Madrid in the Champions League quarterfinal.
There's a case to be made for that first-leg being the greatest-ever game at the Emirates Stadium to date. It certainly was the loudest. Such was the emotion in the stands that the home supporters began to serenade the £100 million ($135m) signing from West Ham with chants of 'He's one of our own'.
Rice's stupendous freekicks -- which were 12 minutes apart -- have become so deeply embedded in club folklore that it's easy to forget that Arsenal also went on to beat Madrid 2-1 in the reverse leg at the Bernabéu.
Worst moment
Getty
It has to be the apology for a tifo that was unfurled at the Emirates for the first-leg of their Champions League semifinal against Paris Saint-Germain. The white cannon on a red flag looked like it had been created on Microsoft Paint and deflated the mood for what was the club's biggest game in a generation.
Now of course, this isn't to say that the tifo was the reason for their exit to the eventual winners of the competition. But it felt indicative of a club and fanbase that were completely unaccustomed to occasions of that magnitude.
Oh, and the two-leg defeat didn't feel great either -- particularly after a Premier League title attempt fell by the wayside.
The tifo unveiled for this season's north London derby showed that lessons had been learnt from past ignominy.
Key signing
David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images
The pick of the eight signings Arsenal made this year has to be Martín Zubimendi (€60m, $67m). Arsenal made significant strides towards securing his signature in January 2025, so his arrival in the summer didn't come as a surprise. The manner in which he has settled into the side has.
Zubimendi's pairing with Rice has imbued the Arsenal midfield with the balance they have sorely lacked in previous seasons, and has helped liberate the England international to take up a more advanced role. The Basque midfielder has quietly become a mainstay in Mikel Arteta's lineup and has started 16 of their 18 games this season.
Transfer to forget
The jury is out on Viktor Gyökeres following his slow start to life in north London since his big-money move in the summer from Sporting Lisbon. But it's far too soon to dub him a flop. Of the eight players to join Arsenal this year, Christian Nørgaard is perhaps the only one yet to make a tangible impact this season. But his value as a squad player in the second half of the season when games and injuries are both relentless will go up.
So I'm going to cheat slightly on this answer and say that Arsenal's worst transfer decision this year was not signing anyone in the January transfer window. The Gunners went into that window with Kai Havertz as their only fit centre-forward, and a couple of weeks after the window closed the German picked up a hamstring injury that ruled him out for the season.
While Mikel Merino admirably stepped up to fill the void up top, the lack of a bonafide striking option hobbled Arsenal's domestic and European campaigns.
- Arsenal 'actively looking' to sign players in January - Mikel Arteta
- Martin Ødegaard: Declan Rice has put Arsenal back in charge of title race
Goal of the year contenders
We've already mentioned Rice's pearlers -- but what else sticks out?
Declan Rice (x2) vs. Real Madrid, April 8
Gabriel Martinelli vs. Manchester City, Sept. 21
Eberechi Eze vs Tottenham Hotspur, Nov. 23
Will 2026 be better?
Julian Finney/Getty Images
Let's think about it in two phases. The simple answer on what to look forward to in 2026, is the prospect of a first major trophy in more than two decades.
Arsenal walk into 2026 with a realistic chance of winning all four trophies this season. While some of their nervy performances over the past month have raised questions about their mentality, they undoubtedly have the depth and quality in their squad to compete on multiple fronts.
The fear would be that after three successive second-place finishes, there is a sense of now-or-never for Arsenal this season.
The prospect of another trophyless season will force the club and its fans to confront some difficult questions about the squad's mentality. And perhaps even around Arteta's suitability to coax this group of players across the finish line.
The Spaniard is into his seventh year in the job and another season without tangible success will heighten the sense that his reign at the club isn't dissimilar to Mauricio Pochettino's at Tottenham.