Reviewing the standout performers from this past campaign.
It feels like it’s been a while. In reality it has only been a couple weeks or so since my last piece, but such was the pace of this past season that taking a few extra days to write something feels like going months without publishing a column. Compared to the whirlwind that was the 2025/26 campaign, taking a bit of time to think about what I want to say feels like an almost glacial pace.
Additionally, if we’re being candid, it has been rather lovely to not have to scurry to write something every few days before the moment is obsolete and we’ve moved onto another match. That isn’t to say I don’t plan on doing all this and more next season, because I very much do. But with the World Cup, I’ve greatly enjoyed the opportunity to just kick my feet up and be purely a spectator, free to watch matches and then continue on with my day.
Another reason why I feel I’ve taken some extra time between pieces is that I’ve been working on a small project on the side. That project? A compilation detailing Arsenal’s title-winning Premier League campaign last season.
One thing I’ve learned while working on this is that, at least to my mind, the music you select is a foundational element of a good compilation. If you’re trying to produce something truly artful, the song you choose is critical. The beat and rhythm dictate how you cut clips while the lyrics can serve as thoughtful flourishes when paired with the right bit of footage. The right soundtrack can really elevate a good compilation into a great one.
Another thing I’ve realized while working on this compilation is that it’s a great way to watch the season back in review. As I’ve searched through clips and watched back every goal Arsenal scored this season four times over, I have been able to relive this past Premier League campaign in depth. And in doing so, I have had ample opportunity to reflect on the Gunners’ successful challenge.
With that in mind, it seems like a good time to dive into some superlatives from the 2025/26 season. So that’s what we’ll do in this piece. Below are several categories. For each one, I’ll select a player I feel is most deserving of that particular title and provide my argument for doing so. Since there are plenty of choices from a 63-game season, I might feel the need to pay homage to some honorable mentions for a category.
And of course, feel free to let me know your selections in the comment section!
Anyway, without further ado…
Best Moment
There are a lot of moments from this season that I’ll always remember fondly. There’s Eberechi Eze scoring a hat trick in first North London Derby, just a few months after escaping the clutches of Spurs in the transfer market to join the club he supported as a boy. There is also Leandro Trossard scoring his first goal in 2026 late on at West Ham in Arsenal’s penultimate win before securing the league title. And who could forget the full time whistle blowing as the Gunners earned a first Champions League final appearance in 20 years?
All of these are beautiful stitches in the tapestry of Arsenal’s season. As Mike Breen wonderfully stated when the New York Knicks ended their own decades-long championship drought — life isn’t perfect, but some moments are perfect. Those moments above and several others are all perfect in their own right.
But the instant from this season that will stick with me forever is of course when Manchester City failed to win at Bournemouth and Arsenal were officially crowned Premier League champions. Seeing the players at London Colney go nuts celebrating finally getting over the line was endearing and heartwarming. Watching videos of local supporters flocking to the Emirates, all intrinsically feeling that was where they needed to be, induced a tidal wave of pride within me. Later I would see videos of some of the Arsenal players at the stadium in the early hours of the morning, showcasing the connection and togetherness in this football club that surely helped propel the Gunners to that long-awaited title.
However, in the moments immediately following the realization that Arsenal had won the league, I didn’t feel much outside of relief. It was over. I could stop panicking and worrying every minute of every day. But after a few minutes of that one overriding emotion, I couldn’t help but think to myself, “Is this it? After all this time, is this all I feel?”
I sat down in my office and checked my phone. Arsenal had posted a video. And there was Arsène Wenger, glass of wine in hand, proudly proclaiming, “You did it.” Joyous music began playing as a montage of the Premier League season commenced. That’s when the tears started to flow.
In truth, I wept with joy for quite a few minutes. I’ve been an Arsenal supporter for twenty years now. That was twenty years of banter, twenty years of not being good enough, twenty years of nice memories here and there but no glory in the end, and twenty years of loving this club anyway. Finally,finally, I could say I had witnessed this team overcome all others in the league. When the heaving sobs of elation finally let up, I felt cleansed. Pain had been washed away and replaced with peace.
I don’t really see how any other moment could compare to that.
Best Goal
Okay, I promise I will keep the personal anecdotes to a minimum for the rest of this piece. We are now onto the best goal of the season. Here, I must admit, there are different ways to interpret this superlative? Are we talking about the most impactful goal that might not necessarily be the easiest on the eye, like Trossard’s deflected strike to win the game at West Ham? Or perhaps this is more geared toward sumptuous finishes that need not be match-defining, like Gabriel Jesus’ curling effort from outside the box to make it 4-1 against Aston Villa?
In the end, I went for something in the middle. For me, the best goal of the 2025/26 season was Eberechi Eze’s strike against Bayer Leverkusen. Hopefully that selection makes some sense.
Let’s start with the aesthetics. What is there not to like? It is a textbook wondergoal, an illustration of which you’ll probably find in the newest edition ofMerriam-Websterunder “thunderbastard”. Trossard taps the ball over to Eze, with the Englishman’s back to a goal that is about 25 yards away. But instead of perhaps laying it off to Viktor Gyökeres or trying to funnel the ball out wide Eze pops it over his shoulder, swivels on a dime, and blasts it past the keeper at a speed that almost certainly was three digits (at least in kilometers). The reaction of Eze’s teammates should tell you how galactic the quality of that strike was.
The best teams have at least a player or two who are atomic bombs offensively, able to create sheer devastation out of seemingly nothing. Eze is such a player. This was his emphatic statement of ability, in which after 35 minutes of a 0-0 scoreline he declared, “Fuck it, I’m him”, and took matters into his own hands.
And the reason the best teams have players like Eze is because even the best teams can’t be at the top of their game all the time. Even the cream of the crop need to be bailed out every once in a while. The Gunners had required an 89th-minute penalty to snatch a draw in the reverse fixture. Back in London, they had generated several good chances but couldn’t break the deadlock. And in the Champions League, it just takes one unfortunate moment for a club’s journey in it to be over for the season.
Arsenal found their fate hanging in the balance. They needed to find a goal so that they could exert much-needed dominance over proceedings. And Eze answered that call in the most stunning fashion.
Signing of the Season
In hindsight, Arsenal’s summer transfer window last year was an effective one. I plan on writing a series of pieces called Performance Reviews which will more specifically get into this from a couple angles. I want to more closely analyze the new players’ debut seasons as well as Andrea Berta’s first window with the club. More on that in due course. What I’ll say here is that for the most part, it actually is quite difficult to pick an outright Signing of the Season from the current batch.
Cristhian Mosquera arrived from Spain a 21-year-old defender and proceeded to perform with a maturity far beyond his years at the highest level of the sport; a last-ditch tackle on Igor Thiago to save Arsenal a point at Brentford and an hour of excellent defending in the Champions League final against the best winger in the world are just the highlights from a mightily impressive debut season. Piero Hincapié immediately established himself as the quintessential embodiment of an Arteta-style defender, launching himself into every tackle with overwhelming ferocity and unquestionable commitment. Eze produced some spectacular moments of quality to win crucial games and points for the Gunners. Love him or hate him, Viktor Gyökeres was the top scorer on a team that won the league and almost became champions of Europe. And Noni Madueke showed some promise with his elite athleticism as well.
But ultimately, I think the Signing of the Season remains Martín Zubimendi. The Spaniard arrived from Real Sociedad and promptly elevated Arsenal’s midfield. Despite it being Zubimendi’s first season in England, his first season in the most physically demanding league in Europe, his first season without a winter break, he was relied on heavily by Arteta. When all was said and done, Zubimendi ended his first season in north London having played 4,299 minutes.
That rather ridiculous amount of playing time certainly was the driving factor behind Zubimendi’s decline in form to end the season. By the run-in, he was showing clear signs of exhaustion — less exuberance in his duels, poor decision-making in buildup, and a lack of composure compared to when he first stepped onto the Emirates pitch. Myles Lewis-Skelly is back in contention for a starting spot in midfield because he capitalized on Zubimendi’s faltering conclusion to the campaign.
But for me, that doesn’t undo his contributions for the majority of the season. It’s important to remember what Arsenal’s midfield looked like before the addition of the man whom Liverpool and Real Madrid had also chased intently. Zubimendi’s predecessor, among other red flags, had a penchant for attempting risky passes at inappropriate times and lacking both the athleticism and positional discipline to consistently protect his side from transitions. The Gunners were often under on the break because of that instability at the base of midfield. The resulting openness against counters was certainly a contributing factor to Arsenal finishing with 14 draws in the 2024/25 edition of the Premier League.
Zubimendi brought with him more reliable, albeit pragmatic, passing. This often meant that he was more of a tempo-setter, Arteta’s loyalist lieutenant in the Department of Buildup who wasn’t afraid to pass sideways an infuriating amount if it meant Arsenal didn’t lose the ball in their own third. He punched through his share of line-breakers in the middle of the pitch, but the Spaniard certainly wasn’t the deep-lying playmaker many mistakenly expected him to be.
Perhaps that’s why I see Arsenal fans coming to the conclusion that he was something of a bust this season. Despite the price tag and the acclaim, Zubumendi is very evidently not a sexy, new-age Andrea Pirlo, masterfully pulling the strings from a ZIP code away. Additionally, his few mistakes tended to be high-profile ones given the role he played for the Gunners in possession. And for those reasons, it’s easy to come away thinking he didn’t contribute much.
But this Arsenal team won the title by being the single best defense in the world from front to back. Zubimendi was a critical part of that. The Spaniard’s knack for intelligent positioning off the ball allowed to consistently make critical interceptions and get to loose balls. He also was surprisingly effective in the tackle. Even less expected was his proficiency in aerial duels.
On top of this, Zubimendi’s arrival at Arsenal also saw him develop a habit for goalscoring. In his maiden season in north London, the midfielder scored six goals and made three assists in all competitions. Among his strikes were a brace consisting of a brilliant outside-the-box volley and a header against Nottingham Forest, a deft run and finish against Aston Villa, and a bullet from the left half-space against Sunderland. His goal contributions often proved crucial as well, either serving to open the scoring for Arsenal or clinch the result.
As much as I believe that the level of contribution from almost all of Arsenal’s signings last summer has been generally quite high, I can’t help but conclude that Zubimendi’s involvement on and off the ball has been the most crucial of that group. Again, I know people’s final memories of him from this season won’t be all that positive. But I genuinely believe the Gunners would likely not have enjoyed the success they did in the 2025/26 campaign without him.
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Unsung Hero
I took quite some time on the previous superlative and I’m excited to get to the next couple of sections, so I’m going to refrain from burying the lede here. We’ve seen the likes of David Raya, Gabriel, and Declan Rice rightfully and deservedly be included in multiple “team of the year” graphics. But there is an Arsenal player who has performed just as wonderfully this season, who will go down as an Arsenal legend, who unfortunately has not received the same level recognition. That player is William Saliba.
For me, this past season was the one in which the Frenchman established himself as the best center back in the world. I love Gabriel — he exemplifies the toughness and resilience of this title-winning Arsenal side. The Brazilian defender is responsible for a multitude of highlight-reel-worthy moments and displays of elite athleticism. And he is one of the world’s biggest threats from set pieces. But I genuinely think we are looking at a future all-timer in Saliba.
While Saliba’s defensive actions aren’t as loud as those of his partner at the back, I believe they are just as effective. His positioning off the ball almost always ensures he’s in the right place at the right time in order to neutralize issues before they have germinated. And when he does have to put out fires, he typically does so with aplomb and minimal drama.
On the ball, Saliba has become almost as important. While Arsenal fans have been surprised that Zubimendi has turned out not to be a deep-lying playmaker, the French center back as in effect performed that function. The Gunners’ no. 2 typically ends matches with the most touches and passes of anyone on the pitch, or is at least quite close to that status. He knows when to punch passes through the lines, when to carry into midfield (or even into the final third) himself, and when to just keep things ticking. He and Raya are very much the two biggest catalysts in Arsenal’s buildup play.
And the thing is, over the course of 50 appearances and 4,254 minutes, Saliba has maintained a stunning level of consistency. Almost every game from him last season was an 8/10 or better. But because the genius of his game is that he solves problems before they arise, this world class display has essentially gone under the radar. So I want to give Saliba his flowers, because this title does not happen without him.
Baller of the Season
As a frequent overthinker, I have realized that there are effectively three different ways to go about determining the winner of this superlative. Which may be part of the reason why I took so long to write this piece. The first method of selecting the Baller of the Season involves going back through all of my Ballers & Fallers columns and tallying how many inclusions in the Ballers section each member of the squad totaled (good news: everyone made it in at least once). The winner would be whichever player has earned a place on the Ballers list the most often this season.
There is of course another way to go about this determination. Instead of simply counting up the number of inclusions in the Ballers half of the columns, I also toyed with the idea of basing the choice on something I’m calling the Baller-Faller Differential. This is a value calculated quite simply, by subtracting the number of designations as a Faller over the season from the number of designations as a Baller in that period. Naturally it follows that the player with the highest Baller-Faller Differential is the Baller of the Season.
And then of course there is the final method, the tried and true test of the masses: the eye test. Instead of going off the statistics, I just give my opinion as to which Arsenal player has see their stock rise the most this season simply on the basis of having watched all 63 games. No statistics, just vibes.
So let’s do all three. First up is the primary tally. Here, we have a tie! Between, unsurprisingly, Rice and, surprisingly, Viktor Gyökeres. Both have a record 16 inclusions in the Ballers column. This is probably because Rice regularly put in man-of-the-match-level performances while Gyökeres was the team’s top goalscorer.
However, when you incorporate the Baller-Faller Differential, Gyökeres very quickly falls away. His BFD comes out to a value of +5 given his 11 appearances in the Fallers column. Rice — and I’ve double-checked this — never appeared in that category this season, meaning his BFD is +16. No one else comes close to that value, although Saliba and Max Dowman also went the entirety of last season without being designated as Fallers.
With those two stats in mind, I’m opting for Gyökeres as the Baller of the Season. This decision is made for two reasons, one I’ll explain later and one I’ll elaborate on now: the whole point of the Ballers & Fallers column is to evaluate whose stock has risen and whose has dropped on a game-by-game basis. And over the course of a season, it’s proven to be a good way to measure who has performed above expectations. For me, the Arsenal player who did that in the 2025/26 campaign was Gyökeres.
As I’ve mentioned before, I wasn’t exactly thrilled when news of his imminent arrival broke. I expected a player who wasn’t quite at the level. And while I’m also working on a piece that involves being a little less complimentary of the Swede, he surpassed my estimations in a big way. He scored some important goals among the most scores on a team that won the Premier League and made it to a Champions League final. Over his time, his holdup and linkup play greatly improved. His fitness also elevated when all was said and done, which allowed him to put in some extremely admirable work off the ball, particularly during the run-in. Gyökeres demonstrated an almost unmatched commitment to pressing, chasing, making runs in behind, and wrestling with defenders.
And in the end, he was an important part of a successful season. Considering that in August, I would have singled him out as a potential reason why Arsenal don’t win the title, I’d say that’s a marked rise in standing.
Faller of the Season
Now it’s time for the other, less fun side of this coin. We’re going to employ the same methods of determination as we did for the last superlative. First up is the simple tally of inclusions in the Fallers column, which hilariously sees Gyökeres earn that distinction. This is more than certainly down to the fact that for all the good he did in his first season at Arsenal, the Swedish striker had a habit of putting in truly poor performances when he didn’t impress.
But if we’re going off of the Baller-Faller Differential, the results are intriguing. In this instance, we again have a tie; Kepa Arrizabalaga and Myles Lewis-Skelly both clock in with a BFD of -3. Kepa’s appearance here isn’t surprising. His showing in the Carabao Cup final was rather abysmal, and he followed it up with another stinker at Southampton. This isn’t to mention a couple of shaky performances in Raya’s stead earlier in the season.
As for Lewis-Skelly, his negative differential largely has to do with a conspicuous lack of usage over the first half of the season. Up until the run-in, it looked like the Hale End graduate was destined for a heartbreaking sale in the summer. However, it’s hard to argue that he’s the Faller of the Season after witnessing stake a fairly compelling claim for a starting role in midfield next season.
So we rely once more on the eye test. And for me, that means another tie. This time, it’s between Martin Ødegaard and Gabriel Martinelli. If the Baller of the Season is the Arsenal player who saw their stock rise the most, surely it follows the Faller of the Season saw the status sink the most. And for what it’s worth, both registered a BFD of 0 this season.
With Martinelli, I just feel that he was something of a non-factor in the Premier League this season. He finished with just one goal and four assists in the English top flight this time around. Admittedly, that goal was a crucial equalizer at home to Manchester City. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that he was the team’s most productive player in the Champions League. But the point still stands: it wasn’t good enough output in the Gunners’ bread-and-butter competition. More than ever, it feels like the Brazilian is a player Arsenal should look to upgrade on.
The same can be said of Ødegaard as well. The captain suffered another injury-riddled season in 2025/26. When he did make it onto the pitch, he very typically seemed to struggle with the pace and physicality of the Premier League. Outside of a few moments the Norwegian’s campaign was a largely disappointing one, to the point where moving on from him increasingly seems like the correct path to take.
Just a couple of years ago, Ødegaard and Martinelli were key pieces in this Arsenal team, practically guaranteed to start and leaned on heavily by the manager. This season, the latter was more of a rotation option and the former should be concerned by the number of options there are to usurp him in midfield, both in outside and within the squad. As things stand, their stocks have fallen heavily in the past year.
Player of the Season
Now for the big one. No calculations necessary, no technicalities leaned on here. Simply put, who was the MVP of Arsenal’s 2025/26 campaign?
There are several options to choose from, of course. And all of them are defensive players, which certainly speaks to how Arsenal won their Premier League title this season. There’s Raya, whose elite distribution was crucial to Arsenal’s buildup while his spectacular saves repeatedly kept his side from dropping critical points. Gabriel also deserves a mention here for his robust defending and unrivaled goalscoring prowess on set pieces. Saliba should also get his flowers for a campaign that thrusts him into “best in the world” status in my humble opinion.
However, for me it’s impossible to look past Rice’s display from start to finish last season. As I said before, he never showed up in the Fallers section across the dozens of Ballers & Fallers columns I wrote last season. He legitimately did not have a single truly bad performance. A couple quiet ones, yes. But he showed a truly spectacular level of consistency.
And he made a positive impact on both sides of the ball. On it, he helped orchestrate Arsenal’s buildup as part of double pivot with Zubimendi and often singlehandedly got his side up with pitch with his lung-busting carries. He also was Arsenal’s best chance creator over the entirety of the season, and the team’s third-best on a per-90 basis. This is largely due to his phenomenal set piece delivery, at which he is now certainly among the most capable on the planet.
In defense, the Englishman was fairly immaculate as well. Rice very typically covered titanic swathes of the pitch throughout matches, frequently putting in important tackles and cutting out dangerous passes. And despite the sheer volume of them, his defensive interventions were rarely anything less than top quality.
I really need to hammer home the picture of consistency that Rice was in the 2025/26 campaign. The Arsenal record signing played 55 games, racking up an eye-watering 4,456 minutes. For better or for worse, no. 41 was used like a bar of soap. But in that time, how many mistakes do you remember Rice making? Not more than a couple, I’m guessing. All I can conjure up in particular is his giveaway for Spurs’ goal in the away edition of the North London Derby.
Over that time, we’ve witnessed Rice become a true spiritual leader for the Gunners. While Ødegaard earned his captaincy behind closed doors, the Englishman marshaled his teammates with authority on the pitch. He barked out orders and gave players an earful when they deserved it. And of course, his post-City proclamation that the title race was “not done” will go down as the stuff of legend.
Ultimately, more than anyone else, Rice was the driving force of Arsenal’s successful season. He is the player whose absence most inspires panic among Gooners. He was the paramount raiser of standards among the playing personnel. All that makes him more than deserving of this and the club’s Player of the Season designation.
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