**There is a strange thing that happens when you finally get what you have spent years wanting.**
The celebration eventually stops.
Then somebody asks you to do it again.
For **Arsenal**, that moment has arrived remarkably quickly.
Twenty-two years of waiting disappeared when **Mikel Arteta’s** side became Premier League champions last season. The near-misses, the arguments about progress and the repeated pursuit of Manchester City finally had an answer.
Arsenal were champions.
Now comes the slightly less romantic part.They have to live like them.
Arteta, however, has already rejected one part of the language normally associated with being champions.
“We aren’t the defending champions, we’re the attacking Premier League champions,” the Spaniard said ahead of the new campaign.
It is an extremely Arteta way of putting it.
Yet underneath the semantics is something revealing about where Arsenal now believe they belong.
They are not approaching this season as custodians of something they won in May. They appear intent on treating last season’s title as the beginning of something rather than the culmination of it.
And their summer business suggests those words are more than motivational theatre.
Arsenal are no longer building a squad capable of becoming champions.
They are behaving like champions.
**The view changes from the top**
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For years, Arsenal were allowed to talk about the journey.
There was always another stage.
Return to the Champions League. Challenge Manchester City. Learn from finishing second. Go again. Get closer.
Until eventually there was nowhere left to climb.
Winning the Premier League changes the vocabulary surrounding a football club.
A draw that once represented resilience becomes two points dropped. A promising young player becomes somebody expected to contribute immediately. Finishing second stops being evidence of progress and starts producing questions about what went wrong.
That is the uncomfortable privilege Arsenal have earned.
Only three managers have successfully retained the Premier League title, placing Arteta in pursuit of membership to a particularly exclusive club.
There is Europe, too.
Arsenal reached the Champions League final last season, only to lose to Paris Saint-Germain on penalties. It means expectations surrounding this team no longer begin and end domestically.
The ceiling has disappeared.
So, increasingly, have the excuses.
**Arsenal are spending like champions**
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Perhaps the clearest indication of Arsenal’s mentality has come away from the pitch.
Winning teams can become sentimental remarkably quickly.
The temptation is understandable. You look around a dressing room containing the players who delivered something supporters waited more than two decades to experience and convince yourself that continuity itself represents improvement.
Arsenal have resisted that temptation.
**Bruno Guimarães** was the statement.
The Brazilian did not arrive as a project or an intriguing piece for Arteta to develop over several seasons.
Arsenal spent £75million on one of the Premier League’s established midfielders, signing Newcastle United’s captain on a four-year contract with the option of another season.
That distinction matters.
Guimarães was not signed to rescue Arsenal.
He was signed to improve the champions.
Then came **Christos Tzolis**, adding another profile and another direct threat to Arteta’s attacking options. His two assists in the 3-0 Community Shield victory over Manchester City provided an encouraging early indication of what he can offer.
And now there is **Ezri Konsa**.
Arsenal have agreed a £51million deal with Aston Villa for the England international, with the defender set to undergo a medical after the clubs reached an agreement.
In some ways, Konsa might tell us more about Arsenal’s current position than the glamour of the Guimarães deal.
With William Saliba injured and Jurriën Timber dealing with fitness problems, Arsenal could have accepted a depleted defence as an inconvenience to navigate.
Instead, they moved for an established England international who can operate at centre-back and right-back.
That is how Premier League champions should operate.
Not spending because the squad is broken.
Spending because standing still is another way of moving backwards.
**Depth is no longer a luxury**
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That approach becomes particularly important when considering what Arsenal are now trying to achieve.
Arteta does not merely need his best XI.
He needs solutions.
Guimarães offers another way of configuring a midfield containing **Declan Rice**, **Martin Ødegaard** and a wealth of alternatives.
Tzolis creates greater competition in attacking areas.
Konsa provides Premier League experience and versatility to a defensive unit that will again be asked to compete across several fronts.
None of those moves feel particularly desperate.
That might be their greatest virtue.
This is squad building from a position of power rather than panic.
Arsenal chief executive Richard Garlick has indicated that the club remain prepared to act if the right opportunity emerges, despite their significant business already this summer.
The champions are behaving as though winning the league exposed more work to do, not less
Perhaps that is exactly what Arteta means when he talks about attacking the title rather than defending it.
Defence implies preservation.
Arsenal’s summer has been about expansion.
**Being hunted is different**
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There remains one thing Arsenal cannot purchase this summer.
The experience of being champions.
They have experienced almost everything else together.
They know what it feels like to lead a title race and lose it, what it feels like to finish second and what it feels like to hear that Manchester City will eventually catch them.
Now they know what it feels like when nobody does.
But being the benchmark introduces a different psychology.
Every club gets to measure itself against Arsenal now.
Opponents arrive knowing that taking three points from Arteta’s side means beating the reigning Premier League champions. Every setback will be examined for evidence that the crown is slipping.
That is the price of becoming the team everybody wanted Arsenal to become.
The fascinating part is that Arteta does not appear interested in pretending otherwise.
“We’re the attacking Premier League champions.”
There is something almost confrontational about the phrase.
The league is not something Arsenal intend to protect. It is apparently something they intend to go out and win all over again.
It may sound like another entry in the increasingly large book of Arteta-isms, but mentality is often communicated through language.
His choice is deliberate.
**Expectation is the final stage of Arsenal’s evolution**
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Arteta has already overseen several versions of Arsenal.
There was the team trying to repair itself.
Then came the young side unexpectedly entering a title race, the challengers attempting to learn from painful near-misses and, finally, the group capable of crossing the line.
This is another version entirely.
The champions.
For much of Arteta’s reign, Arsenal could be defined by what they were becoming.
Now they will be judged by what they have become.
That changes the emotional equation of the season.
Expectation can be uncomfortable, particularly when almost anything short of winning begins to feel like regression.
But there is something slightly backwards about fearing it.
This pressure did not suddenly happen to Arsenal.
They built it.
Every improvement increased expectations. Every major signing raised them further. Every title challenge removed another excuse until Arsenal eventually created a football team good enough that people expect it to win.
That was the point.
Arsenal wanted to matter again.
They wanted May afternoons to feel enormous. They wanted Champions League nights at the Emirates. They wanted players of Guimarães’ calibre to view north London as somewhere to win the biggest trophies.
They wanted other clubs looking upwards at them.
Well, here they are.
**Now Arsenal have to make success ordinary**
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Perhaps that is the real challenge facing Arsenal this season.
Not winning once.
Making winning feel normal.
The great Premier League sides are rarely remembered solely because they reached the summit. They are remembered because of what happened after they got there.
One title proves you were the best team in England for a season.
Sustained success creates something else.
Arteta’s Arsenal are not there yet, and one championship should not be confused with an era of dominance.
But there is an opportunity now that did not exist 12 months ago.
Arsenal no longer have to imagine what crossing the line feels like.
They have done it.
The question is what that knowledge does to them.
Does expectation become heavier because they finally have something to lose?
Or does winning remove the final psychological barrier for a team that spent years wondering whether its moment would ever arrive?
Arteta appears to have already chosen his answer.
He does not want Arsenal protecting anything.
He wants them attacking again.
And if their summer business tells us anything, the club appear to agree with him.
For years, Arsenal were defined by what they were becoming.
Now they are defined by what they have become.
**The champions.**
The next step is making sure that word describes more than one season.