Why '1-0 to the Arsenal' is back - and what it means for UEFA Champions League final as Mikel Arteta aims to stop Paris Saint-Germain

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After ending their 22-year wait for a Premier League title, Arsenal now head into Saturday's UEFA Champions League final aiming to end an even longer drought, with echoes of their last European triumph prominent.

Party time! Arsenal fans celebrate title win at the Emirates

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The football club song book is a document in constant need of updating.

Around the pubs, cafes, supermarkets and streets of Islington on Sunday evening, as Arsenal supporters held an impromptu carnival to celebrate the Premier League trophy being held aloft, heard on repeat were songs dedicated to Viktor Gyokeres, Piero Hincapie and, above all, Eberechi Eze.

All Arsenal players for less than a year, yet all lauded more frequently than Bukayo Saka or Martin Odegaard by fans hanging off lampposts, scaling scaffolding, and generally turning the streets around Emirates Stadium into a mass of jostling humanity, not unlike one of the corners which helped propel them to Premier League glory.

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But there is at least one old song which endures, and perhaps even thrives.

Whether hollered organically by the hordes packing Holloway Road, cloaked in red smoke, or manufactured when a pub speaker starts pumping out the opening chords of Go West by the Pet Shop Boys, ‘1-0 to the Arsenal’ was a part of the sonic texture of Sunday’s unforgettable party.

It is a chant which has not only stood the test of time - as a result of the specific way Mikel Arteta has claimed the title and now has Europe in his sights, it has been given a fresh lease of life.

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While in the days since Arsenal returned to the top of English football, many have quoted the fact that it was 22 years since the club’s last domestic title, it is also 32 years since their last European trophy – a Cup Winners’ Cup campaign, in 1993/94 under George Graham, where ‘1-0 to the Arsenal’ became more than a ritual incantation.

It became a mission statement in a campaign which culminated in a famous night in Copenhagen and the inevitable scoreline.

As Alan Smith, the scorer of the only goal in the most famous '1-0 to the Arsenal' in the club’s history, told TNT Sports for a retrospective a few years ago: "The '1-0 to the Arsenal' thing, which caught fire during that campaign, was a badge of honour.

"You want to be scoring more goals, but the fact we could grind out a 1-0 win was in our favour and we took pride in that."

Arsenal’s title-winning – and possibly Europe-conquering – campaign under Arteta has followed a similar route in its final stages.

From the start of April to mid-May – the period which, though tumultuous, took Arsenal to the brink of glory in two competitions, they won six matches, five of which finished 1-0: against Newcastle United, West Ham United and Burnley in the league, and against Sporting CP and Atletico Madrid in successive rounds in Europe.

Indeed, across all competitions, ‘1-0 to the Arsenal’ is the most common result across English clubs this season. A 'badge of honour' once again.

Most common scorelines - all competitions	Games
Arsenal 1-0	11
Manchester City 2-0	10
Aston Villa 2-1	10
Arsenal 2-0	9
Manchester City 3-0	9
Liverpool 1-0	6
Manchester City 2-1	6
Arsenal 2-1	6
Aston Villa 1-0	6
Crystal Palace 2-1	6
Newcastle United 2-1	6
Brighton & Hove Albion 2-1	6
Fulham 1-0	6

As they return to a European final on Saturday, trying to finally claim a continental trophy for the first time since 1994, could Arsenal be cooking up a ‘1-0 to the Arsenal’ to put all others in the shade?

And, ultimately, does it matter? After all, in another echo of Graham's Arsenal, the manner of Arsenal’s title win under Arteta has drawn sustained criticism in recent months, from rival fans and corners of the media.

Much as Graham’s team were unloved, too. Their crowning moment in Europe even prompted one reader from Kent to write to The Independent and complain that: ”Arsenal’s win in the European Cup Winners’ Cup must surely have been a profoundly depressing experience, truly a victory for the dullest virtues and a denial of the game’s potential for grace, imagination, subtlety and beauty.”

Substance over style?

It has been noted that of his two managerial mentors, Arteta’s methods of late have proved more in line with David Moyes’ teachings than Arsene Wenger’s.

The echoes are stronger still when you compare Arteta with Graham. Another Arsenal manager who had been a midfielder for the club in his playing days.

And - with Wenger losing three finals, and Unai Emery losing one - Graham is still the last manager to steer Arsenal to European glory.

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The evolution of their respective teams has not been similar. Graham’s Arsenal lost the ability to win league titles and morphed instead into a cup team in the early 1990s; by contrast, Arsenal’s trip to Budapest to face Paris Saint-Germain (coincidentally, Graham’s semi-final opponents in 1994) is the result of six years of near-constant improvement.

But the methods both men used to underpin their work do sustain comparison. The foundation of Graham’s success in that later period was his highly-choreographed defence and extremely well-drilled team.

It was to the extent that the players had nicknamed their training facilities 'The Killing Fields'. Sobha Realty Training Centre doesn’t have quite the same ring to it and Arsenal’s current surrounds are necessarily more corporate.

But the lessons are the same: tightly controlled and choreographed patterns of play can manipulate enough variables to enhance your outcomes. Or, to put it more bluntly: defences win titles.

”I worked them into the ground until they had perfected zonal marking,” Graham wrote in his autobiography ‘The Glory and The Grief’.

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”I would sometimes use a pitch-width rope that the players would hold onto as they tugged and pulled each other while they disciplined themselves to stay in their zone.”

The modern Arsenal's rigorous work in this regard - not just defensively, but offensively too, in their awesome threat from set-pieces - is clear for all to see.

David Raya, William Saliba and Gabriel have been among the players of the season and, in fact, Arsenal are the only team in the top five European leagues to boast a clean sheet in over 50% of their matches across all competitions this season.

Team	Games played	Clean sheets	Clean sheet %
Arsenal	62	32	52%
Como	44	21	48%
Lyon	48	22	46%
Inter	54	24	44%
PSG	55	24	44%
Manchester City	60	26	43%
Roma	49	21	43%
Milan	42	17	40%
Juventus	50	20	40%

And the absolute totals show they are streets ahead of their opposition both in England and in Europe.

Big five leagues - all competitions	Clean sheets
Arsenal	32
Manchester City	26
Inter	24
Paris Saint-Germain	24
Lyon	22
Como	21
Roma	21
Juventus	20
Crystal Palace	20

Combining defensive excellence with set-piece dominance is evidently not the most popular approach, judging by the reception which has been afforded to Arteta's side in some quarters.

But what no one can doubt is that it has worked, and that Arsenal's methods have left a lasting impression on the game in England and beyond.

So much so that PSG coach Luis Enrique unambigously described Arsenal this week as "the best defensive team in Europe this season."

End of the identity crisis

A team’s identity is rarely fixed. Within a handful of years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Arsenal had been transformed from Graham's robotic team immortalised in The Full Monty for the effectiveness of their offside trap, to being caricatured in The IT Crowd as the team who ‘always try and walk it in’ under Wenger.

Perhaps Arteta’s Arsenal are one tightly-written and viral SNL UK sketch about a meat wall at corners away from achieving the same kind of wider cultural permanence.

Certainly, it feels significant that for many, the defining moment of Arsenal’s title climax - immortalised by fans buying ‘After review, No. 19...’ shirts - was a VAR call on the kind of penalty box scrum, exploited by Arteta and set-piece coach Nicolas Jover, that has defined the season.

Assuming a new identity has been a fraught process for Arsenal in the Emirates Stadium era.

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Divorced from success, the club first tried to coalesce around the idea of 'Project Youth', imposed by the financial restrictions of funding a new stadium.

Increasingly, as Wenger floundered and the club painted fourth place as a trophy, there was a full-blown identity crisis.

Tormented fans shouted ”we want our Arsenal back”. A brief flicker of being a pressing engine under Unai Emery dissipated, and it was to Arteta that Arsenal turned to reclaim an identity in 2019.

But three successive second-place finishes, and all the ridicule coming the way of the club and its supporters, above all obliged Arsenal to win this season.

That was nakedly the singular aim: to win something. Not win it in style, or scoring more than everyone else. Simply to win.

As such, any complaints from fans, opposition managers and sections of the media around Arsenal’s approach have been rendered null and void by the joyous scenes of celebration which have wrapped north London in the past week. Arteta delivered what was asked of him.

And winning can be an identity in itself. Just look at Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson. There was no grand idea in the style of Arrigo Sacchi or Johan Cruyff, other defining managers of the period.

Yes, an adherence to wingers and attacking football became part of the United mystique, but overall the identity they forged was of a relentless winning machine - players who famously won the title and immediately began thinking of the next one.

And the next one, for Arsenal, is the biggest of all.

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A shot at history

If Graham and Wenger represented two polar opposite ideas of football, they had a chance to hash it out at the funeral of staff member Bill Graves in 2005.

As Tony Adams told us for the retrospective piece on the 1994 campaign: ”I remember them having this conversation. I know Arsene always had arguments with George.

”He thought that George worked too hard and organised too hard and worked more on defence than offence and letting the team play.

”He said to George, 'if you let that team go, they would have won more'. And George in reply said, 'Arsene, if you organised your team a bit more they would have won more as well'. And then they departed.”

As a result of his Premier League title win, Arteta can now call himself Arsenal’s third great manager of the modern era.

And as much as he reveres Wenger, it’s evident which side of the stylistic schism he would be on.

Saturday's final in Budapest - live on TNT Sports and HBO Max - represents a chance to eclipse not only Wenger and Graham but every other Arsenal manager throughout history, by winning the Champions League.

One final ‘1-0 to the Arsenal’ for the 2025/26 season would put all arguments to bed.

Parts of this article were adapted from By George: Arsenal and the '94 Cup Winners' Cup

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