Declan Rice and his teammates celebrate

THERE will be people out there trying anything to pretend this isn’t happening, or falling over themselves to insist they don’t care.

Witness the numerous attempts to puncture the party, audit the vibes and diminish the achievement. That’s a lonely path, and you should leave them to it.

Who could look at the celebrations in north London this week and not smile? This was the twee ending to Fever Pitch playing out in real life but with more people, more fireworks and no need for Van Morrison.

Strangers becoming friends underneath the red flare smoke, scarves waved like revolutionary flags and tonsils sore from the singing – and maybe some pashing too.

Richard Osley has written a LOT of columns to finally get to do the Gyokeres celebration

The ogres from Manchester City – a club never apologetic for the synthetic way its success has been manufactured – had finally been felled by Arsenal, like the good guys winning a fairytale.

A lot has been made of the 22 year wait to win the league again, and back in 2004 it seemed reasonable to think that a club which had gone through the whole season unbeaten might press on and win more titles.

And that’s why writing this column week in, week out seemed like easy chips for the 25-year-old hopeful reporter I once was. The Gunners would surely succeed, and I’d just provide overwritten prose about how spiritually nourishing it was to be an Arsenal supporter.

Those who have stayed with it – thank you, we met as young people but all these years on are more fearful about pension provision, an AI job apocalypse and potential bifocals, than the quality of bands at the Bull & Gate – know it didn’t quite turn out like that. You’ve read increasingly fried manifestos trying to explain how Arsenal were better than everybody else when they clearly weren’t; those days when we were bullied by Chelsea, honking in Europe and betrayed by favourite players.

At various low ebbs, you may even have seen occasional criticism of the world’s greatest football manager of all time, Mikel Arteta.

He did take a long time to buy a striker, is all I’m saying.

And yet here we are, it all worked out in the end. Champions.

People say Arsenal fans are obsessive both in real life and as bullish sea lions on social media, incapable of processing any match without producing a 14-tweet thread.

The aggressively uninteresting pundit Jamie Carragher claimed that the club’s supporters made the rest of the country want anybody else to win the league.

And yet this should be a moment not just celebrated here but across the nation.

The team that normally always wins it on the basis of near unlimited funds has… not in fact won it. No, they haven’t.

Arsenal have spent money in the transfer market, but don’t be gaslit by the comparisons as City blow everybody out of the water on wages. Pep Guardiola never mentions that bit.

Halfway through the season, he went on one last frantic supermarket sweep and suddenly they had Marc Guehi and Antoine Semenyo as well. We could also mention ‘the charges’, the guy with the bottle, Rayan Cherki doing keepy-uppies, Haaland smirking at the camera – but this moment isn’t about the defeated.

Arsenal have played prettier football before than they have this season, for sure. When they tried to be romantics, they finished second and were mocked for their fragility.

This time they became meaner, more pragmatic, and finished first.

Perhaps that is why the celebrations felt so huge.

Not because Arsenal winning the league is completely unprecedented, but because for a while it felt faintly impossible, like trying to outswim a cruise ship.

So what poured out onto the streets this week was as much a release as triumphant satisfaction.

Fans released from the worry that football’s hierarchies had calcified permanently without Arsenal. Release from having to intellectualise every near miss and process every collapse.

Released, finally, into this uncomplicated joy.