Every Arsenal supporter has a story of where they were and what happened on the day that might go down as the defining win of their title-winning season. Josh Kroenke, Arsenal's co-chair's experience of what might forever be The Max Dowman Game sounds as jubilant as anyone else's, just with a fair bit more cleaning up to do afterwards.
"We had just adopted a puppy. So when Max went on his run, I scared the hell out of the puppy by jumping up. That dog peed on the floor right there next to me with what I was saying and yelling at the television!"
First of all, no, the puppy is not called Max. But while Kroenke has not been bestowing Arsenal-themed appellations on his canine friends, in many other respects he has been with his team every step of the way. He felt the pain of dropped points to Wolves and Nottingham Forest, though he could at least offer words of encouragement to Mikel Arteta and his squad. "Hang in there, we got this, you aren't alone." He still grumbles about the handball that wasn't in defeat to Manchester United. He loves that Declan Rice got vindication for that "it's not done" line on the Etihad turf.
And of course, he experienced the dying minutes against West Ham at the London Stadium in the same way millions around the world did. "I was on my hands and knees in my living room," he said. "No matter how neutral [I want to be] or how I try to stay objective, I am for sure watching it with red-coloured binoculars. I can only see the Arsenal lens, but at that point in time I was like, I know what I see, but… it was a moment where I think every Arsenal supporter worldwide held their breath."
Nearly seven years ago Arsenal fans had a simple message Kroenke and his father, Stan. We care, do you? Nearly an hour in the company of the former leaves you in no doubt that the Kroenkes are as emotionally invested in Arsenal as they are financially.
Why Kroenke went backwards to go forward
Even in the afterglow of their crowning moment, Kroenke frequently looks back to the "very, very tough times" on the journey to the top. He dwells on the mistakes of the Super League, the days of fury in the summer of 2021, "when they were hanging us from lampposts", and in particular on the summer two years earlier where fans were stinging in their rebuke of him. As they saw it the Kroenkes had been key figures in 12 years of decline since their firm KSE had first taken a stake, a club that had once been fighting for titles on the pitch, having been riven by boardroom struggles with Alisher Usmanov and underinvestment.
At the time, in a moment outside Dick's Sporting Goods Park just outside Denver, Kroenke was visibly hurt by questions over his family's commitment to the club. He reacted angrily when it was put to him that his father might not have bought his stake in the club to win trophies. "I'm not in this business to make friends, I'm in it to win," he said nearly seven years ago.
Mission accomplished. And in retrospect, the approach that Kroenke laid out in 2019 and restates now makes sense. There was "heavy lifting" to be done after KSE took complete control of the club a year earlier. The fault that he now acknowledges is that trying to establish a new ownership model, move on from Arsene Wenger and find a new structure after the departure of chief executive Ivan Gazidis was "way too much change in way too short of a period of time."
These were trying times for Arsenal and their owners. They also brought clarity. Defeat to Chelsea in the Europa League final meant the club had frittered away two avenues through which to requalify for the Champions League. It was as Eden Hazard and Olivier Giroud took them to the cleaners that Kroenke had a realization. "Seeing that happen was the first time where I came back from that trip and I told my dad that I think we need to really embrace where we are. Now that we have 100% of the club we might need to take a step back to go forward at some point.
"During that transition phase, I started to talk to our previous chairman who was a big mentor of mine, Sir Chips Keswick. We would go to lunch all the time, and we talk through things about the club and, having just taken it private, we were starting to talk more and more about the future.
"At lunch one day, I said 'Chips, you know, in the States [with KSE's other sports franchises], we've had to take a step back to go forwards at times, so I think at some point we may have to do that'. And he kind of smiled and he agreed and he just looked at me and he goes [puts on impression] 'bloody hell, don't relegated', and I said 'I will do my best, to try to thread that needle'."
That was not the only sage advice offered to Kroenke, who freely admits it is not up to him to pick the players. He hopes instead to ask the right questions at the start of the process. Questions such as, as Sokratis Papastathopoulos and Laurent Koscielny were being taken to the cleaners, why didn't Arsenal have their own Virgil van Dijk?
"It's funny to think back on this one," says Kroenke, "I had a great conversation with Per Mertesacker. After the final in Baku I made a comment about Virgil van Dijk, who had arrived at Liverpool a year or two before. I said how do we get one of these guys into our system? Well, unless you've got 100 million quid, you better not be thinking about him. I said, well, who's the best young defender in Europe? He turned without hesitation and said William Saliba."
Getty Images Building a title contender
Arsenal had assembled a few of the building blocks of a title winner -- Saliba arrived in 2019 just as Gabriel Martinelli and Bukayo Saka were getting their first looks at senior minutes -- but there was a long way to go. Though Kroenke speaks warmly of then-manager Unai Emery, it was apparent even then that the now Aston Villa boss was not the leader for this moment in North London. This was a club that needed root and branch reform, something Arteta identified even before his appointment.
As Arsenal's expenditure in building a title-winning squad has come under the microscope -- the third-highest net spend since Arteta's appointment and the fourth largest wage bill hardly screams lock for top spot -- one aspect of squad management flew under the radar. That is how the club has been willing to write off tens of millions just to get players out of the door. Mesut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang were the most high-profile instances, players who fell out of favor as much, if not more, for what they were like off the pitch than on it. They were not the only ones to have their deals ripped up or to be sold off for below market prices as Arteta focused on getting the culture right.
Kroenke does not name names as he reflects on the triumph of getting the first team to be what it is today. He does, however, refer back to one of Arteta's most memorable lines from the 2025-26 season when he invited supporters to "jump on that boat" in January. There might have been choppy waters in the months that followed, but the end point was certainly worth the journey. In those formative years, the sailing was even more perilous.
"Sometimes we had people that not only were they not in the boat, but they're underneath the water with a rope trying to pull us back," he explains. "We had to figure out who those people were, and we had to snip that rope along the way. And so the boat metaphor maybe still carries on to this day. Everybody is in that boat, and everybody is rowing in the same direction."
There is no sense of Kroenke ever wavering in his belief that Arteta was the one to captain the vessel. It is not a given that every owner would act in that way. After three years of nearly winning, where there is 0.01 non-penalty expected goals between them and Manchester City on a game-by-game basis, who would not ask if the factor that gets them across the line is a new voice in the dressing room? Would every owner willingly sanction nearly $400 million of expenditure not designed to raise the ceiling but to afford their manager with the depth pieces that could allow him to navigate another injury crisis?
CBS Sports Asked if there was a point where the two had a conversation about a change in management, the co-chair points to the experience of the Los Angeles Rams, whose defeat in Super Bowl LIII to the New England Patriots inspired them to go one step further three years later, lifting the NFL's greatest prize on home turf at SoFi Stadium, the passion project of Stan Kroenke. His son could also have referenced the Denver Nuggets, who spent four seasons hammering away at the NBA's glass ceiling before fitness and form broke their way in 2023.
These are the standards KSE get to hold their clubs against now. And so when sporting director Andrea Berta arrived last year and found himself at dinner with his new boss, the challenge was set for him. "I went to Andrea and I laid out our championship rings. I said: 'This is what we're here for. So as we start to shape our thinking, know this is what we're going for.' He was looking at them pretty close!"
Now what for the Gunners?
As Arsenal ready themselves for life as champions of England (and perhaps Europe), Arteta is at the heart of their plans. The manager has only a year left on his contract, but further talks are due to take place during the summer. "If there is a singular person you can trace this all back to, I'm going to give 100 per cent credit to Mikel, his staff and the players. Those are the ones. As much as Mikel is putting together our tactics, the players have got to go play the games; they've got to go and win for you.
"Keeping Mikel around is [an] utmost priority, and I think the good news for Arsenal fans worldwide is he's enjoying the project, he's enjoying being here and from his time as a player all the way up until now, he's an Arsenal man through and through."
Having summited the Premier League mountain, there is no desire within Arsenal to simply enjoy the view from the top. Though space will have to be made in a squad that runs at least two deep in every position, Kroenke shares the will of the rest of the club that they must look to strengthen for the years ahead. Having achieved ownership's professed goal of winning a title does not change that much, only that it might make even greater opportunities available.
"When you win something, the sun's still going to come up the next day. You've got to get back to work and there are many teams trying to gain on you, including some historically great ones around the Premier League. We're going to look to strengthen because we know that teams around us are going to get better. If you're not trying to continually evolve and improve, you're standing still.
"Champions of England sounds pretty good and champions of Europe could sound even better, especially with the double tied to it. But we think we have a chance here. We have very strong foundations in place to continue to build and try to sustain.
"Getting the foundations in place is usually the hardest part of the journey and now we have all this, it is about trying to stay at the top knowing everyone is trying to climb the mountain after you."
That foundational work includes the remodelling of the Emirates Stadium, which is being led by chief executive Richard Garlick alongside other board members. Kroenke speaks keenly on his disappointment at never being able to truly experience Highbury. Is there a way to marry the marble halls of their old home, the scale of their current ground and the ultra-modern premium experience of SoFi Stadium? That will be up to the supporters to decide, their co-chair insists.
If this all sounds rather big picture and grand plans, well you can't argue that they weren't professing to do this from the off. When the Kroenkes launched their takeover bid in the summer of 2018 they spoke about building that would be "competing consistently to win the Premier League and the Champions League." Few believed them and perhaps that was understandable given what their partial ownership had looked like.
The ultimate aim goal of KSE at Arsenal was always, though, "[what] we achieved on Sunday." Kroenke adds, "It's easy to pay lip service and say we're in it to win it. And I understand that there's a lot of hesitation. Because when you come into something in the sporting world, what else are you going to say? We're in this to do this. We're in this to kind of be okay.
"But no, we're in to win. But learning how to manage something up to a winner is a process at times. And it's one you don't get right. And it's for sure not linear. It's going to be a big squirrely thing that finally gets us there. But once you do reach there, hopefully, you have kind of a knowledge base that allows you to stay there.
"You're in to compete and you're in to win. And my dad and I are very competitive people. My mom is too. So is my sister. Some of my best friends back home in college, they would call me 'Competition Kroenke'... My competitive side gets the better of me at times but we're competitive people and you're in it to win it. And that requires patience at times. That requires being aggressive at times. But if you're not in it to truly try to win, you're just kind of bouncing along in a world of people around you trying to.
"This was a journey beyond belief. And I'm very proud. I'm very proud of Mikel and the players. I mean, you know, the different ups and downs of this season."
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