The Athletic FC.

The only way to score is, of course, to play with a handbreak-off.

Hello, I'm Ian Stone. This is Hand-Break-Off, the Arsenal podcast, brought to you by The Athletic.

Yeah, Premier League Champions edition, should we call it.

We're going to be celebrating the league title by hosting a sort of end-of-season awards,

even though season hasn't ended, because there is one sort of nothing game,

except that we'll get a Premier League trophy at the end of it, and then one rather large game after that. But we're going to maybe mention Palace on Sunday. We'll talk about Champions League next week. But this is really about stuff in the league. So everyone's here. We've got full house. Art de Roche, Adrian Clarke, Amy Lawrence, James McIntyre. Morning. Good morning. Good Hello. Morning. Hello. Hello. James, you have to go, though, don't you? So we'll, you know, I don't know. If we're short of any. There's so many of us. You won't notice, guys. I'll just seem like I've gone quiet for a while. What happened to James? Where'd he go?

All right.

Biden, why?

I'm assuming you all watch Michael Alteta's press conference talking about how he was having a barbecue and how he was going to go.

The players said they all wanted to watch it together.

And after watching the videos and being, it was their moment and they have to be themselves

in that moment. And if I'm there, I think it was not going to be the same. And yeah, I'm glad

I did it that way. They enjoyed it so much. And the star was all over the place. And yeah,

we had our moment together a few hours later. Adrian, I'm amazed that they all wanted to watch it. Watch the game, to be honest with you, because I didn't want to watch the game. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you've seen it before. I recently watched the Jamie Vardy documentary on Netflix and all the players at Leicester City 10 years ago sort of all piled around Jamie Vardy's house. Yeah, but they were watching Tottenham screw it up, which was pretty much like, oh yeah, even though they go two-n-all-up, there's a chance, but this is different. This is Pepsman, see. I know, but I think there's a, you feel more relaxed in company with mates and you can sort of live it together.

And I think if, I think the players knew that it, look, if Bournemouth did the business and maybe

they were as confident as some of us were that, that they would get a result that they had to

be together.

You'd hate to have missed that moment, wouldn't you, have been stuck at home?

So I think it's a case of, is it FOMO, fear of missing out, I think, from some of the lads. So even if they weren't sure about it, they had to go really. And I'm pretty sure they're glad they did. And I also thought it was good that Mikhail left them to it. I did like that. It's like when the teacher's there, you're not quite as relaxed, are you? So I think, I think it was nice that he stepped aside and let them just, just be themselves, which is, which is good. Well, I was going to ask you, Amy, do you think they would have celebrated less if Michael O'Donters was able to have been more restrained in their celebration.

Yeah, I think it would have been all right.

Yeah, I think so as well.

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