We remain the invincible team of England
Open top bus parade to celebrate our unbeaten league success. Image courtesy of Daily Mail
After Chelsea’s defeat yesterday, all the teams in the Premiership have now lost at least once this season. It means that Arsenal’s achievement of a whole season unbeaten in 2004 is not equalled by another Premier League team. Not at least in the modern era.
In fact the closest this record came to ending I think was the very next season. Chelsea only lost one league game in Mourinho’s first season as their manager. Since then, the Premiership has got more defensive and more pragmatic but our record remains intact.
Even Chelsea and Liverpool’s at times, dour brand of football, safety first approach hasn’t saved them from the outcome of defeat. And note Fergie, we didn’t have to wink at the referee either.
This unbeaten achievement doesn’t command as much praise as more tangible successes. And sometimes it is even dismissed emphatically as if there was nothing special about it. I once heard someone saying yeah, well it is great but AC Milan also did it and they won the European Cup.
But then I would like to say we were in the semis for FA Cup and league cup that year and lost a closely fought quarter final of the CL. So it wasn’t as if it was just the league we went for and nothing else.
And correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t this record actually result in a separate trophy being given to Arsenal that year? Other clubs around us may shove the league and European trophies they’ve won. But we can top it by saying we have a trophy, an achievement that virtually no other club in the world has.
Utd won the league by winning the most games last year. But Liverpool felt bitter because they lost fewer games.
At least when we won it, we won the most games and lost none! Celebrate this fact and be safe in the knowledge that it is ours to keep for a while yet. 5 years and counting Gooner folks!
I’ve just noticed that the Gunning Hawk have mentioned this before me. Genuinely a co-incidence. Apologies to them and anyone else who posted something similar today.
Around the tail-end of that season, I had the thought that we’d under-achieved. I took a trip overseas one month, and we were unbeaten in the league and still in the FA Cup and the Champions League. When I got back, we had been knocked out of both cups and only had the “unbeaten” season left to hang our hats on. And considering the brilliance of that side, I felt that we’d underachieved in the early 00s. When you get down to it, we only have two EPLs to show for 4(?) years of sustained brilliance, playing football that hasn’t been seen since. We should’ve won a lot more than that.
That said, we were fucking fantastic back then.
Ironically that team didn’t have the squad depth as our current team. If they did, we would have won another trophy and the players wouldn’t have been as tired. But then how do you replace any of the first 14-15 players even if they were tired towards the end of the season. Tough job that.