In 2004 Arsenal did something no other English club has achieved in over 130 years.
They became invincible.
Make a note of the date: May the 15th, 2004.
"History has been made. Arsenal have gone through an entire league campaign without losing."
38 games, 0 defeats.
"People will remember that the season 2003/2004 we were unbeatable."
Arsenal were at the top of English football,
and felt like they were on their way to becoming one Europe‘s megaclubs.
"I’m not gonna stop here because the club is getting bigger every year."
But since then Arsenal haven’t won a single Premier League title.
And after years outside the Champions League, in 2021 they failed to qualify for Europe at all.
What happened?
How did Arsenal go from invincibles to outsiders?
"We were losing players every single year after that."
"It was quite mysterious and not in a good way."
"All of those things just playing into the idea that the fates were conspiring against Arsenal."
"Of course we have regrets."
Sure, it’s a story about comical errors.
And disastrous signings.
But it’s also the story of how English football changed forever.
Let’s start at the beginning.
Arsene Wenger arrived in 1996 and led the club to phenomenal success.
In 1998 they won the league and cup double for the first time in almost 3 decades.
Then between the summers of 2001 and 2005, Arsenal became the most dominant team in English football.
They are back at the summit of English football again, and they are Arsenal.
Two league titles and three FA Cup wins in four years meant no one could match them for silverware.
Not even Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United.
You knew you were going to challenge for a title.
You knew that come the end of the season, more than likely you were going to be there
or thereabouts when it came to the Premier League.
So that on top of some of the best players I've ever seen at Arsenal made it a really enjoyable period.
The likes of Patrick Vieira, Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp were Premier League legends,
and among the best in the world in their positions at the time.
Life was good.
But in football nothing lasts, including beloved stadiums.
In 2002 Arsenal received permission to build a new ground.
An ambitious move that would take them away from the iconic Highbury.
The reason was simple: matchday revenue – ticket sales and so on – was a massive financial factor.
In the 2005/2006 season, Arsenal’s last at Highbury, matchday income accounted for
about a third of Arsenal’s revenues.
So building a bigger stadium sounds pretty smart, right?
The problem was, Arsenal had to take on almost £400 million of debt to build Emirates Stadium.
A big number even now, a crippling sum in those days.
And long before the stadium was finished, the ground had already shifted beneath Arsenal’s feet.
"Arsenal embarked on a project believing the football landscape was one way.
By the time they committed to that, it had begun to change in a very considerable way."
The arrival of Roman Abramovich at Chelsea was the precursor to all of that.
Yes, we have to talk about Roman.
Abramovich pitched up across London in June 2003, and immediately set about throwing cash around.
"So the summer before the invincible season Chelsea had bought around 10 players, which
cost them over €100 million.
That was a seismic thing that happened in the transfer window, and looking back, I don't
think enough was made of this."
The Arsenal hierarchy, like vice chairman David Dein, were rattled.
"There's a famous David Dein quote about how when Chelsea were looking to sign Patrick
Vieira and Thierry Henry, that 'Roman Abramovich has parked his Russian tanks on our lawn and
he's firing £50 notes at us'."
Chelsea never got their hands on Vieira or
Henry, but they did outbid Arsenal on transfer targets, drive up fees and wages, and one
year after the Gunners went invincible, knock them off their perch at the top of English football.
And they knew who to thank.
Just as Arsenal had weakened themselves financially, the Premier League’s first billionaire foreign owner showed up.
The timing could not have been worse.
And so, at the 2005 FA Cup final, even as Arsenal beat Manchester United on penalties,
there was already a feeling that the club’s fortunes were changing.
"The issue was nobody thought in 2005 that it would take nine years for Arsenal to win another trophy."
That’s right.
Nine long years.
Welcome to the Banter Era.
In the years that followed, Arsenal became experts at missing out on glory in tragicomic fashion.
In 2006 they were 1-nil up against the mighty Barcelona in the Champions League final.
But with just 15 minutes to play, they conceded two goals, the second of which was helped in by their own keeper.
But this was just one year after the last FA Cup win.
Chill out, we all thought.
Surely more success was just around the corner.
Right?
Er…
no.
In February 2008 Arsenal were actually top of the Premier League… until they rolled up to Birmingham.
First a horror tackle left striker Eduardo with a broken leg.
Then after a last-minute penalty cost them victory, captain William Gallas lost it right in the middle of the pitch.
Arsenal’s form collapsed, and Manchester United beat them to the title.
"I think what defined this whole era was the 2008 2-2 draw against Birmingham.
We looked on course to win the Premier League that season.
It was a devastating match, what happened to Eduardo da Silva in that match."
And then there was the 2011 League Cup final.
"When you see the way we concede the goal of course we have regrets."
Birmingham, again.
Arsenal were heavy favourites, but with the scores at 1-1 in the 89th minute, some slapstick
defending saw them concede, and another trophy slipped out of their grasp.
"It is a gift."
"The fact that we lost it in these ridiculous circumstances - a mess up between the goalkeeper
and Laurent Koscielny, the central defender - all of those things just playing into the
idea that the fates were conspiring against Arsenal."
Nobody could snatch failure from the jaws of success quite like Arsenal.
And there were plenty more embarrassments.
"You think about the eight two at Old Trafford.
All you can think is like, remember when we went to Old Trafford and won the title?"
"Pushed out by Barthez… Wiltord!
Arsenal are the champions.
They’ve taken the title away from Manchester United, they’ve done it here at Old Trafford.
Speaking of winning the league, Arsenal were actually the dominant force in English women’s football
throughout this period.
Their successes included a nine-year league title winning streak, multiple FA Cup wins,
and even the big one, that has forever eluded the men’s team – the Champion’s League.
In fact they hold the record for the most English titles and cup wins.
So when we talk about Arsenal’s decline, we really are just talking about the men’s team.
And that decline should perhaps have come as no surprise given that the Invincibles
squad had been broken up quickly, to be replaced with younger, cheaper players.
"Why did it not become a dynasty?"
"I think the stadium.
Money wasn’t available.
In two years we nearly lost the Invincible team.
We were losing players every single year after that.
It wasn’t the same team anymore."
"Young players, not particularly expensive signings.
Bringing players in, then selling them on for quite a lot of money.
It really did have an impact on on the way that the the team was built, the kind of quality
that Arsene Wenger was able to bring in via the transfer market."
To make matters worse, by the time Arsenal had paid off a good chunk of the stadium debt,
other sources of income had boomed.
Broadcasting revenues exploded, and commercial earnings from sponsorship deals had overtaken matchday revenue.
Remember that was almost a third of total revenues in 2006?
In the last pre-covid season 2018/19 it was down to less than a quarter
despite the sum having more than doubled in that time.
So basically all those extra seats at Emirates Stadium have been much less of an advantage than Arsenal expected.
Still, by 2013 Arsenal had money to play with again.
Mesut Özil arrived to usher in a new era, and Arsenal finally won some silverware in
the form of back-to-back FA Cup wins, while also maintaining consistent top-four finishes.
Not bad, but not where they had been a decade earlier.
The thing is: for their new owner, 'not bad' was good enough.
American Stan Kroenke became the majority shareholder in 2011.
But he had no plans to be Abramovich 2.0.
We couldn’t even get being bought by a billionaire right.
He and his son Josh treated the club as an investment, and one they clearly felt required little input.
"They came in and they saw a beautiful stadium.
They saw all these corporate facilities.
They didn't really have any concept of the sacrifices that were made to make those things happen.
I think they came in and went, well, it's beautiful.
It will always be like this and we can just coast."
Of course, coasting doesn’t work particularly well in the ruthless world of football.
In 2017 Arsenal missed out on Champions League qualification for the first time in 20 years.
That despite spending ridiculous money on players like Granit Xhaka,
and flops Shkodran Mustafi and Lucas Perez the previous summer.
"A lot of the problems came before they even came in, and I do think it's from the drop off of everyone else."
Those seasons before you had Sanchez and Özil who were declining, and then you probably needed a few more talents there.
It was the start of a trend that saw Arsenal throw fortunes at quick fixes, in the hope
of getting back to Europe’s top table.
The club went on to break their transfer record three times in just two years.
And in the middle of all that came the biggest change of all.
Over the previous decade, bit by bit, much of the fanbase had fallen out of love with Arsene Wenger.
Or at least with his management.
Some called for his head during the trophy drought, others kept the faith for much longer.
But despite yet another cup success in 2017, it seemed like Wenger, the man who had revolutionised
English football, had been left behind.
Wenger’s early success was built around a strict diet regime, insider knowledge of
French talent and a style of play that matched intense athleticism with technical brilliance.
Off the pitch, the counsel of vice chairman David Dein helped keep him at the top of his game.
Dein was Arsenal’s strategic mastermind, responsible for bringing in Wenger himself,
as well as a raft of successful signings.
But in 2007 a boardroom fallout led to his departure.
"The defining moment, that we would never return to the early noughties, was when David Dein left.
If you don't have someone to back you or your decisions, someone like David Dein as in the past.
It becomes sour really quickly."
By then, other clubs had copied Wenger's blueprint.
They scoured the European markets for talent.
And the drinking culture of English football in the 90s had largely disappeared.
"And as football had developed, we had this man who was the manager of everything, and
that's not really the way it worked in modern football at that point.
You need structures, you need recruitment specialists, you need maybe a director of football.
And he was always really opposed to that."
Arsenal still put together a few title challenges after that, and finished second in the league as late as 2016.
But two years later, following back-to-back failures to reach the Champions League, Arsenal
decided it was time to part ways.
After almost 22 years, the club said au revoir to Arsene Wenger.
"Well done, bye bye."
The problem for Wenger’s successors was that the club’s plan seemed to change every five minutes.
Chief executive Ivan Gazidis had brought in figures like Dortmund’s former chief scout
Sven Mislintat and Barcelona executive Raul Sanllehi to give Arsenal a dream team with
expertise on every level.
But the way things worked out was less Avengers Assemble,
and more Royal Rumble.
Gazidis swiftly followed Wenger out of the door to join AC Milan. In the power struggle that followed,
the innovative Mislintat was outmanoeuvred by the slick Sanllehi.
"Gazidis left immediately. Sanllehi ousted Mislintat, and now you have a guy who's basically a marketing guy for
Nike who ended up at Barcelona running the football club.
I mean, that's crazy stuff you know, that's crazy stuff."
"It was quite, quite mysterious and not in a good way.
Sanllehi was obviously less analytics, more agent based.
He would boast about his contacts.
He didn’t like Sven Mislintat’s side of the job, didn’t really believe in it."
New coach Unai Emery was hired by Gazidis, and led a squad bulked out by Mislintat signings
like Bernd Leno and Sokratis.
But by the end of Emery’s first season, Sanllehi was in charge with a completely different transfer strategy.
Arsenal were acting like a Champions League addict needing a fix, jumping on any solution
that might get them back into the big time.
"Do you ever play Tetris?
Do you ever get to like two thirds of the way up and you're like ‘oh my God’, you've got no time to think."
And you're desperately trying to find the piece that will fit to get rid of all the
bits and make everything good.
And that's what they did in terms of the people they hired, the players they signed, the coach that they brought in."
"It was all very patchwork and was bits and bobs just thrown in, probably money driven and not a lot of sense.
And that kind of also describes the appointment of Unai Emery too.
Free flowing, total football sort of tactics to a manager who didn't have any real philosophy
and would basically change his game plan under every opponent."
Emery had a bright enough start, but lost his way completely with a squad that resembled
Frankenstein’s monster.
He was sacked shortly into his second season, and replaced by Mikel Arteta.
Then during HIS first summer transfer window in 2020, former Invincible Edu took over in the boardroom.
The new rookie pairing couldn’t fix everything with a snap of their fingers.
A shock FA cup win did keep Arsenal in the Europa League despite an 8th placed finish.
But in his second season they finished 8th again, and failed to qualify for Europe for the first time since 1995.
Where could they go from here?
Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before things get better.
And fortunately, cause for optimism was right there waiting for them: Bukayo Saka, and Emile Smith Rowe.
The two young stars, straight out of Arsenal‘s Hale End academy, burst onto the scene about
a year apart, and revitalised the club.
They helped reconnect the team with a fanbase that had long felt disenchanted.
Perhaps even more importantly, Arsenal finally stuck to their own plan.
Arteta and Edu remained in place, and made smart signings to give the side a young,
vibrant feel that had been lacking since Wenger’s prime.
The likes of Aaron Ramsdale, Martin Odegaard and Takehiro Tomiyasu quickly became fan favourites.
"There is something there that will lay the foundations for… organic growth makes it
sound like I'm a bit of a hippie farmer or whatever, but you know what I mean?"
"I do think it's getting better, but it's still a lot of damage that we've done over that
whole decade, basically before Arsenal challenge again.
However far the current team and management can take Arsenal they seem to have learned
some lessons from the catalogue of errors they’ve made.
Above all, that the most successful era in the club’s history was built on the strongest
of foundations, not delusions of grandeur.
"Probably the worst thing they could do is say we've got to find the next Arsene Wenger,
we've got to build the next Invincibles.
They existed 14, 16, nearly 20 years ago at this point.
And if you're trying to recreate something from the past, I don't know if you can look
sufficiently well to the future to make it happen."
Football has changed in ways that Arsenal couldn’t have seen coming, and no doubt it will again.
They’ll almost certainly never have another invincible season.
But at least they seem to have found their way back to a strategy that fits the club's identity.
If they keep planning for the future, one day they’ll be contenders again.