Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’ are remembered for completing the 2003/04 Premier League season without a defeat. The bigger record, however, did not fit neatly inside that campaign. Their unbeaten league sequence actually began before the title season and continued after it, eventually reaching 49 matches across three separate seasons.
The run started in disappointment
Just days after Arsenal had surrendered the 2002/03 title to Manchester United, they hosted Southampton at Highbury on May 7, 2003. Instead of drifting toward the summer, Arsenal won 6-1. Robert Pires and Jermaine Pennant both scored hat-tricks, and an historic sequence quietly began.
Arsenal’s own match-by-match history of the run identifies that Southampton victory as game one. A win at Sunderland then closed the season, meaning the famous unbeaten championship campaign began with two matches already in the sequence.
A whole season without losing
Arsenal went through all 38 league matches of 2003/04 unbeaten: 26 wins, 12 draws and zero losses. The Premier League’s season review records that they finished 11 points ahead of Chelsea. Arsène Wenger’s side sealed the title with a 2-2 draw away to Tottenham Hotspur, then completed the undefeated campaign by coming from behind to beat Leicester City 2-1 on the final day.
The achievement was not merely defensive survival. Arsenal scored 73 league goals, and Thierry Henry contributed 30 of them. Yet the most revealing moment may have been a match they did not win: at Old Trafford in September 2003, Ruud van Nistelrooy hit the crossbar with a late penalty, leaving the match goalless and the run intact.
From 42 to 49
The sequence carried into 2004/05. Arsenal matched Nottingham Forest’s previous benchmark of 42 unbeaten league games with a dramatic 5-3 victory over Middlesbrough after trailing 3-1. Three days later, a 3-0 win against Blackburn Rovers moved them clear of that mark.
The record finally stopped at Old Trafford on October 24, 2004, when Manchester United won 2-0. By then Arsenal had played 49 consecutive Premier League matches without defeat, winning 36 and drawing 13. The Premier League’s official records page still lists 49 as the competition’s longest unbeaten run, from May 7, 2003 to October 24, 2004.
That is what makes the number more remarkable than a single flawless season. It survived one title disappointment, an entire championship campaign and the beginning of the next. The Invincibles did not simply avoid defeat for 38 matches; they built a record that extended eleven games beyond that perfect league season.
Sources and further reading
- Arsenal: The Invincibles go 49 games unbeaten
- Premier League: Club, manager and player records
- Premier League: 2003/04 season review
- Premier League: Patrick Vieira remembers the Invincibles
