Arsenal’s Season-by-Season Return to Premier League Glory

Manchester United ended Arsenal’s record 49-match unbeaten run in a traumatic, wildly controversial 2-0 defeat at Old Trafford on Oct. 24, 2004. The loss sparked a month of grief and rage at Arsenal, and by the time the team recovered, Jose Mourinho’s relentless Chelsea had surged past them into the title lead. Although Arsenal remained the most watchable team in England, something had died in them.

An improbable run to the Champions League final compensated for a difficult domestic season. Arsenal sat eighth at Christmas, a crushing 20 points behind Chelsea, but finished strongly and pipped Tottenham to a Champions League place on the final day. Thierry Henry scored a hat-trick against Wigan at Highbury in the club’s last match at that stadium.

The first season at the Emirates Stadium, and Henry’s last at Arsenal, confirmed the club was in transition. Arsenal never seriously challenged for the title, though they completed a double over eventual champions Manchester United. The season was defined by a desperate 11-day period when they exited all three cup competitions.

A young, strikingly small team built around Cesc Fabregas, Mathieu Flamini and Emmanuel Adebayor led the Premier League for most of the season but finished third. Arsenal lost only one of their first 30 games, but four consecutive draws in February and March — including a harrowing game at Birmingham where Eduardo da Silva suffered a horrific leg fracture — ultimately cost them the league.

It is hard to make sense of a league season that included four consecutive 0-0 draws, a home defeat to Phil Brown’s Hull and madcap 4-4 draws against Tottenham and Liverpool. The latter, in which Andriy Arshavin scored all four goals, helped Manchester United retain the title. To prove the clubs now occupied different worlds, United demolished Arsenal in the Champions League semifinal.

The first of Arsenal’s forgotten title challenges under Arsene Wenger began with a 6-1 win at Everton. Despite losing home and away to Chelsea and Manchester United — the eventual top two — Arsenal remained serious contenders until a wretched five days in mid-April. A first league defeat to Tottenham in 11 years was followed by a shambolic collapse at Wigan, and Arsenal’s reputation for flakiness grew.

With Jack Wilshere emerging as a potential superstar, Arsenal sat second at the end of February but won only two of their last 11 games. Before that, they blew a 4-0 lead to draw 4-4 at Newcastle, lost at home to Tottenham after leading 2-0, and lost the League Cup final to Birmingham, which was eventually relegated. Yet they also came closer than anyone to beating Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering Barcelona.

The year the “fourth-place trophy” was created. Wenger’s phrase, referring to Champions League qualification, would come back to haunt him, but Arsenal achieved that goal in another season of wild swings. They lost 8-2 at Old Trafford, came from 2-0 down to wallop Tottenham 5-2, and beat Chelsea 5-3 at Stamford Bridge. Though Arsenal did not win the league, they had the best player in it: Robin van Persie scored 30 goals, swept the individual awards — and then joined Manchester United in the summer.

Arsenal spent almost all of the season outside the top four, only to snatch a Champions League place from Tottenham on the final day. Goals were spread in Van Persie’s absence. There were five scorers in another 5-2 victory over their local rivals, and top scorer Theo Walcott hit a hat-trick in a 7-3 win over Newcastle.

In the first season after Alex Ferguson’s retirement, the league felt more open than ever. Arsenal topped the table for most of the winter before falling apart. They conceded 17 goals on the road to the eventual top three: Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea. A 6-0 defeat to Mourinho’s Chelsea in Wenger’s 1,000th game as Arsenal manager was especially humbling. A frustrating season ended on a high when Arsenal won the FA Cup, their first trophy in nine years.

A rising rebellion was captured when Wenger was booed by Arsenal fans on the train as the team returned from a 3-2 defeat at Stoke in December. Arsenal were already out of the title race by then, though they improved enormously after Christmas. The signing of Alexis Sanchez added more stardust and they retained the FA Cup, but the league looked further away than ever.

Wenger’s last title challenge may remain his most frustrating. Arsenal twice beat eventual champions Leicester, more than the rest of the league combined, but their erratic results made “the little girl with the little curl” seem a model of consistency. One consolation: Arsenal finished second for the first time in a decade after leapfrogging Tottenham on the final day.

End times. Arsenal missed the Champions League for the first time in 20 years; worse, they finished below Tottenham for the first time in 22. An underrated FA Cup triumph, including wins over Guardiola’s Manchester City and Chelsea, provided illusory hope.

For years, Wenger was ridiculed for saying a team of diminutive technicians could win the Premier League. He was proved right in 2017-18 — by Guardiola’s Manchester City. Arsenal were further away than ever, finishing 37 points behind City, and Wenger stepped down at the end of the season.

Unai Emery’s first season was a solid meal with a nasty aftertaste. There was a blistering 4-2 win over Tottenham and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang shared the golden boot, but Arsenal blew a top-four finish by losing three games in eight days at the end of April. The last two Champions League places were claimed by Chelsea — who hammered Arsenal in the Europa League final — and Tottenham.

Arsenal’s poorest league season in a generation. They were eighth when Emery was sacked at the end of November and finished in the same position — their lowest since 1995 — under his replacement, Mikel Arteta. A stirring post-COVID triumph in the FA Cup, when Manchester City and Chelsea were beaten in the semifinals and final, offered hope.

Arsenal’s board held their nerve when the team endured a bleak run of seven defeats in 10 league games. Arsenal were 15th at Christmas, but three young forwards — Gabriel Martinelli, Emile Smith Rowe and Bukayo Saka — inspired a mood-changing win over Chelsea on Boxing Day. It was Arteta’s little acorn.

An all-or-nothing season in which Arsenal drew only one game after October ended miserably when Tottenham snatched the last Champions League place. But there were signs of the team we know now, particularly in the form of Saka and Martin Odegaard, and the ruthlessness shown by Arteta when he ostracized Aubameyang.

Arsenal made unwanted history by topping the Premier League for 248 days without winning it. A sparkling young team set an extraordinary pace — 56 points from the first 21 games — before being hunted down by Manchester City. The decisive game was at the Etihad in April: Kevin De Bruyne put Arsenal across his knee, City won 4-1 and Arteta became a born-again pragmatist.

The signings of David Raya and Declan Rice gave Arsenal a granite defensive spine and they would probably have won the league but for an epic save by Manchester City’s Stefan Ortega from Tottenham’s Son Heung-Min in their penultimate match. Instead, and despite winning 16 of their last 18 games, Arsenal finished two points short.

A third successive runners-up medal equaled the English top-flight record. Though Manchester City’s form collapsed, Arsenal drew 14 games and spent most of the season in the slipstream of a rampant Liverpool. There were significant moments, though: a 5-1 hammering of City and reaching a first Champions League semifinal in 16 years. The jury remained out on whether they were getting closer to glory. A positive verdict was to come the following season.