100 seasons in the top division: Wenger triumphant twice 1997/8

 

 

 

Recent posts in the 100 Years in the Top Division series…

• 1996/97 – the launch of the modern era
• Arsenal in 1995/6 – the interim season
• 1994/5: when Arsenal shocked the whole of football.
• Fourth but the signs are not good

The full index of articles in this series so far… is published here 

By Tony Attwood

Arsenal finished third in Wenger’s first season of 1996/7, ending the season seven points behind the winners, Manchester United.  Considering that the season before, Arsenal had been 19 points behind the leaders, that was not a small improvement.  But then, as the club approached the 1997/8 season, there was still a feeling around that a foreigner, no matter how many languages he spoke, could not really “get” English football, and therefore was unlikely to be able to win the league.

And it is interesting for me, writing this history of Arsenal’s 100 consecutive seasons in the top division, which we celebrate in 2026, to look back on those 29 years, knowing that none of us could imagine at all what was about to happen.

For it wasn’t that we didn’t expect Arsenal to win the league… for the thought of emulating the achievements of the 1970/71 campaign by winning the double, I don’t think that was even contemplated in the wildest of wild dreams, let alone planned for.  But what\ the commentators had not yet grasped was that Wenger was not buying foreign players because he himself was foreign, but rather he was buying players who could achieve what British players could not.

The Premier League table after close of play on 30 September 1997 read

 

 

And that looked great and seemed like fun.  Except that by the new year, the table read

 

 

And those who sneered at our enthusiasm for a French manager who could bring a new approach to football were calling on Wenger to be sacked!   Three consecutive games without scoring in October, and then two goals in five games in late November and early December, seemed to confirm that the new boss “didn’t get English football”.  Where, they demanded, was the consistency?

The turnaround started after Christmas with 12 games undefeated, followed by another run of 17 without a loss.  As a result, on 4 May 1998 the table read

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Arsenal	36	23	9	4	68	28	40	78
2	Manchester United	37	22	8	7	71	26	45	74
3	Liverpool	36	17	11	8	64	41	23	62
4	Chelsea	37	19	3	15	69	43	26	60

 

And so Manchester United could not catch Arsenal.  But more than that, Arsenal were also in the FA cup final, and the fact that Arsenal then lost their remaining two league matches to Liverpool and Aston Villa didn’t matter.   

All of which meant that Arsenal won the league, and were in the FA Cup final.  In the sixth round, it had been close – two draws between the clubs with the second draw followed by a penalty shoot-out which Arsenal won.   Then a 1-0 victory in the semi-final over Wolverhampton, followed by a 2-0 win over Newcastle in the final.

The final league table read

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Arsenal	38	23	9	6	68	33	35	78
2	Manchester United	38	23	8	7	73	26	47	77
3	Liverpool	38	18	11	9	68	42	26	65
4	Chelsea	38	20	3	15	71	43	28	63

 

And thus Arsenal had won the double.

But perhaps I might now also add a comparison with the season we have just finished, in which Arsenal won the league, but of course not the double.   This season just passed, saw Arsenal not just win the league, but win it with more goals scored, fewer goals conceded, and seven more points than Wenger got in the first of his triumphs with Arsenal.  Here’s the comparison

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Arsenal 2025/6	38	26	7	5	71	27	44	85
1	Arsenal 1997/8	38	23	9	6	68	33	35	78

 

And yet what we get now are comments about how this season Arsenal didn’t really do that well.   There really does seem to be no pleasing some people – at least not where Arsenal are involved.

The season saw the debuts for Grimandi, Petit, Overmars, Boa Morte, Wreh, Manninger, and Upson, names that many of us will still remember.  But it wasn’t just individual players that Wenger found, as we saw with Overmars.  He was of course, a great player, but what really bemused the opposition, and caused the journalists to start realising that football was not all about individual players, was the way that Overmars and Bergkamp understood each other.

That we lost Overmars and Petit to Barcelona three years later showed how quickly the big overseas teams had grasped what Wenger could do.   It was almost as if they were willing to let Wenger do the groundwork and find the brilliant players, and then they would come in and snap up the ones they wanted.  OK, it cost them more money, but it felt like they hardly had to bother with their own coaches any more.  Arsenal were still living on crowds of 38,000 and so had no chance of paying what the Spanish giants could afford.

Thus, 27 years after winning the League and Cup Double for the first time, Arsenal became the first ever team to repeat the trick.  1997/98 was indeed Arsenal’s year, and more than that, the year in which anyone with eyes to see realised that there was a new way of playing football and a new way of running an English club with a small ground, and it was being revealed week by week in north London by the man of whom Tony Adams said, “What does he know about English football?  He’s French.”