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By Tony Attwood
At the end of the 20th century and into the start of the 21st, Arsenal had a run of four seasons in which, having won the league in 1998, they then came second to Manchester United three times running, in 1999, 2000 and 2001. Their record across Arsenal’s last year of triumph in 1998, and the three years of coming second is shown below.
| Season | P | W | D | L | F | A | Pts | Pos | FAC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1997–98 | 38 | 23 | 9 | 6 | 68 | 33 | 78 | 1 | W |
| 1998–99 | 38 | 22 | 12 | 4 | 59 | 17 | 78 | 2 | SF |
| 1999–00 | 38 | 22 | 7 | 9 | 73 | 43 | 73 | 2 | 4 |
| 2000–01 | 38 | 20 | 10 | 8 | 63 | 38 | 70 | 2 | RU |
| 2001-02 | 38 | 26 | 9 | 3 | 79 | 36 | 87 | 1 | W |
By a curious coincidence, in the three seasons from 2022/23 up to 2024/5 Arsenal once again came second three seasons running… and then…
| Season | P | W | D | L | F | A | Pts | Pos | FAC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022–23 | 38 | 26 | 6 | 6 | 88 | 43 | 84 | 2 | 4 |
| 2023–24 | 38 | 28 | 5 | 5 | 91 | 29 | 89 | 2 | 3 |
| 2024–25 | 38 | 20 | 14 | 4 | 69 | 34 | 74 | 2 | 3 |
| 2025–26 | 38 | 26 | 7 | 5 | 71 | 27 | 85 | 1 | QF |
In both runs, there was, as I remember it, a sense of despair in relation to the run of three consecutive second-place finishes, with suggestions that there was something fundamentally wrong with the team and/or the manager. Thus, the notion was that instead of just buying a few more players and using the growing experience of those in the team, a whole new approach was needed. The manager, and perhaps the bulk of the team, didn’t have a “winning mentality”.
Quite what a “winning mentality” was, how one got one, and why seemingly most people didn’t have it, but a few observers could see it was lacking, was never explained – simply because as an explanation it was quite meaningless..
For really, it wasn’t anything simple that was missing, such as having a top scorer, or that somewhat mystical “winning mentality” that could swing the trophy Arsenal’s way. Indeed Thierry Henry, who had been the club’s top scorer for the previous two seasons, took his number of goals up even further. For having scored 22 goals in 2000/1 – much in keeping with the previous season’s top scorers, he went on and scored 32 goals in 2001/2. It was an utterly astonishing achievement. Here are the records in previous seasons…
| Season | P | W | D | L | F | A | Pts | Pos | FAC | Top scorer | Goals |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1997–98 | 38 | 23 | 9 | 6 | 68 | 33 | 78 | 1 | W | Bergkamp | 22 |
| 1998–99 | 38 | 22 | 12 | 4 | 59 | 17 | 78 | 2 | SF | Anelka | 19 |
| 1999–00 | 38 | 22 | 7 | 9 | 73 | 43 | 73 | 2 | 4 | Henry | 26 |
| 2000–01 | 38 | 20 | 10 | 8 | 63 | 38 | 70 | 2 | RU | Henry | 22 |
So I thought it might be interesting to look at goal scorers in recent Arsenal years and see if we could spot a similar effect, which is to say, the top scorer suddenly pushing on and scoring even more than before.
In 2022/23 we have the curious situation of three players each scoring 15 goals (Martinelli, Odegaard and Saka). In 2023/24 Saka was again top with 20 goals. In 20234/25 we were back to the 15 level, but this time it was just Havertz who got to that number. However this past season (2025/6), in which I suspect you will recall Arsenal won the league, Arsenal brought in Viktor Gyökeres and he got 21 goals – more than anyone since Aubameyang in 2019/20, who knocked in 29, having scored 31 the season before.
So part of the key to winning the league does appear to be having a forward who scores a higher number of goals. Except… that in those two seasons when Aubameyang scored his highest number of goals, Arsenal came 8th. Quite simply, the top scorer is a great person to have but not enough on his own.
So the great problem in recent years is not goal scoring, for the highest number of goals Arsenal have scored is an astonishing 91 in the league in 2023/24 when the club came second.
Now of course, we can say that conceding fewer goals is a great idea also, when it comes to winning the league, since in 1999 we conceded an all-time low of 17 goals. But even then, Arsenal only came second in the league.
In fact our lowest ever goals conceded in the Premier League was in 1998/9 when we let in 17. Unfortunately, we still only came in as runners-up.
So what did we do particularly well in 2025/6 that gave us the league title and such wonderful celebrations?
First, we won 26 games. Only once in the Premier League has Arsenal won more, and that was 28 games in 2023/24…. when we came… second.
We lost five games – one more than in 1999 when we also came… second. We got 85 points, but that was four fewer than 2024 when we came … second.
So it seems clear there is no single obvious way of guaranteeing a title win – in essence, the club needs to score more, concede fewer, and turn more draws into wins, and more defeats into draws. – all in the same season. One can’t say “score this many” or “lose only one game”, and it guarantees the title, because it doesn’t. It is a case of having all departments working at the very top of their game, throughout the whole season.
Much of this, of course, is that a 1-0 win gets the club as many points as a 5-0 victory. OK, those extra goals might help if two teams finish on the same number of points, but actually, that is quite rare. No, the winners usually have a very good all-round side, perfectly capable of turning a potential draw into a one-goal victory.
In 2001/2 Arsenal won the league after three years of coming second, and did it with 87 points, nine points more than they had achieved the last time they won the league, back in 1998. This time they scored 79 and conceded 36, which meant they scored 16 more goals than the season before and conceded two goals fewer. IBut at the heart of it all, the management had seen the flaw (attack) and fixed it by making Henry the key goal machine. He made four more appearances than the season before and scored seven more goals.
Now, in one sense, scoring seven more goals having played four more games doesn’t sound that fantastic an improvement, but as I suspect anyone else who was there at the time will probably agree, there was more to it than that.
Every defender knew that Henry was Arsenal’s ultimate weapon. But Ljungberg got 12 goals and Wiltord scored 10 – and that pair of figures gives us a clue to what was going on that season. The word was out for defenders from other teams: don’t let Henry get the ball and head for goal. Except that if they put two men on Henry, that would always leave either Freddie or Dennis in space.
The secret of the season and of winning the league was that all the attention of lots of defenders went onto the goal machine that was Henry. But equally, the problem was that as the season went on, other clubs woke up to that mistake, and not only fixed it, but in the summer worked out other ways of handling a side that had three players who were all perfectly capable of scoring from anywhere, given the opportunity,
In 2001/2, having come runners-up for three years running, Arsenal had won the league by seven points. They were the top scorers and had the second-best defence (Liverpool conceding six fewer in coming second in the table). In scoring 79, Arsenal had equalled Manchester United’s total of 79 from the season before, although curiously, Manchester United slipped to third, still scoring eight goals more than Arsenal.
But ManU were a very wealthy club, and still a threat, as everyone knew. They considered the title to be their personal property, and although Liverpool had managed to oust them by taking second place, there was a general feeling that it was still going to be between Arsenal and Manchester United in 2002/3. And so it turned out to be.
However, the season remains famous for something that Wenger said, before it all started, and as it was a prediction that didn’t turn out to be fulfilled in 2003, the media of course, laughed themselves stupid over it. Sadly, few of them felt able to apologise in 2004 when the ultimate triumph in English league football was displayed for everyone to see. But the story of that, is still one year away…
