Previously
- 2004/5 Arsenal win the unbeaten season; a wish for a video on my tombstone
- 2003/4: the proof that the Almighty really does support Arsenal
By Tony Attwood
What did we expect with the club investing all its money and then some in a new stadium? Another unbeaten season? Surely not! After all Arsenal had come second in 2004/5 as the first signs of the new ground began to arise. 2004/5 had begtun with a bang – 19 goals in the first five league games, but then things settled down somewhat. The word had started to spread – the building of the new ground was causing Arsenal financial problems in relation to the buying of new players, and Wenger was having to manage through his knowledge of players no one else was seeking. In the 2004/5 season, second was not bad but it was 12 points behind the league champions: Chelsea.
Permission to build a new ground there was gained in 2001 although looking back it now seems that the relocation programme was initiated without all the financial arrangements being in place. There was talk of Arsenal’s bankers being Tottenham supporters….
Indeed Arsenal had originally planned to move in 2003 but the financial issues put this back and the new ground was not finished until 2006: three years late. The old ground was then redeveloped as apartments and this of course, helped pay off some of the debts.
So after the Unbeaten Season, Arsenal had come second in the league, finishing 12 points behind Chelsea in 2004/5. But then in 2005/6 with the building of the new ground continuing, Arsenal themselves were still playing at Highbury where capacity was limited to 38,000 or thereabouts.
There was talk about the new stadium being ready in super quick time – after all Arsenal had been talking to the council about moving for years… but of course that sort of thing never happens: 2005/6 was played at Highbury with crowds of just above 38,000 and it was clear that the new stadium would not be opened until the start of the 2006/7 season. But that drop down to fourth in 2005/6 was merely a blip surely, for with a new stadium to play in, and almost down the crowd size, Arsenal would rise once again…
The fact that Arsenal finished fourth in the league in 2005/6 was less painful than it might have been given that it was still a finish above Tottenham (although only by one place and one point) and the tiny totts (as we had been calling them for a while) appeared to be centuries away from finding a new ground for themselves.
Also, we had the news that the Emirates airline had got the sponsorship of the ground for 15 years which sounded good news, and the first game there before a big crowd was Dennis Bergkamp’s testimonial, which felt to everyone to be exactly the right sort of thing for Arsenal to do. Especially with Cruyff and van Basten playing.
But if supporters somehow felt that a new ground would mean a new Arsenal, this was just fantasy talk. The miracle that Wenger as manager performed was that he kept Arsenal in the top four, with a painfully small transfer budget. What’s more, as anger grew among some supporters, urged on of course, by the anti-Arsenal media, about buying more players, Arsene Wenger held the club and the team together. “Fourth is not a trophy” wrote some blogs, but given the lack of money that the manager had to spend, it was a miracle. And it generated the cash that Arsenal needed to help pay off the debts
Indeed in retrospect it is worth looking at Arsenal and Tottenham in 2006/7, wherein Arsenal were swamped in debt and came fourth, and Tottenham, debt-free, came in fifth. We might compare that with 2025/6, with Arsenal once again debt-free winning the league, but Tottenham, still paying for their new ground, came 17th (West Ham, in 18th, being relegated), while Arsenal finished seven points clear at the top of the league.
Yes, it did take from 2006/7 to 2025/6 for Arsenal to find their way back to the top of the league. And yes, we had an eternity of coming third and fourth, or so it seemed (we didn’t reach runners-up until 2015/16), but as other clubs have found, and will find in the future, new grounds may look wonderful and bring in bigger crowds, but one way or another they need to be paid for.
So Arsenal, having completed the impossible unbeaten season in 2004, slipped to second in 2005 and then in 2006 began their long run of ten seasons of coming third or fourth. Some have considered that a failure – but it meant that Arsenal paid off their debts through those years of Champions League football.
And yes, although we have had to wait until 2006 to win the league again, during that time we were able to be distracted a little by FA Cup victories in 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2020. And if my calculations are right, that is more than anyone else, while we waited to win the Premier League again in 2026.
The tragedy of Arsenal was that a number of fans were impatient with this extraordinary rebuilding process that involved getting a new stadium, finding the way to pay for it without the club ending up massively in debt, finding the way to win a few trophies along the way, and then finding a manager who, without breaking the bank, could take us back to the top of the league with a modern stadium, of which there is now talk of expanding.
But there is something else, because after the utter disaster of picking the wrong manager to come after Wenger, Arsenal sorted itself out again, and was willing to settle for a slow but well managed plan to take us back to the top – via a few cup finals along the way. More on that later..
