By Tony Attwood
- Arsenal trophies during the recovery programme
- After the unbeaten season: the financial issues and the new stadium
The series that has been running on this site under the overall headline 100 Seasons in the Top Division has now reached the final moments in the adventure: the sacking of Unai Emery and the arrival of Mikel Arteta, leading up not just to the 100th consecutive season in the top flight, but also winning the league in the 100th consecutive season.
And at this point I do want to go back to the final era before Mikel Arteta arrived, and consider a few points not dealt with in earlier pieces.
As you’ll know, and as we have covered, Arsenal won the league in the grandest of styles in 2004 with the Unbeaten Season, and I suspect I was not the only one who felt this was the start of something wonderful that could take me through the rest of my Arsenal-supporting life.
But in fact it was the end; the end of an incredible run of seasons with Arsenal appearing at or near the top of the league most of the time. An era greater even than the days of Chapman. Eight amazing seasons of coming first or second in the league, alongside five FA Cup finals (won four, lost just one). And it ended with the most amazing event of all – the unbeaten season – and then….
What caused the sudden drop after 2004 was two events: on the one hand, there was the cost of building what became known as the Emirates Stadium, which ate up all our transfer budget, and then some. Then after that there was the difficulty of putting together a new team that could challenge at the top of the league once more.
And I guess we should also note that there was a third issue of Arsenal’s own making – appointing completely the wrong person to take over after Mr Wenger left. Mr Wenger had, I believe, been upset by the lack of understanding of some fans with their wretched “fourth is not a trophy” slogan. What’s more, those who were tempted to come to Arsenal to manage the club knew that the supporters would give them no leeway.
In short, Arsenal had become an all-or-nothing club. The managers who were having great success had no need to move, and those who thought they could take Arsenal back to the top knew that failure meant, if not the end, at least the temporary wrecking of their career. Why risk everything by going to Arsenal as manager when for these supporters, anything short of the title would not be enough?
In reality, it was obvious that the only manager who would come to the club would be a novice – a person who had been a backup, but not a manager, in the past. Someone who knew the crowd could turn on him, but who might give him a chance because of his history. In short, an ex-player who had been liked by the crowd and who had worked as an assistant to an incredibly successful player.
But more than that, although some of the crowd had turned on Arsene Wenger, they still lived with the memory of seven FA Cup wins, and three league titles, including of course the Unbeaten Season. That, it was felt, was the real Arsenal. That is where we should be, some thought, even when still paying off the debts created through the building of the new stadium.
As it happens, I was the person who took the idea of there being a statue of Mr Wenger outside the ground to the board of directors, and fortunately, by the time it was put up, his rehabilitation had gone some way towards fans recognising that he was the architect of Arsenal’s survival, not the man who caused its downfall. Indeed, I would argue that if anyone still thinks he might have done more after the move to the new stadium, maybe they should have a look at how Tottenham have coped with their move – and remember they haven’t even had to pay for it all themselves!
But that is the past, and of course we know what happened. We got the new stadium, we got the unbeaten season, Mr Wenger left and our next manager could neither pick winners in the transfer market, nor keep the club in the top four – an essential part of the club’s financial recovery programme.
Indeed, finding a new manager proved difficult, and the club did have a false start, but after that we did get a manager who could achieve miracles. – but only because the club were persuaded to give him time.
Emery was sacked on 29 November 2019, and I didn’t meet anyone who suggested that “letting him go” was a mistake. Arsenal were eighth having played 14 games with a negative goal difference and under half the points of Liverpool, who were top of the league. Out of those 14 games, Arsenal had won four, drawn seven and lost three.
The new man arrived in December 2019: Mr Arteta. He steadied the ship and won the FA Cup. OK Arsenal came in eighth in the league, but we were back on the trail. Except that in March 2020 football was stopped because of COVID. But we had a new manager and as we found out later the Prime Minister was holding parties in Downing Street, which didn’t do much for the country’s respect for authority figures.
Yet mostly we didn’t even mind that because in these surreal circumstances we won the FA Cup. This, a lot of us felt, was the real Arsenal. No matter what, we’ll win the FA Cup.
If there was a blip, it was 2020/21 when Arsenal did not win the FA Cup and only came fifth in the league. I am not sure if anyone was writing “fifth is not a trophy” but it did mean we were back in Europe and making steady progress. Although the real problem was that although Arsenal had moved up from 8th to 5th, in fourth place and thus in the Champions League was Tottenham Hots.
But Arsenal were building a new team with players like Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who in 2018/19 scored 31 goals and in the following season (the cup-winning season) 29, now moving to pastures new.
But such finishes in the lower part of the league were rare – we have to go back 50 years to have two consecutive low-level finishes with no cup compensation: 1974/5 Arsenal came 16th and 1976 Arsenal went one worse and finished 17th. Just a few years after the first Double!
Some supporters were very critical of Arteta’s progress, of coming 8th, 8th, 5th, 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, and on Untold Arsenal we had calls for him to be sacked. The suggestion was that Wenger had given Arsenal eight consecutive seasons finishing first and second, while including in those eight seasons three league titles, four cup wins and two double seasons. That was Arsenal, and that was now what we still expected. But in fact that is the trouble with success. Once you get it, it’s never enough.
Perhaps it was at the point to Arsenal’s advantage that no one either in the ground or commentating on Arsenal would seriously claim to remember a time when things were worse. For that, they had to go back to 1924/25 when the appalling Leslie Knighton took Arsenal to within one place of relegation at the end of the season, and as a result was finally sacked. (There’s more on that in our earlier article here.)
So this was a new situation. Arsenal needed a manager to sort out the mess, and they went to Manchester City and asked for permission to talk to their second in command, a certain Mikel Arteta. He became manager on 20 December 2019. In 2026 he won Arsenal the league. Their first title since the Unbeaten Season, which finished in 2004. The first Arsenal title in 22 years.
Mind you in those 22 years we did win the FA Cup five times and come runners up in the Premier League five times as well. So not a complete failure of two decades. And besides, I might be wrong, but I don’t recall Tottenham winning either of those trophies during that 22 year period.
So there we are. In 1919 Arsenal joined the top division, and continued playing there for 100 seasons: the absolute all-time record. Sadly, the club didn’t really do much to celebrate 100 seasons in the top division, but it did turn out to be a rather jolly affair. Not just because it was 100 consecutive seasons (an absolute record) but also because we seemed to have won the league in that 100th season.
The series has been written as I have publsihed it, and inevitably with this type of writing there are thoughts that “I should have mentioned x earlier” etc. My apologies. Over the next few weeks I will go back and tidy it all up, but I hope that for now, as we continue to celebrate 100 years AND winning the title in the 100th year, you’ll have found something of interest.
The full index of articles is published here
.
