With two wins already under our belt in the Premier League this term, the feel-good-factor from last season has spread into the current campaign - and leaves us on course to achieve something we’ve not done for 20 years.
Our win at Aston Villa was our eight-straight success in the Premier League, and incredibly is the second time in 2024 that we have racked up that many victories on the bounce.
To put that into context, those are two of the top 10 winning league runs in our history, and three points against Brighton & Hove Albion on Saturday would see us reach nine in a row for the first time since our Invincibles campaign in 2003/04.
Back then, the run started with a 4-1 success against Middlesbrough in January 2004, and saw us take a stranglehold on the league title over the next two months as we left our rivals in our dust.
| Date | Opposition | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 10/01/04 | Middlesbrough | W 4-1 |
| 18/01/04 | Aston Villa | W 2-0 |
| 01/02/04 | Manchester City | W 2-1 |
| 07/02/04 | Wolverhampton Wanderers | W 3-1 |
| 10/02/04 | Southampton | W 2-0 |
| 21/02/04 | Chelsea | W 2-1 |
| 28/02/04 | Charlton Athletic | W 2-1 |
| 13/03/04 | Blackburn Rovers | W 2-0 |
| 20/03/04 | Bolton Wanderers | W 2-1 |
Given that was two decades ago, it shows how hard that feat is to achieve, and should we make it nine on the bounce, then there will only have been three occasions in our entire league history that we have bettered our current run.
Two of those coincided with Arsene Wenger’s Premier League title wins in 1998 and 2002, when we came from a long way back to chase down Manchester United and pip them to the championship, including famous wins at Old Trafford.
The 2002 run saw us record a club-record 14 straight victories, while 10 in a row was also registered by George Graham’s 1987 side.
| First Game | Last Game | Winning Run |
|---|---|---|
| 10/02/2002 | 18/08/2002 | 14 |
| 12/09/1987 | 14/11/1987 | 10 |
| 11/03/1998 | 03/05/1998 | 10 |
| 02/03/1971 | 20/04/1971 | 9 |
| 10/01/2004 | 20/03/2004 | 9 |
| 05/09/1903 | 26/10/1903 | 8 |
| 19/03/2000 | 06/05/2000 | 8 |
| 10/02/2015 | 11/04/2015 | 8 |
| 20/01/2024 | 09/03/2024 | 8 |
However to highlight the current high standard within the Premier League, the two longest winning runs in English top-flight history have both been achieved within the past seven seasons.
Manchester City hit 18 during the 2017/18 campaign - when Mikel Arteta was assistant manager - while two years later Liverpool matched that tally during their title-winning campaign.
Copyright 2024 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
