Where would Arsenal rank in the greatest seasons by a Premier League club? Man Utd in danger | OneFootball

Arsenal will crash the top five greatest seasons by a Premier League club if they win the title and Champions League, beating Liverpool’s best.

Some entirely, obviously and wonderfully fake Paul Merson quotes suggest that ‘if Arsenal manage to win the Premier League and Champions League this month, it’ll be the greatest achievement we’ve witnessed in British football history’.

But as entirely, obviously and wonderfully fake as they are, it got us thinking: where would this Arsenal season rank in terms of the best ever campaigns by a Premier League club if they win both? Definitely in the top five. Possibly in the top three…

10) Manchester United, 2008/09

Premier League champions with 90 points; the first Club World Cup winners from England; and League Cup victors knocked out of the FA Cup semi-final on penalties and beaten in the Champions League final by one of the greatest teams in history.

Manchester United’s only defeats in regulation time of the 2008/09 season were to genuine heavyweights of the sport in Liverpool, Arsenal, Fulham, Derby, Zenit Saint Petersburg and Barcelona. Edwin van der Sar simply refused to concede for a bit. John O’Shea scored in a Champions League semi-final.

9) Chelsea, 2004/05

Setting a Premier League record which will never be broken in the process, Chelsea lost once en route to winning their first top-flight title in 50 years. Bloody Nicolas Anelka.

A particularly absurd League Cup final win allowed managers to pretend it could be a springboard to establish a trophy-hoarding dynasty in the two decades since, while Jose Mourinho’s quest to retain his Champions League crown was ended by Luis Garcia and a linesman whose likeness the Portuguese has almost certainly stuck pins into for the past 20 years.

Chelsea conceded 33 goals in all competitions; only Arsenal (26) and Manchester City (32) are under that bar in the Premier League alone this season.

8) Manchester City, 2017/18

It all started – naturally, of course – with a win in the League Cup final. Pep Guardiola was merely copying Mourinho’s homework again.

That might be a slight misrepresentation of the only 100-point campaign in Premier League history, with Manchester City also setting seasonal records for most wins, most consecutive wins, most goals and best goal difference, all of which have still yet to be beaten.

They do lose a couple of marks for losing to Wigan in the FA Cup and it somehow being only their second most embarrassing ever defeat to Wigan in the FA Cup. Liverpool also absolutely Klopped them in the Champions League.

7) Arsenal, 2003/04

Perhaps that is simply the fate that befalls teams who have achieved something uniquely brilliant in the Premier League: losing to domestic opposition in Europe.

Chelsea and Wayne sodding Bridge of all people rendered the 2003/04 iteration of Arsenal one of the greatest teams never to win the Champions League.

It does nothing to undermine the mastery of going a whole league season unbeaten, but it is funny that The Invincibles were knocked out of cup competitions by Chelsea, Manchester United and Steve McClaren’s Midlesbrough.

6) Leicester, 2015/16

As Miguel Delaney of The Independent once quoted an anonymous ‘senior figure’ from a Big Six Premier League side as saying: “We don’t want too many Leicester Citys.”

It is difficult to fathom the particular set of circumstances that might bring another one about. For every usual challenger to soil their beds so dramatically and simultaneously was unprecedented and will not be repeated.

Even then, a Leicester side who had fought relegation the previous season and sacked their manager in the summer ought never to have been the ones to capitalise. There will never be a less likely or predictable champion than the entirely worthy Foxes.

5) Manchester City, 2018/19

Sir Alex Ferguson called the domestic Treble “impossible” because of fixture congestion, injuries and the danger of “coming unstuck in a cup tie through any kind of unlucky break”.

It seemed like a truism enforced by years of clubs falling short at various hurdles, unable to fully unite the Triforce of Barclays, Worthington’s and Magic.

Yet Manchester City accomplished it by realising that just winning all your games is absurdly effective and teams should do it more often. From February 3 to May 18 they played 23 matches and won 22, wrapping up the title, FA Cup and League Cup, but contriving to make that solitary loss part of the most ludicrous Champions League exit imaginable.

4) Liverpool, 2019/20

It will probably forever remain the earliest and latest a team has won the Premier League title.

Liverpool wrapped the crown up with seven games to spare in June 2020. The jibes about it being an asterisk-worthy season should never stop, but by the time it was decided that football probably shouldn’t continue during a literal pandemic, the league table made for preposterous reading:

Klopp’s side dropped more points during that seven-game behind-closed-doors procession than in the 31 matches previous. They didn’t reach further than the quarter-finals in any other competition but no Premier League team has ever been as dominant as Liverpool between March 2019 and February 2020.

3) Manchester United, 2007/08

In the Premier League era, only three teams have combined winning the title with lifting a European trophy. The other continental champions have finished 2nd, 3rd (three times), 4th (three times), 5th, 6th, 14th and 17th.

Manchester United balanced the two disciplines expertly, as Arsenal will hope to emulate in their next four games.

It required the early sacrifices of the FA Cup and League Cup in the sixth and third rounds respectively, but that feels like a trade-off most teams would accept. Better to kill the Quadruple with the second string against Coventry in September than let those hopes linger.

2) Manchester City, 2022/23

Not even a mid-season World Cup more than 4,000 miles away, the death of the Queen, nor the blow of missing out on Marc Cucurella was able to stop arguably the crowning triumph of Guardiola’s inimitable coaching career.

Manchester City scored 151 goals across the course of a frankly daft season, with Erling Haaland accounting for more than one-third on his own after joining in the summer.

It does make the identity of the person who ostensibly stopped them from winning the Quadruple all the funnier.

1) Manchester United, 1998/99

The story of the forgotten Treble will be told one day, perhaps once Gary Neville finally arranges for some former Manchester United player guests to appear on one of his myriad platforms to at long last talk about Sir Alex Ferguson.

And when those tales are told, they should focus on how implausible it is that Manchester United won the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup, all without the League Cup springboard.