Arsenal's Invincibles: The 2003-04 Unbeaten Season, Game by Game

Arsenal's Invincibles were the Arsène Wenger side that won the 2003-04 Premier League without losing a game: 38 played, 26 won, 12 drawn, none lost. They finished on 90 points, 11 clear of Chelsea, and are still the only team to go a 38-game English top-flight season unbeaten. Counting the end of the season before and the start of the one after, the run reached 49 league games.

This page sets out how they did it: the numbers, the eleven, the matches that came closest to ending it and how it finally stopped.

The season at a glance

Record	P38 W26 D12 L0
Goals	73 scored, 26 conceded
Clean sheets	21
Points	90
Winning margin	11 points over Chelsea
Manager	Arsène Wenger (eighth season)
Captain	Patrick Vieira
Top scorer	Thierry Henry, 30 league goals
Title clinched	25 April 2004, 2-2 at Tottenham
Unbeaten run	49 league games, May 2003 to October 2004

The Premier League's own season review records them as the first team since Preston North End in 1889 to go through an English league campaign unbeaten. Henry was the division's top scorer and Player of the Season, and Wenger its Manager of the Season.

The final table

	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
Arsenal	38	26	12	0	73	26	90
Chelsea	38	24	7	7	67	30	79
Manchester United	38	23	6	9	64	35	75
Liverpool	38	16	12	10	55	37	60
Newcastle United	38	13	17	8	52	40	56

Twelve draws is the number that stands out. The record rests less on winning every week than on never losing: each of those draws kept a point that a defeat would have thrown away. How points, goal difference and tie-breakers work is covered in how league tables and points work.

The team

Wenger played a 4-4-2, and the cornerstones of the side, as Flashscore's retrospective lists them, were Jens Lehmann in goal; Lauren, Kolo Touré, Sol Campbell and Ashley Cole across the back; Freddie Ljungberg, Patrick Vieira, Gilberto Silva and Robert Pires in midfield; Dennis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry up front.

On paper it was a flat 4-4-2. In practice the front two were not a pair of identical strikers: Bergkamp could play deeper, closer to midfield, leaving Henry to roam the final third on his own, as he did at Old Trafford in September. Vieira and Gilberto held the middle, and Ljungberg and Pires supplied the wing play. Arsenal's own explainer on the Invincibles calls Henry arguably the world's best striker at the time, and Cole perhaps the best left-back of his era.

The defence was new. Lehmann had arrived from Borussia Dortmund that summer to replace David Seaman, and Touré had only just been moved to centre-back. He later said he had asked Wenger at the pre-season training camp in Austria to play there, and that learning alongside Campbell was why the partnership worked.

The regulars in numbers

Premier League figures for 2003-04, from Transfermarkt.

Player	Position	Apps	Goals
Jens Lehmann	Goalkeeper	38	0
Lauren	Right-back	32	0
Kolo Touré	Centre-back	37	1
Sol Campbell	Centre-back	35	1
Ashley Cole	Left-back	32	0
Freddie Ljungberg	Right midfield	30	4
Patrick Vieira	Central midfield	29	3
Gilberto Silva	Central midfield	32	4
Robert Pires	Left midfield	36	14
Dennis Bergkamp	Second striker	28	4
Thierry Henry	Striker	37	30

Lehmann played every minute of all 38 games. Henry's 30 goals were more than twice anyone else's in the side. Vieira's three all came in decisive matches: a top-of-the-table game against Chelsea, the title-clinching game at Tottenham and the final day against Leicester.

The games that nearly ended it

An unbeaten season reads like a procession afterwards. It did not feel like one at the time, and four matches came close to breaking it.

Manchester United 0-0 Arsenal, 21 September 2003. The sixth game of the season, now known as the Battle of Old Trafford. Vieira was sent off with about ten minutes left for a second booking after kicking out following a tangle with Ruud van Nistelrooy. In stoppage time Martin Keown was penalised for a challenge on Diego Forlán, and van Nistelrooy hit the penalty against the crossbar. Keown's celebration in van Nistelrooy's face became the image of the afternoon, and the FA later charged six Arsenal players with a total of 11 counts of misconduct, according to Arsenal's account of the game.

Arsenal 4-2 Liverpool, 9 April 2004. The danger started before kick-off. Within a week Arsenal lost the FA Cup semi-final 1-0 to Manchester United at Villa Park and were knocked out of the Champions League quarter-finals by Chelsea, Wayne Bridge scoring the winner in the 87th minute at Highbury. Then, on Good Friday, Liverpool led twice: Sami Hyypiä scored in the fifth minute and Michael Owen made it 2-1 before half-time. Pires equalised four minutes after the restart, Henry scored a solo goal from near halfway moments later, and his third completed a hat-trick. Arsenal's match account has Henry calling it the one goal of his that still gives him goosebumps.

Tottenham 2-2 Arsenal, 25 April 2004. Newcastle's 2-1 win over Chelsea earlier that day meant one point would win the title. Vieira scored after three minutes, finishing a counter that started from a Spurs corner, and Pires made it 2-0. Jamie Redknapp pulled one back, and Robbie Keane equalised from the penalty spot with the last kick of the game. The point was enough: Arsenal won the league at White Hart Lane, as they had in 1971. Arsenal's report also records that Henry was named PFA Player of the Year that week for the second year running, with six Arsenal players in the PFA Team of the Year.

Arsenal 2-1 Leicester City, 15 May 2004. The final day, against a side already relegated. Paul Dickov, a former Arsenal player, headed Leicester ahead in the 25th minute, and Arsenal went in at half-time a goal down with the record in the balance. Henry equalised with a penalty two minutes after the break, his 30th league goal of the season, and Vieira scored the winner from a Bergkamp pass. The club's report notes that the Premier League then announced a special one-off trophy would be commissioned to mark the unbeaten season.

No cups

For all their dominance in the league, the Invincibles won nothing else in 2003-04. The FA Cup run ended in that semi-final against Manchester United; the Champions League run, which had included a 5-1 win at Inter in the group stage, ended against Chelsea in the quarter-finals. In his programme notes for the Liverpool game, Wenger wrote that his players had to "re-programme their brains" and focus on the one competition left. From then on, the league was the whole story.

The 49-game run

The unbeaten season sat inside a longer streak. Arsenal's last league defeat before it was a 3-2 home loss to Leeds United in May 2003, Sky Sports notes. Here is the timeline from there.

Date	Match	Run
May 2003	Wins over Southampton (6-1) and Sunderland (4-0)	Games 1-2
16 Aug 2003	Arsenal 2-1 Everton, opening day of 2003-04	Game 3
21 Sep 2003	Manchester United 0-0 Arsenal	Game 8
25 Apr 2004	Tottenham 2-2 Arsenal, title won	Game 36
15 May 2004	Arsenal 2-1 Leicester, season unbeaten	Game 40
22 Aug 2004	Arsenal 5-3 Middlesbrough	Game 42, equals Nottingham Forest's record
25 Aug 2004	Arsenal 3-0 Blackburn Rovers	Game 43, new record
16 Oct 2004	Arsenal 3-1 Aston Villa	Game 49
24 Oct 2004	Manchester United 2-0 Arsenal	Run ends

The Middlesbrough game was nearly the end. Arsenal were 3-1 down early in the second half before Bergkamp, Pires and José Antonio Reyes turned it round and Henry added a fifth, as Flashscore's retrospective recounts. Three days later goals from Henry, Cesc Fàbregas and Reyes beat Blackburn and broke the 42-game record Nottingham Forest had held since 1978. Fàbregas's goal made him Arsenal's youngest league scorer at the time. Against Villa, Lee Hendrie scored after three minutes; Pires scored twice and Henry once to win it 3-1.

How it ended

The 50th game was at Old Trafford on 24 October 2004. With the score 0-0, referee Mike Riley ruled that Campbell had fouled Wayne Rooney in the area, and van Nistelrooy scored the 73rd-minute penalty; Rooney added a second in the final minute. The decision still divides opinion. Reviewing it for Sky Sports in 2024, former referee Dermot Gallagher judged that it was not a foul, and that van Nistelrooy should have been sent off earlier for a challenge on Cole for which he was later banned for three matches. How the same incidents would be reviewed now is covered in VAR explained. The tunnel confrontation after the final whistle became known as "Pizzagate".

How the Invincibles compare

When Arsenal next won the league, in 2025-26, the club compared the two title sides.

	2003-04	2025-26
Won	26	26
Drawn	12	7
Lost	0	5
Goal difference	+47	+44
Points	90	85

Same number of wins, but where the Invincibles drew, the 2025-26 side sometimes lost. Arsenal's explainer still counts the Invincibles as the only team to go all 38 games of an English top-flight season unbeaten. The closest it lists are Liverpool, who went 27 games into 2019-20 before losing, and the two sides that lost only once in a season: Chelsea in 2004-05 and that same Liverpool team.

Further reading

Henry and Bergkamp were two different kinds of forward, a finisher who roamed the front line and a second striker who dropped deeper, and the difference between those roles is set out in types of striker explained. For the defenders at the top of the game now, see the best centre-backs in the world, and for one of the current Arsenal generation, the Max Dowman profile.