How Arsenal’s Current Title Hopefuls Compare to Invincible Season

Mikel Arteta’s team are aiming to become Arsenal’s first title winners since the Invincibles.

2003–04 Arsenal remain the only team to enjoy an unbeaten Premier League campaign. | Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC/Getty Images

Arsenal seemingly won’t have a better chance to claim their first Premier League title since Arsène Wenger oversaw an unprecedented success just over 20 years ago.

The Gunners have come mightily close twice under Mikel Arteta, with Manchester City’s treble-winners hunting them down in 2022–23 before, arguably more impressively, they pipped Arsenal to the post the following season.

Remarkably, Arteta’s project has merely returned an FA Cup and multiple Community Shields. While disliked (or merely envied) by a good majority, their efficacy with the Spaniard at the helm cannot be denied. Surely this is their year.

Man City will come on strong down the stretch, and their winter business suggests that they believe the title is still up for grabs. Arsenal, though, have a healthy enough advantage, and their proficiency this season has seen them draw comparisons to the ’Invincibles’ of 2003–04.

Arteta, despite refusing to rule out a potential quadruple, has played down any resemblance to Wenger’s great team, suggesting that his side can only be held in such a high regard when they start to win major silverware.

Statistically, though, there’s certainly an interesting comparison to be made between Arsenal’s 2025–26 title hopefuls and their previous champions.

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Comparing Arsenal’s Premier League Title Hopefuls to ’Invincibles’

Mikel Arteta refused to compare his current team to Arsenal’s previous title winners. | Catherine Ivill/AMA/Getty Images

The latest iteration of Arteta’s Arsenal is the culmination of a multi-year project that has undergone an array of tactical evolutions.

While the current Premier League leaders are decried for their set-piece reliance (they joint-lead the league with 12 set-piece goals), Arteta’s side are able to assert such dominance from dead ball situations because of their capacity to assert all-out control in matches.

Arteta may not be a Pep Guardiola sycophant, but he boasts a similar obsession with control, and this Arsenal team have long been revered for their cohesiveness without possession. Pressing simply wasn’t in vogue when Wenger’s ’Invincibles’ were around, with that team venerated for their balance as a unit in possession, as well as their superstar talent in attack.

The current team has the brilliant Bukayo Saka, but their personnel pales in comparison to their previous title-winning side. A deadly left-sided axis consisting of Thierry Henry, Robert Pires and Ashley Cole was capable of overwhelming any opponent, and Henry also benefited from working in close proximity to Dutch maestro Dennis Bergkamp. He ended the Premier League season with 30 goals, while Pires scored 14 times.

That team was reliant on a select few in the final third, but Arteta’s title hopefuls have an array of threats. The current side is projected to not have a single double-digit goalscorer in the top flight, yet, as a collective, they’re averaging just 0.02 goals fewer per match than the ’Invincibles’.

Defensively, there had been talk of this Arsenal outfit being remembered as the Premier League’s greatest, with their stern start to 2025–26 faciliating plenty of comparisons to Chelsea’s door-bolt unit of 2004–05, which conceded just 15 goals. However, there were lapses (and notable injuries) in the winter, and they’re now on course to surrender 25. The ’Invincibles’ conceded 26.

While no Premier League side before them or since has been able to match their feat, naysayers are quick to bring up the number of draws during Arsenal’s 2003–04 campaign (12). Their win rate of 68.4% is lower than the current team’s (71.4%), but Wenger’s men did record a 90-point haul, and Arteta’s men are tracking to notch slightly less than that (88).

It’s not only the knack for drawing that hurts the ’Invincibles’ from a legacy perspective, but also the fact that they were unable to back up their unprecedented success with silverware elsewhere. They lost semi-finals to Manchester United and Middlesbrough in the FA Cup and League Cup, respectively, while Chelsea stunned the Gunners in the Champions League quarter-finals.

Thus, while Arteta’s side have already lost twice in the Premier League this season, there’s scope for them to be held in an ever loftier light by supporters should they throw their weight around in other competitions. They’re in the League Cup semi-finals and FA Cup fourth round, while a strong start to their continental campaign suggests that a maiden Champions League triumph isn’t so far-fetched.

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2025–26 Arsenal Premier League Record Compared to ’Invincibles’

Team	Played	Wins	Draws	Losses	Points	Points Per Match	Average Goals Scored Per Match	Average Goals Against Per Match	Win Rate (%)
2003–04	38	26	12	0	90	2.37	1.92	0.68	68.4
2025–26	21	15	4	2	49	2.33	1.90	0.66	71.4

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