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For those of us looking for even more narrative about this season, above and beyond the title scrap we face against Man City and Liverpool, there’s the fact that this year is the 20th anniversary of the Invincibles.
2004 is the last time Arsenal won the Premier League, and if you’d said that to somebody back then, they’d probably have looked at you funny. Roman Abramovich had arrived at Chelsea the summer before, and immediately made his intentions clear by trying to sign Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira.
David Dein’s famous quote at the time: “Roman Abramovich has parked his Russian tank in our front garden and is firing £50 notes at us.”
But the idea that an Arsenal side that had won the league without losing a single game, with two doubles in recent seasons, would go two decades without another title would have felt fanciful. It’s not that I think anyone would have expected us to dominate, because with Chelsea’s arrival thanks to Abramovich’s dirty money, and the continued presence of Alex Ferguson at Man Utd after he’d rowed back on his retirement plans, there was always going to be plenty of competition.
Obviously the team underwent significant changes, linked to the move from Highbury to the Emirates, and the way we went about things financially. Some great players came to the end of their time with us. Vieira was sold to Juventus, Thierry went to Barcelona, Robert Pires to Villarreal, and Arsene Wenger tried to build a team around Cesc Fabregas but – in my opinion anyway – never quite committed to that the way he should have done.
It’s all water under the bridge now, of course, but would Arsenal have been a different team if he’d really gone the distance with the Xabi Alonso deal that time? I suspect so. Instead, Fabregas had to carry other midfielders who weren’t really close to the level we needed.
Still, there were opportunities in that time. Football is full of sliding doors moments, and if it’s 20 years since the…
Source link : https://arseblog.com/2024/03/reflections-on-20-years/
Author : arseblog
Publish date : 2024-03-25 07:44:59
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