Their Premier League record will go down in English sporting folklore. Played 38. Won 26. Drawn 12. Lost 0.
Arsene Wenger ’s 2003/04 Arsenal team have already penned their place in footballing history, but their nickname remains a bone of contention with some of their detractors. After all, while ‘the Invincibles’ couldn’t be stopped in the league, they failed to win any of the three major cup competitions.
Already dumped out of the League Cup at the semi-final stage by Middlesbrough, they suffered the same fate in the FA Cup last four, losing out to Manchester United on April 3.
But just three days later, they had a chance to put that disappointment behind them by clinching their Champions League quarter final tie vs Chelsea.
The Gunners were well placed going into the game at Highbury, having earned a score draw at Stamford Bridge a fortnight before. And when the late Jose Antonio Reyes broke the deadlock in the final seconds of the first half, Arsenal looked well set for another semi final.
However, the visitors came roaring back in the second half, with Frank Lampard bringing the tie level, before Wayne Bridge broke the home side’s hearts with a goal in the closing minutes.
The nature of the defeat was a sickening one for the eventual champions and Jens Lehmann - who was at fault for the first Chelsea goal - pointed the blame at the decision to switch Nike balls from the group stage to the knockouts.
"I remember I made a mistake against Chelsea because we played with a brand new Nike ball and it came swerving like that and I couldn’t stop it,” he told beIN Sports in 2020. “I couldn’t catch it. It was a draw then with Frank Lampard and then in the last minute all of a sudden, because we were so tired, we couldn’t defend a draw and we lost that game."
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In a season where disappointments were few and far between, Wenger subsequently accepted that the decision to not rotate his squad was a costly one. Speaking during a 2021 media appearance, the legendary former Arsenal boss said: “Playing in the same week Manchester United on Saturday, Chelsea on Tuesday in the Champions League… I made the mistake to play the full team on Saturday against Man United. They kicked us off the park.
“Then we lost against Chelsea [in] a game that with fresh players we would not have lost. Maybe I should have prioritised the Champions League that season.”
It’s a regret that has gnawed away at Wenger and Arsenal fans alike, with Europe’s top prize proving elusive throughout his trophy-laden stint in north London. But for Chelsea, it was a defining moment - perhaps the first - of Roman Abramovich’s tenure at Stamford Bridge.
The landscape of football in the capital is now vastly different due to the Russian bankrolling the Blues for almost 20 years, but back in 2004 the scene was very different. Going into that clash, Chelsea hadn’t tasted victory over their cross-city rivals in five years and had already been dumped out of the FA Cup by the Gunners.
Ex-Chelsea winger Joe Cole perhaps explained it best on the All to Play for podcast: “I think that was a turning point in Chelsea’s history, because that Arsenal team would be Invincibles and they were unbelievable, but on that day we were a young, energetic, vibrant team.
“That night when we beat them, I felt for the first time you can puff your chest out with that team and compete with them… So I felt that game was [about] closing the gap and that was the game where we just got ahead of him in that sense.”
Arsenal did manage to dust themselves down and win the Premier League title, while Chelsea were dumped out of the Champions League by Monaco in the next round. But April 6, 2004 laid the foundations for a changing of the guard, a passing of the baton. And all thanks to a swerving Nike ball and an unlikely hero in Wayne Bridge.
