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May 2004 Results & Match Reports

While Arsenal had already sealed the Premier League title, the Gunners were not about to ease up as they still had the remarkable achievement of going unbeaten throughout the whole of the campaign firmly in their sights.

With fixtures against Birmingham City, Portsmouth, Fulham and Leicester City set to be contested; Arsenal achieving the magnificent feat was certainly within the realms of possibility. However, the Gunners could not allow complacency to creep into their game and needed to maintain 100% focus.

Arsenal did exactly that as they negated a couple of sticky situations to grab two draws and two victories to go through the entire season unbeaten and etch their names in history as immortals.  

1/5/2004 – Arsenal 0 – 0 Birmingham City Villa, Venue – Emirates Stadium

After already sealing the Premier League title a few days ago, Arsenal looked a bit lackluster in the following game against Birmingham City and labored to a 0-0 draw.

Arsenal’s cause was not helped by the fact that Birmingham had set their stall out to defend and the usually brilliant Gunners attack were not able to get through their opponents’ stubborn backline as they created precious little throughout the game.

4/5/1999 – Portsmouth 1 – 1 Arsenal, Venue – Fratton Park

Arsenal’s unbeaten run looked in serious threat when they travelled to Fratton Park to face a dangerous Portsmouth side.

Yakubu handed Pompey the lead on the half an hour mark and there were serious fears among Gunners’ fans that their hard work throughout the season would be undone with an unceremonious defeat.

Much to the relief of the Arsenal fans though, Jose Antonio Reyes popped up in the second half to score his first Premier League goal and hand Arsenal the equalizer.

Despite leveling things up, Portsmouth still created a host of chances and it required goalkeeper Jens Lehmann to make some stunning saves from Yakubu and Dejan Stefanovic late into the game, to keep Arsenal’s unbeaten run intact.

9/5/2004 – Fulham 0 – 1 Arsenal, Venue – Loftus Road

Arsenal looked set to be in for another difficult afternoon when they squared off against Fulham at Loftus Road but were quite literally handed the win by Cottagers goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar.

Having put-in a heroic performance during the corresponding fixture, van der Sar was the one to blame for Fulham’s defeat this time around. The Dutch international needlessly dallied on the ball inside his own box and was duly punished by the incoming Jose Antonio Reyes, who picked the ball off of the goalkeeper and slotted home in the 9th minute. It was a largely uneventful game after the goal and Arsenal did enough in defence to claim the victory.

15/5/2004 – Arsenal 2 – 1 Leicester City, Venue – Highbury

With Arsenal to welcome already relegated Leicester City to Highbury in their final game of the season, many felt that the Gunners would surely manage to achieve their target of going the entire campaign undefeated.

However, the match did not prove as straightforward as people expected it to be as Leicester seemed intent on playing party poopers.

After a tight start, Leicester’s Paul Dickov popped up to give the visitors the lead in the 26th minute and shock the home fans. The Gunners went into half time behind and it would not be an exaggeration to say that 38,000 fans inside the stadium were left fearing the worst.

Arsenal proved why they were the champions in the second half though as they launched a fine comeback to turn the game on its head.

Thierry Henry grabbed the equalizer as well as his 30th goal of the season from the spot in the 47th minute before, perhaps fittingly, captain Patrick Vieira scored the winning goal for the Gunners in the hour mark after receiving a wonderful pass from Dennis Bergkamp.

Having come so close to making history, Arsenal were certainly not interested in letting it slip away and although they had to go through a couple of difficult moments at the end – the Gunners held on to claim the victory and achieve arguably the greatest feat ever seen in English football.

As a mark of their fine achievement, the Gunners were handed a Golden replica of the trophy during the post match ceremony by the Premier league and the team would go on to become known as ‘The Invincibles’.

May 2004 Results

League Table

Player Of The Month:
Jose Antonio Reyes

The final month of the campaign turned out to be quite an edgy one for the Gunners as they came close to losing their unbeaten run on more than one occasion – probably due to the fact that they were too anxious of getting past the finishing line.

There were moments, especially against Portsmouth and Fulham, when it looked like Arsenal would not be able to achieve the remarkable feat but it was Jose Antonio Reyes who popped up to spare the Gunners’ blushes on both occasions.

The Spaniard’s two goals during the month allowed Arsenal to get past some sticky situations and his contribution was certainly a vital one in helping the Gunners cap off a truly magnificent campaign.