Invincibles? I hate doing this but....

ancoats said:
The Premier League, VAR and match officials will stop that from happening

Anfield, Old Trafford, Emirates, Spurs Stadium, We would have to play at our very best 100% Perfect, even then you know something would be handed to them teams to help them.

It's the only thing left to achieve and prove we are the best ever
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I always love these posts. The PL can’t stop us winning 6 titles in 7 years, can’t stop us going on 20, 30 match winning runs, can’t make us lose a home game in 2 years, can’t stop us winning a treble or being the first English club in history to win all 4 domestic comps, but this is where you think they’ll draw the line.
 
gordondaviesmoustache said:
‘The Invincibles’ was a truly remarkable achievement but it was a freak, and once the finish line was in sight not losing became more important to Arsenal than winning, which is a complete anathema to Pep.

The fact it has only happened twice in 140 years is telling. All teams have off days, just as all teams in the PL are capable of raising their game on occasion. That, happenstance and poor refereeing mean it’s so unlikely over 38 games at this level it’s not worth wasting emotional energy on. At least not until the clocks go forward.
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I really don’t think PNE deserves to even be in this conversation - if league seasons were still 22 games long with 7+ days between each match (including cup games) we’d have had a dozen invincible teams by now at least.

The achievement is just not comparable to remaining unbeaten in a 38 game season with 25 cup games midweek at the same time.

It’s still noteworthy for its time, and they were the only ones to do it, but it’s not worth bringing into a debate about a club doing the feat in 2003 or 2025.
 
hello said:
Totally correct pep would never send a team out to draw. A great achievement but some of those arsenal performances were shite playing against relegation fodder for a point.
Only way we could replicate it would be shattering the centurions record of either getting 114 points or very close to with a couple of unlucky draws at the likes of Anfield or those tag twats & probably so unexpected 1-1’s at the Everton’s or wolves where we have 20+ shots score once & their only shot sails in ;)
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This is exactly how a City Invincible season would come around, you're spot on. People saying we can never do it because we don't play for a draw are missing the point... the Centurions season was two games off of Invincible. If we ever do it, we'll do it on somewhere around 102 - 106 points.

That's not to say I think it's likely, it's more likely not to happen, but it's not impossible, and not playing for draws doesn't actually harm our chances, for us it helps them... *if* we are on top of our game as we were in 2017-18. I agree with OP that we have one of the strongest squads we've had, at the very least on paper, with the additions we've made so far. The other contenders being the Centurions, and then the UCL Winners.

If we manage to bring in a backup option for Haaland before the deadline that seals it as strongest, again that's on paper. It's also worth noting that we seem to be closer to the style of play of the 2017-18 season now than we have been in more recent years. Could be an omen, could not.

I'd love it if we did it, no doubt we all would. We can still have a great season without it though.
 
overrated narrative/marketing...a team with 36W/2D has one point less than a team with 37W/1L
 
BigJoe#1 said:
I have to say that in my opinion, this seems to me to be the best squad we have ever had.

I am willing to predict that we will come very close to going the whole season unbeaten. Our strength is phenomenal and Pep really does seem to be on top of his game.

I know its by no means a certainty but looking at the strength of our squad and the that of the opposition I just cannot see anyone getting close to us. The likelihood of us getting overturned will be by a lower struggling team as opposed to any of the big guns.

I hope I haven't jinxed us but we really do have strength all over the place, brilliant cover and a fantastic group of youngsters eager to get involved.

Most importantly what we have which I think will deliver for us is.... a settled squad that is regularly and comfortably rotated.
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are you from arsenal fan tv?
 
Interesting reading a little bit about Preston’s ‘Invincibles’ The nickname was actually first given to them years before they even entered the Football League. Never mind won it.

Not as compliment but almost as suggestion that they were cheating or disrespecting the game by paying the players a wage. While most other teams were still fully amateur.
 
Stephen230 said:
Interesting reading a little bit about Preston’s ‘Invincibles’ The nickname was actually first given to them years before they even entered the Football League. Never mind won it.

Not as compliment but almost as suggestion that they were cheating or disrespecting the game by paying the players a wage. While most other teams were still fully amateur.
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Yes that’s correct, the sentiment was more “of course they’re ‘invincible’ - their full time job is winning football matches.”
 
Stephen230 said:
For me three things would need to happen to even have a decent run at it.

Firstly and most obviously you’d have to get to New Year unbeaten. Don’t think we’ve ever come close to that have we?

Then you’d have to get dumped out of the cups early. Particularly the Champions League. That’s probably increasingly unlikely under the new seedings system.

Finally, you need someone to stick with you for the vast majority of the season. That happened with Arsenal because of all their draws. But in the 100 point season, even though we weren’t unbeaten, the title race was as good as over by about February.
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Unbeaten up until the Liverpool match in 17/18.
 
To be fair, as long as Rodri can stay injury free we stand a chance. Can’t rely on the standard are officiating not screwing us at least once though
 
Will be harder to remain unbeaten these days as the standard of PL clubs outside the top 3 has improved dramatically. Most clubs can beat any other club on their day and even relegation threatened sides are packed full of international players. City could lose to Arsenal/Liverpool but could also feasibly lose to Palace. The Arsenal Invincibles were never going to lose to the Palaces of the day, their jeopardy was trips to the Rags, Liverpool etc.
 
I’d rather lose one or two and get, say, 95 points, than go unbeaten but only get 90 points. The 95 points is a better achievement than 90 even if 90 came as unbeaten.

A few season back when Liverpool hadn’t lost a game for ages, I said that I’d love for them to go unbeaten all season but us still win the title having lost a couple of games.

Imagine if we went unbeaten this season but Arsenal won the league because they got more points. It wouldn’t be anything to celebrate at all for us.

I don’t think football should ever be viewed as being about not losing. I think it should always be about goals, wins and points.
 
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It's a uniquely difficult thing to do. Every team has a wobble from time to time and that can lead to a loss. In league, you can get over it (and win the league) by doing well in the other games. Even in the Champions League, the group stage and two-legged nature of the knockouts gives you a chance to recover from a loss (only the final is 'do or die').

To go a season unbeaten leaves no real margin for error over 38 games. The FA cup and league cup are single legged knockouts, of course but the number of games required to win is far far lower (maybe 6 for the FA cup and teams go on a 6-game winning streak quite frequently).

Now, Arsenal famously did it whilst drawing loads of games so there was obviously a huge dose of luck in that as well as any one of those could easily have become a loss just with an unlucky bounce of the ball or deflection. Hence, whilst obviously possible to repeat it, it's probably unlikely.
 
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