Tales of the perfect club

14 April 2012

The Gunners are on the verge of winning a place in an elite band to have stayed undefeated in a season. Ian Chadband reports on the teams who dominated their sport.

When Sir Bobby Robson pondered the prospect of Arsenal going through a season without losing a game, he reckoned it might just be the monument which would define the 2004 champions as the best side in the history of the domestic game.

Why? Well, look at the barriers that stood in the way of this 'perfect' season. "The pressure, the tension, the competitiveness and the sheer pace of the game today," mused Robson. "What they have done in the face of all this has been quite fantastic."

Quite right. The demands of sport today militate against such unblemished campaigns of excellence. It's why Arsene Wenger senses that, with his side already champions, it would be almost criminal to let the focus slip for just four remaining games.

Because if they make it 38 Premiership matches without a loss, he recognises that a form of immortality beckons. He fancies it could be a feat which won't be replicated in his lifetime. It is such a rare occurrence that only two teams have achieved it in modern annals of Europe's major football leagues.

One was the Ajax team of 1995, featuring a young Kanu, which went through the Dutch League season unbeaten and won the Champions League that year. Altogether, that side went 52 league games without losing.

The other was AC Milan in 1991-92 who won 22 and drew 12 of their Serie A games that season during a record-breaking unbeaten streak which lasted 58 matches.

That triumph only served to underline the greatness which had been conferred a couple of years earlier with back-to-back European Cup triumphs. That, of course, is the sort of European masterpiece which now has to be demanded from Arsenal in coming years if they are to be considered in the same breath.

In the British game, though, their season already stands alone. You have to wade back into footballing pre-history to find an equivalent when Preston North End's "Invincibles" won 18 and drew four of their 22 league games in 1889 to win the title as early as 4 January! They also became the first to do the Double, beating Wolves 3-0 in the FA Cup Final.

A decade later, Rangers went through a Scottish League campaign with the only 100 per cent record in British football - 18 wins in 18 matches.

Forget the sepia age, though. Not just in football but in all professional British team sports, there has barely been a campaign to compare in recent times.

In cricket, there have been plenty of examples of counties who have enjoyed unbeaten Championship seasons, the last being Surrey in 1999.

Yet even in 1994 when Warwickshire imported Brian Lara and won the Championship, the B&H and the Sunday League they did actually lose one Championship match.

In both rugby league and union, the demands of unforgiving league programmes have ensured none of the dominant English clubs has ever negotiated a season without at least one defeat. Not Wigan in their league pomp nor Bath or Leicester in their union heyday.

So a special mention to Worcester's rugby union men who this weekend completed their National League One programme with a 26th win in 26 matches en route to life in the Zurich Premiership. Okay, so it wasn't achieved at the very highest level but the league campaigns are so attritional now it remains a startling achievement.

Only in America's OTT sporting arena do they take the concept of the perfect season and enshrine it. Every few years, the veterans of the 1972 Miami Dolphins, who remain the only football team ever to win the Super Bowl without losing a match, meet up to celebrate the demise of another team's bid to emulate their perfect 17-win record under the great coach Don Shula.

When the Kansas City Chiefs' bid to equal the record foundered last November, the Dolphins' Hall of Fame linebacker Nick Buoniconti boomed: "It's the greatest single team record in the history of sports and remains the most difficult one to equal."

Well, the Americans would say that, wouldn't they? In truth, in the age of free agency and the salary cap, it will take some beating.

In baseball, a national debate began in the States in 1998 over whether that year's World Series-winning campaign by the New York Yankees was the best ever.

This team without any real superstars were saluted for winning 114 games but a nation could not be easily persuaded that they topped the 1927 Yankees, who won 110 matches and boasted the legendary " Murderers' Row" batting line-up featuring Babe Ruth, who smashed 60 homers, and Lou Gehrig. Myths and nostalgia, one suspects, won the day.

Just as in baseball, the coast-tocoast travelling and demanding schedule of pro basketball means no team will ever go unbeaten but Michael Jordan and his 1996 Chicago Bulls were probably the nearest thing to NBA perfection, recording the highest ever season's winning strike rate of 87 per cent in their 82 regular-season games.

Should Arsenal complete their season in the sun without a league reverse, the next target early next season would be Nottingham Forest's 26-year-old landmark of 42 top-flight league games unbeaten.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though. Thanks to the fine anorakclad folk of the Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation, we can safely assume Arsenal cannot match the 108-game unbeaten league streak - 96 wins and 12 draws - between 1989 and 1994 of the Philippe Troussiermanaged ASEC Abidjan. Don't tell Kolo Toure that the Ivory Coast Championship doesn't quite compare!

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Tales of the perfect club

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