Arsenal completed the Champions League league phase without losing a single game. Eight matches, eight wins, 23 goals scored, four conceded, first place in a 36-team table. The most complete league phase performance in the history of the competition by any club, ever. And on Friday morning in Nyon, somebody is going to find out they have been drawn against us in the round of 16. I hope they're ready.
Eight games. Eight wins. No draws. No defeats.
UEFA's own Arsenal reporter Joseph Terry used one word to describe it: perfect. He was right. No team has ever completed a Champions League league phase with a 100% winning record. Not even the likes of Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, or Barcelona. Not any of the great sides that have shaped this competition across seven decades. We scored at least three goals in six of our eight games. We kept clean sheets in the first four. The eight wins are also the longest winning streak in Arsenal's entire European history, surpassing the six-match winning run from our 2005/06 campaign when we reached the final. We set the standard this season. That is what this club is built to do.
Who we beat along the way
Consider the opposition we faced and dispatched. Athletic Club, 2-0 away on the opening night in Bilbao. Olympiacos, 2-0 at home. Atletico Madrid, 4-0 at the Emirates. Slavia Praha, 3-0 away. Bayern Munich, Bundesliga champions, 3-1 at the Emirates. Club Brugge, 3-0 away. Inter Milan, 3-1 away at the San Siro. Kairat, 3-2 at home on the final matchday. We did not just win these games. We won them with a ruthlessness and a clarity that the supposedly elite clubs of Europe have spent fortunes trying to manufacture. In beating Athletic Club and Atletico Madrid alone we became the first team in European Cup and Champions League history to win seven consecutive matches against Spanish clubs. We did not just win these games. We won them with a ruthlessness and a clarity that the supposedly elite clubs of Europe have spent fortunes trying to manufacture.
Watch the draw coverage on Friday and see how the cameras linger on Bayern and Madrid and Barcelona. Watch how the narrative instinctively frames everyone else as the dangerous side. It is the same reflex that spent three years calling us nearly men while we were simultaneously building the most complete squad in England.
Who we could face
The picture is becoming clear. Bayer Leverkusen are already confirmed in the round of 16. Borussia Dortmund, carrying a 2-0 first leg lead into tonight's second leg away at Atalanta in Bergamo, are heavy favourites to join them. One of those two clubs will find Arsenal's name next to theirs when the draw is made on Friday morning at 11am GMT.
I will be direct about both. Leverkusen finished 16th in the league phase with three defeats, and their route to the knockout rounds came via Olympiacos, a side that finished 17th. Dortmund finished 18th with three defeats of their own. If Atalanta somehow overturn that 2-0 deficit in Bergamo tonight, I would say the same about them. They finished 15th. None of these clubs frighten me, and none of them should frighten you.
What finishing first actually earns us
This matters beyond psychology. As one of the top two seeds alongside Bayern Munich, Arsenal's seeding carries through to the semi-finals. That means home second legs in the round of 16, the quarter-finals, and if we get there, the semi-finals too. The structure of this competition rewards the best team in it. The final is on 30 May at the Puskas Arena in Budapest. Last season we reached the semi-finals before losing to eventual champions PSG. This season the squad is deeper, the experience is greater, and the record going into the knockouts is literally unprecedented. So on Friday morning, when our name comes out of that bowl in Nyon, spare a thought for whoever ends up drawn against us.
They will need it.