The run of 49, though, had its origins in the tail end of that campaign.

Robert Pires and Jermaine Pennant both scored hat-tricks as Arsenal swept aside Southampton 6-1 at Highbury, before closing the season with a 4-0 win at Sunderland, thanks to another hat-trick, this time from Freddie Ljungberg.

If nothing else, the games were a reminder of the immense quality Arsenal had.

By now, you could probably name the Invincibles team off by heart.

Jens Lehmann, Sol Campbell, Kolo Toure, Lauren, Ashley Cole, Patrick Vieira, Gilberto Silva, Freddie Ljungberg, Robert Pires, Dennis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry, lined-up in a 4-4-1-1 formation. Tellingly, only Jens Lehmann was a new addition going into the 2003/04 season.

In typical Wenger fashion, Arsenal’s response to losing out on the title wasn’t to go out in the summer and spend millions on reinforcements, but to rely on what he already had at his disposal getting even better.

The season began with four straight wins over Everton, Middlesbrough, Aston Villa and Manchester City. There was a stumble at home to Portsmouth, as they held Arsenal to a 1-1 draw, before the first big test: a trip to the champions, Manchester United.

That game turned out to be one of the most infamous in Premier League history.

The “Battle of Old Trafford”, as it became to be known, saw two teams who genuinely hated each other spend most of the game fouling one another (overall, 31 fouls were committed by both teams) before setting off a mass brawl after the final whistle.

The flash point was the antics of United striker Ruud van Nistelrooy, who managed to get Patrick Vieira sent off by provoking him into a second yellow card. Hence, when the Dutchman stepped up and missed a late penalty that would have killed another tilt at an unbeaten run in its infancy, the Arsenal players wasted little time in confronting him.

In the aftermath, Arsenal were fined £175,000, and several players were banned. Lauren was suspended for four games, Martin Keown got three games while Vieira and Ray Parlour got one each. Arsenal though, were still unbeaten.

Having escaped Old Trafford with a point, and with several players suspended, Arsenal rallied to win their next three games against Newcastle, Liverpool and Chelsea. A draw at Charlton followed, before three more wins against Leeds, Tottenham, and Birmingham.

By this point, Arsenal had played most of the would-be title contenders and teams most likely to finish in the European spaces, yet still hadn’t lost. But the unbeaten run at this stage was still only 15 games long.

By January, Arsenal were still unbeaten and ominously for the rest of the league, it was this point that the team entered its best spell of form.

Between January 10th and March 20th, Arsenal won nine straight league games. An unbeaten season wasn’t the only possibility, as an unprecedented treble was also on the cards.

Regrettably, that prospect came crashing down in the space of a week.

Arsenal were eliminated from the FA Cup by Manchester United before, days later, Chelsea upset them in the Champions League quarter-final. Having taken two significant blows, Arsenal were wobbling on their feet going into the game against Liverpool at Highbury.

It was this game against Liverpool that gave everyone at Arsenal the belief that the unbeaten season was possible.

Sami Hypia gave the visitors the lead after just five minutes, and Henry’s equaliser was cancelled out by a Michael Owen goal before half-time. The team pulled themselves together during the break, and produced a second-half comeback that would generate enough momentum to carry them through to the end of the season.

Pires equalised four minutes into the second half. Henry then embarked on a solo run through the heart of the Liverpool defence and gave Arsenal the lead. He then completed his hat-trick in the 78th minute.

Doubts about Arsenal’s character were well and truly quashed.

A week later, the Premier League title was within sight.

Leeds visited Highbury and were blitzed by a rampant Henry, who scored four goals in what many consider to be his best performance in an Arsenal shirt. The team just needed one more point to secure the title with four games to spare, and the venue couldn’t have been more perfect.

Arsenal had won the league at White Hart Lane before, way back in 1971. Still, nothing will dilute the pleasure of winning the league in your rival’s backyard.

Goals from Patrick Vieira and Robert Pires, scored in typically sweeping Arsenal style, gave us an early two-goal lead. Spurs came back in the second half with goals from Jamie Redknapp and Robbie Keane to level the game at 2-2, but it didn’t matter. Arsenal were champions again.

Henry didn’t score that day, but he did have an amusing anecdote to share.

“We had orders from the police not to over celebrate if we win the title there (White Hart Lane),” he told Sky Sports.

“In all fairness, everyone said ‘okay we understand,’ because it might goo too far. So you know the story, we went 2-0 up. Then they came back and Jens Lehmann did what Jens Lehmann did sometimes, but then they came back into the game and drew the game 2-2.

“They started to celebrate like they had won the league, so then I said ‘hang on a minute wait,’ they didn’t actually realise that we just needed a point to be champions. I don’t understand.

“So, then I said to Ashley Cole ‘when the referee blows the whistle, now we’re going to celebrate, because we wanted to be humble about it at the beginning of the game, but you’re going to celebrate a draw, really, at your place when we need a point to win the league.”

With the league title done and dusted, it would have been easy for the squad to switch off and coast through the final four games of the season. In fact, they very nearly did precisely that.

The following game at home to Birmingham was a drab 0-0 before the record came under significant threat at Fratton Park against Portsmouth. With Arsenal trailing, they had to rely on young January signing, Jose Antonio Reyes, to get back into the game. Reyes’ arrival at the club proved significant, as he went on to score the winner against Fulham in the penultimate game of the season.

There was just one game to go…