Arsenal eye 123-year record with win at Brighton

Arsenal can equal a 123-year-old club record if they beat Brighton & Hove Albion on Saturday, extending their winning start to the 2026/27 season to eight matches.

Mikel Arteta's side have won all seven of their competitive fixtures so far, claiming four Premier League wins, the Community Shield, a Champions League victory over Napoli and a Carabao Cup win at Ipswich Town. The run began with a 3-0 defeat of Manchester City in Cardiff.

A victory at the Amex Stadium would match the best-ever winning start to a season in Arsenal's history, set in 1903/04 when Woolwich Arsenal — then in the Second Division — won their opening eight matches. That sequence included 8-0 victories over Burton United and Leicester Fosse and a 4-0 win against Manchester United.

Arsenal have already equalled their second-best start, matching the seven-match winning run posted by the Invincibles at the beginning of the 2004/05 campaign before a 2-2 draw with Bolton Wanderers in game eight ended that streak.

Arteta is the only Arsenal manager to have overseen two separate five-game winning starts to a Premier League season, having also opened the 2022/23 campaign with a 100% record.

Factoring in five successive league wins that delivered last season's title, Arsenal arrive on the south coast carrying a nine-game Premier League winning run — their longest such stretch since March 2004, when Arsène Wenger's side also reached nine consecutive top-flight victories.

Arsenal have reached double figures in league winning runs on three occasions: 10 First Division wins in a row under George Graham from November 1987, 10 successive league victories between March and May 1998 as Wenger claimed his first English title, and a club-record 14 straight league wins spanning the end of the 2001/02 double-winning season and the opening weeks of 2002/03.