
Wigan Athletic won 1-0 at home to Sheffield Wednesday last night to claim their sixth consecutive win, a run made all the more noteworthy by its inclusion of a win at the Etihad – and the winning streaks didn’t end there.
FA Cup semi-finalists Sheffield United won 1-0 at home to Carlisle United to record a remarkable TENTH straight win in all competitions, so we got thinking on other great winning streaks of recent times.
Premier League
Arsenal hold the Premier League era record with fourteen consecutive triumphs, registered between February and August 2002.
The Gunners also won twelve straight away games between March and October of last year, albeit in all competitions (including a win on penalties against West Bromwich Albion).
That included a run of eight consecutive Premier League away wins, an impressive haul topped by Chelsea’s eleven between April and December 2008.
Manchester City won twenty consecutive Premier League home games from March 2011 to March 2012, just over a whole season’s worth of home games to put it in context.
Manchester United won eleven Premier League games in a row between December and March 2008-09, a sequence ended by that 1-4 defeat at home to Liverpool where Fernando Torres led Nemanja Vidić a merry dance.
The Red Devils went on to win another seven games in a row later that season – so congested was their fixture list by runs in all cups that these were all recorded between April and May.
Liverpool too ended that season like a juggernaut – they won ten of their last eleven, the only blot on their copybook being the 4-4 draw against Arsenal when Andrey Arshavin scored all four of the Gunners’ goals.
Everton have won thirteen consecutive home games against Fulham in the league – that’s every season, including the current one, since the Cottagers were promoted in 2001.
Europe
Bayern Munich won a tenth Champions League match on the spin in November, and they’ve good form in the winning streaks department having won fifteen league games consecutively in both of seasons 2004-05 and 2005-06.
Inter Milan won seventeen in a row during the 2006-07 season, while Dinamo Zagreb won a brain-scrambling 28 in a row during each of the campaigns 2006-07 and 2007-08.
It’s going back a bit further, but Eusebio’s Benfica won 29 on the spin in both the 1971-72 and 1972-73 seasons. Just what is it with teams emulating their own phenomenal winning streaks down to the game and in back-to-back seasons?
SPL
Rangers were recently denied a tenth win in a row by a 3-3 draw at home to Stenhousemuir.
But they’ll have to go some to top Martin O’Neill’s Celtic, who won a scarcely believable 25 consecutive league wins during the 2003-04 season.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Can you think of any other great recent winning streaks that we missed?