Famously, the 2003-04 version of Arsenal played 38 Premier League games and didn’t lose a single one. I wrote about why this season’s Arsenal, who’ve already lost four times, might be even better than them:

The idea that a team with a forward line that includes Gabriel Jesus and Kai Havertz could be better than the one with Henry and Pires and Dennis Bergkamp just does not compute. And they do still need a signature Champions League performance to really mark their arrival at the upper-most echelon of the sport. But the Invincibles themselves were knocked out in the Champions League quarters by a significantly worse team than Arsenal's current opponents. Plus, no one in the Premier League at the time was at the level of Liverpool or Manchester City, while the teams throughout the rest of the league weren't able to attract the same level of player and managerial talent that they are now, either.

At a certain point, the numbers and the performances and the context just don't lie. Bukayo Saka, Martin Odegaard, Declan Rice, William Saliba: these guys are really that good.

Been slacking on sending out other links recently, so here’s a compendium of recent work:

-Who are the eight most important players in the Champions League quarterfinals?
-Who is the best team in the Premier League? Who is the worst? And who is everyone in between? Our latest Premier League power rankings are out.
-Did Liverpool and Arsenal catch Manchester City over the course of a single summer?

Enjoy your weekends, all.