21 May 2017: Arsenal ended the league season with a 3-1 win over Everton to make it seven wins in the last eight league games – but it was not enough to retain their record of the second-longest-ever run in the Champions League.
Real Madrid hold the record number of consecutive participations in the UEFA Champions League with 21 from 1997–98 to 2017–18. Arsenal (from 1998–99 to 2016–17) participated in 19 consecutive campaigns – more than any other English club, and indeed second only to Real Madrid.
Arsenal in fact finished 2016/17 in fifth place and that meant entry into the Europa League, although the league season’s end was not quite the end of the affair, for in 2017, Arsenal had one more match however – the Cup Final against Chelsea.
Arsenal won that game 2-1 which confirmed Arsenal as the most successful FA Cup team ever (13 wins), while Arsene Wenger became the most successful manager in the tournament’s history with seven wins. Wenger’s achievement was particularly memorable because he overtook the record of George Ramsay. Ramsay won his first three FA Cup finals in the 19th century, at a time when the number of teams entering the competition was much smaller than today, and Aston Villa became known as the dominant force in the FA Cup.