5 of Arsenal's best transfer windows of all-time

#1 Summer 1997

Wenger brought in relative unknowns like Emmanuel Petit and won the double

Even twenty years on, Arsene Wenger’s greatest achievement remains, perhaps, the double win in 1997/98. Sure, the Invincibles season was an incredible one, and is a feat that may never be matched again, but to overhaul a seemingly unbeatable Manchester United team in 1998 – just one season before they achieved the Treble – with a team of largely unknown players – was a massive achievement that’s somewhat unfairly forgotten today.

Sure, Marc Overmars was a big name at the time – he’d won the Champions League in 1994/95 with Ajax and had already starred in international football for the Netherlands, but practically nobody had heard of Emmanuel Petit, brought in from Monaco for £3.5 million, nor Christopher Wreh, Alexander Manninger, Gilles Grimandi or Luis Boa Morte – all of whom starred alongside existing Wenger signings Patrick Vieira and Nicolas Anelka, particularly as the season came to an exciting conclusion.

It was Manninger, Wreh and Anelka who stepped into the shoes of star players such as David Seaman and Ian Wright when they picked up late-season injuries, and it was Petit’s formidable midfield partnership with Vieira that largely drove the Gunners to both their title win and their FA Cup win too.

It was the first sign we had of Wenger being a mastermind and the first time that Sir Alex Ferguson had really been faced with a genuine rival in the Premier League era. All for just under £17 million.