Welcome to the Arsenal Advent Calendar: The Invincibles edition.

Every day in the build-up to Christmas, The Athletic will bring subscribers content to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Arsenal’s unbeaten season in 2003-04. It could be a short story, a long interview, or a segment of audio. It might be published early or late in the day. Whatever it is, there will be a little something, a reminder, or a new take on an event during that campaign.

If you miss a day or want to gorge on it all at once, like the small chocolates in your own advent calendars, we won’t judge. Simply step this way to find all the pieces in one place. Enjoy! 

Former Liverpool striker Daniel Sturridge recently made his debut on UK broadcaster Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football show alongside his former Anfield team-mate Jamie Carragher. After they’d caught their breath following Chelsea’s thrilling 4-1 win against Tottenham Hotspur that was the programme’s main course, their attention turned to the Premier League’s best strike partnerships.

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Their focus, first and foremost, was on Sturridge’s relationship with Luis Suarez for Liverpool in 2013-14, which was so successful they finished first and second on the Premier League goalscoring chart that season. Other duos mentioned included Alan Shearer and Chris Sutton during Blackburn Rovers’ title victory in 1994-95 and, of course, any discussion of Premier League history must mention the Invincibles, so they also talked about Arsenal pair Dennis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry.

But is that latter partnership rightly part of this debate?

Let’s get some things out of the way.

Bergkamp and Henry were obviously both world-class footballers, both finishing second in the Ballon d’Or voting during their peak years. They were, at different points, clearly the best footballer in the Premier League, and notably selfless forwards too.

Together, they contributed to some of the best attacking English football has ever seen, not simply in the Invincibles season. But perhaps an idea has emerged that Arsenal’s attacking play was about Bergkamp receiving the ball between the lines and curling a ball in-behind for Henry, who’d be cutting in from the left before finishing. If you try to recall a goal which fits that description however, it’s surprisingly difficult.

Let’s look at the numbers.

In total, Bergkamp assisted Henry on 11 Premier League goals, which is less than half of the record figure in the Premier League years (24: Harry Kane for Son Heung-min, and Frank Lampard for Didier Drogba). Henry returned the favour seven times, for a total of 18 goal combinations, which is a decent figure, but probably less than you’d expect considering some Premier League partnerships have reached the 40s.

But the more pertinent fact is that, in statistical terms, Henry’s partnership with Bergkamp was only his third-most prolific combination in this Invincibles side.

If Henry had a reliable partnership with anyone, it was Robert Pires. Henry’s unusual positioning out on the left meant he was generally closer to Pires than his strike partner. Pires teed up Henry for 17 Premier League goals, and Henry assisted Pires 12 times.

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Henry also worked brilliantly with Freddie Ljungberg, who was generally driving inside from the right. Their relationship was interesting: Ljungberg was the winger, Henry the centre-forward. But Ljungberg was primarily a goalscorer, while Henry was surely the most creative striker the Premier League has seen. So the pattern here is the opposite of what you’d expect on paper: Henry assisted Ljungberg for 15 goals (including three in a single game away at Sunderland on the final day of 2002-03) and Ljungberg racked up nine assists for Henry.

So Arsenal’s most prolific combinations among this legendary quartet were Pires assisting Henry (17 goals), Henry assisting Ljungberg (15), Henry assisting Pires (12), and then comes Bergkamp assisting Henry (11). That’s not to suggest they didn’t work well together, but if you’re looking for a truly great partnership, the numbers suggest it was elsewhere in this Arsenal side.

Watching the videos of their 18 goal combinations, four of them represent the kind of goal you’d expect to see: a Bergkamp through ball and a Henry finish. They came against Ipswich in 2000-01, Birmingham and Sunderland in 2002-03 (the latter in the game where Henry assisted Ljungberg’s hat-trick) and Southampton in 2004-05. None of them feel particularly famous.

There’s more variety in the goals than you might expect — a surprising number of crosses, a few cutbacks and a Henry goal against Aston Villa in which Bergkamp’s ‘assist’ is really a tackle.

The most memorable ones involve Henry assisting Bergkamp: for a breakaway goal at Birmingham, when the Dutchman demonstrated a surprising level of speed to run in behind, and for a powerful finish in the famous 4-2 defeat to Manchester United, most notable for Roy Keane and Patrick Vieira’s pre-match bust-up.

If anything, Bergkamp’s best strike partner in an Arsenal shirt was Henry’s predecessor, Nicolas Anelka. “He was probably the best I’ve had at Highbury in terms of understanding,” Bergkamp said after his retirement. “The way Nicolas played suited me perfectly, because he was always looking to run forward on goal. That made it easy for me to predict what he wanted, and to know instinctively where he would be. The directness was just right.

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“Thierry tends to want the ball to come to him, or drift towards the flanks more. Nicolas was focused on heading for goal and scoring; he loved having the ball played for him to run onto.”

Of course, Anelka’s relatively brief stint at Arsenal means the numbers don’t fully represent how good their relationship was in their short time together.

Bergkamp was not the only revered No 10 to suggest that Henry, for all his brilliance, was sometimes difficult to assist.

“Maybe Henry simply doesn’t need me,” said Zinedine Zidane when asked why those two rarely combined. Zidane only ever assisted Henry twice for France, once from a set piece and once when the striker received a simple pass on the halfway line, before doing the rest himself. “He brings the ball up from very far back… it’s easier to work in one-twos than to provide him with an assist.”

That’s why Henry worked so well with Pires, who was a pure creator and not necessarily a deliverer of brilliant crosses or magical through balls but was excellent at playing clever, neat little passes into Henry.

The Invincibles, while depicted as a 4-4-2 team at the time, were basically a 4-2-3-1 that played with great fluidity and imagination, and were about improvisation rather than pre-determined patterns. They didn’t make sides like that beforehand, and they didn’t make them very often afterwards either.

If Bergkamp and Henry don’t truly belong in the conversation with other great partnerships, that should be taken as a compliment to the Invincibles. They were more unpredictable than Shearer and Sutton’s Blackburn, more cohesive than Suarez and Sturridge’s Liverpool, more elegant than Lampard and Drogba’s Chelsea, and more successful than Kane and Son’s Spurs.

They were two legendary players in a legendary team, but theirs wasn’t really a legendary strike partnership.

(Top photo: Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)