2001-02 in English football

The 2001–02 season was the 122nd season of competitive football in England.

In what had earlier been one of the most closely fought Premiership title races for years, Arsenal won the championship by a seven-point margin. Their crown was won in the penultimate game of the season when they beat defending champions Manchester United 1–0 at Old Trafford. Four days earlier, they had also won the FA Cup with a 2–0 victory over Chelsea at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff.

Their top scorer, Thierry Henry, was on target 24 times in the league alone.

One downside to the season was Arsenal's failure to progress to the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League.

Sir Alex Ferguson announced in February that he would be postponing his retirement as Manchester United manager by at least three more seasons after he signed a new contract as manager. The news came just after United completed an impressive revival in the Premiership which saw them rise from ninth to first in the space of two months.

On 8 December, United stood ninth in the Premiership – 11 points behind Liverpool, who had a game in hand – and had lost five of their seven previous games in the aftermath of a 1–0 defeat at home to West Ham United. Even a UEFA Cup place appeared beyond reach. An eight-match winning run, however, saw United cruise to the top of the Premiership and they were soon challenging a three-horse race with Liverpool and Arsenal. They remained in the title race until the penultimate game of the season, when they lost 1–0 at home to Arsenal and surrendered the title crown to their opponents.

United's failure was largely put down to the inability to find a suitable replacement for Jaap Stam, the Dutch central defender who had been sold to Lazio for £16.25 million just after the start of the season. Another disappointment was the failure of Juan Sebastián Verón, at £28.1 million the most expensive player ever to sign for an English club, to never live up to his hefty price tag. On a positive note, Dutch striker Ruud van Nistelrooy lived up to his £19 million price tag by scoring 34 goals in all competitions during his first season at Old Trafford, breaking the club record that had been set by Dennis Viollet 40 seasons earlier.

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