Fleetwood Town reached the quarter-finals of the EFL Cup for the first time on Tuesday, knocking out Arsenal on penalties in front of their own supporters.
Eighty-three league places separated the two clubs. Fleetwood sit 18th in League Two; Arsenal are the reigning Premier League champions.
Aaron Loupalo-Bi put the hosts ahead after 21 minutes. Viktor Gyokeres levelled for Arsenal after the break, and from there the visitors might have been expected to take charge.
Instead Fleetwood remained resolute, helped by a wasteful Arsenal performance that included Max Dowman being sent off for kicking out after a robust challenge from Harrison Neal.
The tie went to a shootout, and Conor Haughey struck the decisive spot kick, after which supporters spilled on to the pitch.
Fleetwood have won once in their past eight league games. The club won six promotions in 12 years on its way up from non-league football, and has been in the English Football League since 2012.
"The biggest night in the club's history in terms of opposition coming to town and we've managed to beat the champions," the Fleetwood boss, Matt Lawlor, told Sky Sports. Lawlor had two caretaker spells in charge before being appointed permanently in March.
Left-back Jake Batty told BBC Radio 5 Live: "Our league form's not being as good as what we'd want it to be and for some reason cup competitions everyone gets a bit of a fire in their belly. We just came up with some magical moments and obviously that's one to tell the grandkids, isn't it?"
Batty said the club wanted to carry the atmosphere into the league. "We're not known as a big club in League Two. We get a few thousand fans each game," he said, asking why the club could not "replicate that and get 5,000 fans behind us every game". On the quarter-final, he added: "I don't think we should be scared of any team."
There is a symmetry in the records. On 20 April 2024, Fleetwood's relegation from League One was confirmed. The same day, Arsenal beat Wolves 2-0 at Molineux to go top of the Premier League. They finished that season second and won the title two years later.
The 83 places are worth examining, because they are a genuine measurement and they measure something that was not present on Tuesday night.
League position is produced by a league. It is the output of a table in which two clubs appear only if they play each other, and Fleetwood's table does not contain Arsenal, has never contained Arsenal, and cannot be made to contain Arsenal by anything that happens in a cup.
The EFL Cup does not import league position. It imports eleven players and a referee. For the length of the tie the gap was therefore not 83 places but zero places, and it remained zero for ninety minutes and a shootout.
It reopened at the final whistle. Fleetwood are 18th in League Two this morning, having beaten the champions of England last night, and no table in the country is equipped to record both of those facts at once.
The Department of Unnecessary Research therefore logs the gap as unchanged at 83 places. It has merely been shown, under match conditions, to be unenforceable.