From 2021 to 2024, Arsenal made significant progress with each passing season under Mikel Arteta. The Gunners’ former captain has learnt a job on the fly, and after one-and-a-half seasons figuring out the kinks of management, he has become one of the world’s leading coaches.
It’s testament to the work Arteta’s done that not only are Arsenal now consistently fighting for the game’s most coveted prizes, but they are scolded and picked apart when they don’t get their hands on silverware. They have missed out on the Premier League title again and head to Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday looking to save their Champions League campaign. Luis Enrique’s total-football side left the Emirates Stadium last week as 1-0 victors and have the upper hand heading into a second leg back on home soil.
Amid the disingenuous critiques of Arsenal, there are elements of fairer assessment. Though Arteta has essentially built this squad from scratch himself, should they have more than a solitary FA Cup – a team from which there are no longer any surviving starters – to boast about? Where did they take a left turn when they ought to have veered right on the path to glory?
Unless the Gunners pull off a remarkable comeback in the French capital, they will be under intense inspection again for going trophy-less once more. This meeting at Parc des Princes may have wider complications than first realised.
Wayne Rooney was particularly scathing with his criticism of Arsenal and their fans after the first-leg loss to PSG: “For Arsenal, I was a bit disappointed with how they played, [I was] disappointed with the fans as well, I think the fans against Real Madrid were excellent. I thought tonight they were a bit subdued… almost like an anti-climax because Arsenal beat Real Madrid, that they are going to walk into the final [and] win the competition. The fans had to be there for them tonight. The players had to show up for them, of course, but on both sides, it wasn’t good enough tonight for Arsenal
But make no mistake, that demolition of the reigning European champions across two legs was a statement the Gunners sorely needed to make, and will serve them well even if their journey ends at the semi-finals. They have only reached this stage of the Champions League three times, and this season’s trip to the last-four was the first since 2009. Arsenal have been battered and bruised by the continent’s top dogs for well over a decade, while they failed to make the most of their time in the Europa League too.
How Arsenal were thought of in Europe didn’t marry up with how massive they were considered to be domestically. They were the Champions League’s perennial underachievers, with few scalps claimed and only one appearance in a final to show for their efforts. That’s a failing on the club, but one Arteta has started to make right.
Blowing Madrid away 3-0 in the first leg of their quarter-final was as powerful as Declan Rice’s second free-kick. You had to sit up and take notice of Arsenal, even more so when they went to Santiago Bernabeu and maintained their 100 percent winning record there. In the grand scheme of Arteta’s project, that standing as Los Blancos’ slayers matters
The domestic and European campaigns have felt worlds apart for Arsenal. They went into the Premier League season as one of the favourites to end it in first. Off the back of two successive second-place finishes and seemingly having strengthened more in the summer transfer window than reigning champions Manchester City, there were enough reasons to suggest their upward trajectory would land them the title.
Fast-forward to matchday 34 and the Gunners’ dreams of donning a first English crown since 2004 had already been extinguished. Liverpool wrapped up top spot with four games to spare having extended their lead to 15 points. Mitigating circumstances of course, but Arsenal barely made a fight of this supposed battle for the title at any point after the autumn, finding themselves double-figures behind Arne Slot’s Reds for extended periods of the year.
After smashing City 5-1 on what felt like a landmark day to open February, Arsenal went on to win just four of their next 11 Premier League games, with two of those triumphs coming against sides who would end the season relegated with a whimper.
Saturday’s 2-1 defeat at home to Bournemouth, ensuring they have now dropped a joint-club-record 21 points from winning positions in a single season, has left Arteta’s men barely in control of second spot. Only four points separate themselves from Chelsea in fifth, with Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa not too far behind. Arsenal end the season with games against Liverpool, Newcastle and Southampton – there’s no guarantee they finish as runners-up again.
The difference between the Arsenal of this season compared to the other two is they have had to contend with a rotating cast of injuries to key players. Bukayo Saka, most notably, missed 19 games this term due to a hamstring injury which required surgery, while Martin Odegaard’s form has dropped off a cliff and into the abyss since he returned from an ankle sprain.
Meanwhile, the likes of Gabriel Magalhaes, Ben White, Riccardo Calafiori, Jurrien Timber, Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus have all endured lengthy spells on the treatment table, ensuring the team never gathered sustained momentum together, with Arteta instead forced to adopt a next-man-up approach, one which has seen the fast-track of youth prospects Myles Lewis-Skelly and Ethan Nwaneri into the first-team fold.
Whether or not Arteta placing more of a physical burden on his key players led to their injuries is inconclusive, but ultimately he is the one who must take blame for the squad not being in a better state to compete for the three domestic competitions. The board and recruitment team have listened to every request and every demand of his, yet this club in unison still cannot say they have the best team. Not just yet, anyway.
Arsenal have not been the only team to have been struck by such injuries, while they got away pretty freely with such strokes of ill-fortune in their previous two campaigns (barring the William Saliba issue which derailed their 2022-23 charge). The momentum previously built up over the last 18 to 24 months is working in reverse.
Over the weekend, a report from reliable French outlet L’Equipe claimed that Saliba, whose Arsenal contract expires in 2027, has been in talks with Real Madrid ‘for weeks’. Though he has publicly confirmed his desire to remain in north London, such behind-door negotiations are Los Blancos’ bread and butter.
You could perhaps even trace Madrid’s courtship of Saliba back to an October 2024 interview that centre-back Antonio Rudiger gave. “Saliba is, this brother plays clean… You know, he looks like a silent leader,” he said. When pressed on whether Arsenal fans should be scared of Madrid poaching their star defender, the German replied: “I am not scaring anybody but at the end of the day, it’s clear, if he keeps doing what he’s doing.
At this point, Saliba’s future isn’t decided one way or the other, but this is the first time in Arteta’s reign that an important player has been linked with such an exit. Everyone who Arsenal have sold since his appointment in 2019 has been with his blessing. Saliba is already a world-leading defender at 24, and the location of his next contract will dictate where he plays out his prime years. There’s enough reason for the Gunners to be at least a little concerned it won’t be in N5
And so Arsenal’s season boils down to this. They must win away at this formidable PSG team to avoid Champions League elimination, by two goals to advance to the final without having to rely on the lottery of penalties.
Arteta is still shorthanded as is, and his decision not to rest his main men against Bournemouth may well backfire. Luis Enrique, on the other hand, effectively played his entire ‘B’ team in a 2-1 loss at Strasbourg, ensuring his most important players would be fresh for Wednesday’s showdown.
Arsenal having to come out and attack PSG to try and win on the night as well as on aggregate is a conceivable route to the hosts’ own victory. There will be more space for them to attack into, more urgency from the visitors meaning the ball will fly up and down the pitch at breakneck pace. Playing one goal down is not the ideal game-state for this version of the Gunners, whose bluntness in attack this term has been well-documented.
Arsenal are still in the tie and are deserving of their spot in the semis, but they are running out of steam. Arteta’s battle cry to use “a lot of anger, frustration, rage and disappointment” from Saturday’s defeat still reeks of the naive adolescence of both himself as a manager and his team in general.
Football changes so quickly and drastically that all of these coin-flip scenarios could still turn out in Arsenal’s favour. Maybe they will beat PSG and go on to lift their first European Cup. Maybe Saliba will put pen to paper on a long-term contract and not follow the same path trodden by Trent Alexander-Arnold to Madrid. Maybe they will end the season on a high, take that momentum into next year and win the Premier League.
There’s also an exciting summer window to look forward to. It’d be negligent for Arsenal not to add a top-line attacker to their ranks, and if anything they could ideally do with two of them. The money is there to be spent and some exciting targets are on the shortlist, including Alexander Isak, Viktor Gyokeres and Nico Williams.
One day when we’re all able to zoom out and rate Arteta’s tenure as a whole, 2024-25 may be seen as but a brief domestic blip rather than the beginning of the end. But in sport, you never know when your window to win major honours will end, when ascendancy reverses and turns into decline.
The wider footballing world is wondering when Arsenal will make the step to champions, and it’s that sort of doubt that will begin to creep into the dressing room if they fall short again.
