Is this thing … still on? After last week’sstrangely enervated first-leg performanceagainst Paris Saint-Germain at the Emirates Stadium it has been tempting to get a bit ahead of things, to see Arsenal’s season as already a zombie entity, still out there walking around the place, limbs twitching, skinny hands rattling the perimeter fence, not exactly dead, but not too far from undead.
On Monday night, even, Paris police declared Wednesday’s return leg at the Parc des Princes an event “of no particular concern”, as in no great flashpoints, no obvious tension. Just don’t tell Mikel Arteta that. And not just because rumours of the death of Arsenal’s season are widely exaggerated. There is even a nightmare scenario available to the club’s supporters, a product of the deep banter-verse, where Arsenal don’t make the Champions League next season but Tottenham do. All they need to do is keep losing while others win, and while slack, stitched-together Spursbundle through Bodø/Glimtand a beta Manchester United, thereby banking their £100m jackpot while finishing 16th in the league.
If this remains a highly unlikely combination of events, the current semi-final is still very much alive. Even asteamrollering 1-0 defeatis still just a 1-0 defeat. All that is required for Arsenal to reach a Champions League final is victory against a teamthey have already beaten in the group stagethis season, who have their own demons still to conquer, and who are perhaps just a tiny bit too pleased with their own five-month makeover from despot’s vanity project into avatars of humble, diligent systems-ball.
Wednesday night is alive for other reasons, too. There is a fair chanceArsenalwon’t win. PSG have a stronger squad, a more experienced manager and were able to rest 10 players at the weekend for one of their annual late-season practice games in Ligue 1. But given the nature of Arsenal’s season a great deal hangs on this, whatever the outcome. Die a hero’s death in Paris. And if you must lose,lose right.
Trajectory, vibe, goodwill, a sense of progress. This is all key to what happens next. Lose badly, or meekly, without life, andthe falling away in the Premier Leaguewill be examined with an unforgiving eye over the next few weeks. It has still been an impressive season, with a likely second-place finish and a Champions League semi-final, all with 14 fit senior players for most of the year. But Arsenal don’t have trophies to point to. And football remains a furiously literal-minded business.
Already there is talk of a “mentality problem” because mentality is easy to point to as an idea without ever having to define what it actually means. After the first leg against PSG, Wayne Rooney, who is not a psychologist, identified “a fear, psychologically of just not getting over the line”. Clarence Seedorf talked about Arsenal having “a fear of winning” and requiring “a shift in mentality”. Which definitely sounds useful. OK. How do you do it?
It is a seductive line of non-analysis, one that doesn’t really require much more than the ability to point at some results. The argument with Arteta goes like this: left Barcelona before they became a steamrollering force. Played at PSG in the not-very-good era. Won a single Scottish league with Rangers. Turned up at Arsenal for the late-Wenger age of disappointment. Was Pep’s assistant at Manchester City while Pep won things but not the treble. Here is someone who has spent a career standing quite near other people while they win things. This is mentality. Or culture. One of them anyway.
Mentality is of course a real thing, all other elements being equal. But it is also a violent oversimplification. For a start, if life really was just a matter of winners and losers then Rooney would be a good manager rather than arguably the most disaster-prone in English football history.
In reality, elite modern football is decided more than ever before by the cold hard realities of finance, competent hierarchies and weight of talent. Arsenal don’t have a striker. In less than two years PSG have swallowed their own losses on Lionel Messi, Neymar, Kylian Mbappé, Sergio Ramos, Marco Verratti, Julian Draxler, GeorginioWijnaldum, Marco Asensio, Renato Sanches, many on a free or a cancelled contract, just to tidy up the dressing room a bit and free some locker space. They signed one of the best attacking players in the world in January. This is not mentality. It’s nation-state economics.
Meanwhile, for all Arsenal’s eagerly turned notes of progress, a shabby-looking Chelsea team will earn at least as much money this year thanks to theClub World Cup, which they were invited to because theywon a Champions Leagueunder their previous owner, a Kremlin-connected oligarch with dubious financial habits. Try born-winnering that stuff away.
Yet, of course, this is also a simplification, and an excuse. Two things can simultaneously be true. PSG may have no financial jeopardy. But nobody insisted Arsenal spend their budget on yet more robust full-backs, or took a principled stand against the entire notion of footballers who score goals for a living. Sign Jean-Philippe Mateta last summer and they might have turned more games into wins to challenge for the title. This is where mentality does become an issue. Arteta believes in good vibes, magic, energy. This means he must also believe in bad vibes, bad culture and the danger that this team can become defined by their own sense of tactical caution.
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There is an idea out there that Arsenal tie up under pressure. This could also be seen as a basic lack of tactical variation when games are tighter. Arteta likes to talk about bravery and balls and seizing the moment. But he still manages a team who are incredibly mannered; intense but always intense in the same way.
This is good against a teamas broken and disorganised as Real Madrid. Over a season, against defensively well-organised opponents, it becomes a weakness, a self-limiting device.Rage, the word of the week, is good. But how about playfulness, invention, bravery, the ability to invent in the middle of all that?
Can Arteta learn and adapt in the space of a week from the way PSG pinned Arsenal’s full-backs deep in their own half and emptied the midfield, playing with Arsenal’s set way of pressing to create the kind of space that led to the only goal? Arteta is not a gambler, or an advocate of creative freedom. But sometimes this amounts to pragmatism, too. Last season’squarter-final defeat by Bayern Munichboiled down to small details, finding a single late goal, adapting in the moment. This is what is required in Paris, as much as the result even, if only for evidence that this team can still develop and improve.
At some point Arsenal will need to tie their better players to this project and attract others of the same calibre to the promise of forward progress. This season Myles Lewis-Skelly at roving full-back is the only real note of tactical innovation. Arsenal desperately need another mature creative player to take the load off Martin Ødegaard, who has nowhere to hide in poor form or fatigue, and who seems to have folded in some of his more inventive edges to become a forward pressing machine.
The summer window, goodwill from the hierarchy, the faith of supporters will be vital. And win or lose, some signs of life in Paris are key to all of those elements.