For the third time this season, Arsenal must start again. If that seems dramatic, well, how long have you got?
Their Champions League dreams are all-but dashed with the kind of gut-wrenching defeat not even the Greeks could write. It was not that Olympiacos “won” 0-1 in normal time, but that they also found themselves on the right end of the finish.
Extra-time audacity and atrociousness, both from the right boot of Pierre-Emerick Aubemayang, sandwiched Youssef El Arabi’s goal on 120 minutes that settled the tie on away goals. This is the first time of 18 that Arsenal have not progressed from a European tie after winning the first leg.
Qualification for Europe’s premier competition now rests solely on an upturn in the league that would require something special from Arsenal in ninth and something equally dire from those ahead. Even if Manchester City’s European ban is upheld, there are still four points and three other teams to make up on fifth-placed Manchester United.
As ever with Arsenal, talk of the balance sheet is never far away. At the end of 2019 the club announced a pre-tax loss of £23.5million for the year to 31 May up against a profit of £97.4m for the 12 months earlier. Among a handful of reasons for the drop was operating outside of the Champions League.
But the Europa League was not just a route back to the top table. It also represented exactly what Arsenal’s players needed right now. A competition to seize in a season where there has been little to hold dear. When Mikel Arteta says, “we had a lot of hope in this competition”, it goes beyond a European backdoor.
Privately, those at Manchester United talk of the 2017 Europa League win and the positive effects it had in glowing terms.
For the most part of the campaign, it was viewed as a dirty secret and a bit of a nuisance. The “Thursday night” element a constant stick to beat a club whose ego was already severely bruised.
But once deep into the competition as the big nights under lights at Old Trafford, followed by the glory of walking into a showpiece final and walking out with a trophy and medals to show for it did wonders for perpetuating the sense that United were a consistent silverware-winning behemoth. Perhaps not to those outside the club’s pull, but certainly to those within. You could argue that effect has not been profound, but it certainly has helped club and even Ole Gunnar Solskjaer keep their heads above water.
Instead, Arteta will now have to find new ways to lift his charges. In the long term, it is to convince them the league is not a busted flush. Immediately, it is to get them over the most horrendous of results in a season littered with many. Having spent much of his two months in charge reminding his players of how good they can be, these 120 minutes could undo it all.
“I just want to concentrate now on lifting those players,” said a pained Arteta. “Getting back their belief. Convince them that there’s still a lot to play and move on. It’s part of this sport, a big disappointment can happen, and it happened tonight and we have to react as a team and as a club.”
Arteta’s prescribed remedy to this bitter episode is to experience it again. As much as he believes his squad – and, perhaps, his strongest XI, certainly in an attacking sense – did a lot right, closure will come in analysing what they did wrong, to the finest of detail.
That comes, in part, from his time with Pep Guardiola who is an advocate of showing players their mistakes with a view to almost “embarrassing” it out of them.
“I’ll try to show them what happened in the game and where the game should have finished. And the things we didn’t do to finish the game the way it should have finished. Hopefully it’s part of the process to learn from that and improve as a team.”
The process will be incredibly painful for a number of those players. For Bernd Leno to watch his erratic clearance that led to the corner that produced Olympiacos’ winner. For the Arsenal defenders who, twice, were caught out on set-pieces.
For Aubameyang having to rewatch that scuff and wonder how the net did not ripple from the front rather than the back after it rebounded off the advertising hoardings. Like the rest of us, he might watch the clip again and still believe it’ll end in a goal. All victims forced to rewatch their own muggings.
It says a lot that the Spaniard believes this is the best way to build themselves back up. On paper, this is only his second defeat in 14 matches in charge.
But it is the eighth for these Arsenal players who might well wonder if the season has anything left for them, even with an FA Cup tie awaiting them on Monday.
The truth is, while this is the third time they must start again, they do so from their lowest point.
