Arsenal’s season has been embarrassing – Champions League exit should be the final straw

An impending Champions League exit combined with a possible Premier League implosion means heads should roll at Arsenal, with Mikel Arteta first.

A good cup run can often paper over a lot of cracks.

Chelsea finished sixth in 2011/12 but their first Champions League victory has consigned that position to a forgotten history. Liverpool were fifth when the miracle of Istanbul occurred. During Real Madrid’s run of four Champions League successes in five years, only one came with the league title.

But pinning your hopes on a cup competition is a dangerous game. If you lift the trophy, all is forgiven for any misgivings in the league. Fail to do that and your league shortcomings are now part of a wider problem.

Arsenal are walking this very tightrope now. Their uninspiring defeat at the hands of Bournemouth, the first time the Cherries have won at the Emirates, means Manchester City and Newcastle are circling. A season in which they looked destined to finish second could see the Gunners slip much further.

Having claimed the coveted ‘pushed Manchester City’ title for the last two years, the position of next in line should City crumble was thought to be automatically occupied by Mikel Arteta’s side. Instead they have watched Liverpool barge down the door, steal the crown and secure a 20th league title in a suffocatingly dominant fashion.

The Bournemouth defeat came in Arsenal’s 35th league game of the season. At this point last season they had 80 points to their name. The season before that, it was 81. This year, the figure has plummeted to 67.

Under Arteta, Arsenal have moved away from the free-flowing football that was associated with the north London side during Arsene Wenger’s years and if that has made them more defensively resolute – no team has conceded fewer in the league this season – it has also made them a difficult watch.

The main issue has been a distinct lack of goals. An injury to Kai Havertz just after the winter transfer window had shut was unfortunate timing but when you are relying on a less-than-prolific midfielder turned striker to be your main goal threat, you are in trouble long before any injury issues crop up. They are also increasingly reliant on set-pieces, making Nicolas Jover an annoying omnipresent figure on the sidelines, and seeing them deploying tactics that would have had the likes of Sean Dyche called a footballing dinosaur.

While Arteta has taken blame for the season’s undoing, the board is just as culpable. The summer window saw just five players arrive, only one of which was an attacker – a 29-year-old Raheem Sterling.

Instead of focusing on their attacking deficit, the Gunners board bolstered their midfield and defensive options – signing Riccardo Calafiori and Mikel Merino alongside two goalkeepers. This came after Arsenal had conceded just 29 goals in the league, the fewest of any team. Considering Arsenal had just finished two points off their first title in 20 years, now was the time to strengthen, not play it safe.

Arsenal were not the only club to find themselves short as the season went on. Injuries to Rodri amongst others and a collapse in the league prompted a January transfer splurge for City, bringing in talented but also ready-to-start players in the form of Abdukodir Khusanov, Omar Marmoush and Nico Gonzalez – proving that good players can come mid-season provided you get the chequebook out.

Arsenal, meanwhile, submitted a lowball offer for Ollie Watkins towards the end of the window and after Aston Villa had already sold Jhon Duran. An injury to an overworked Bukayo Saka, who was increasingly becoming the main and only threat for the team, saw a league title that was already slipping from Arsenal’s reach fall away completely.

Saka missed 19 games with a hamstring injury and yet is still joint-fourth in Arsenal’s scoring table. Top of that list is Havertz on nine.

Senior players have also gone off the boil. Martin Odegaard was voted Player of the Season last year and now looks a shadow of himself. Gabriel Martinelli averages a goal every 4.29 games. Leandro Trossard scores once in every 4.37 matches.

And then there are the cup competitions. A solitary FA Cup win in 2020 disguises what is a pretty dismal record for Arteta in knockout competitions. Since taking over in N7, Arteta has been knocked out of tournaments by West Ham, Olympiacos, Villarreal, Sporting, Southampton, Brighton, a then-Championship Nottingham Forest and a 10-man, 14th-placed Manchester United.

This season’s Champions League run has been billed as a turning point for the club, the time when they move away from European laughing stocks to genuine contenders, but even this run to the semi-final has its flaws. Their group stage success was built on being hard to beat and they scored a combined three goals in their opening three matches. A 5-1 victory away at a Sporting that had just lost their central figure Ruben Amorim was a rarity.

In the knockouts, a 7-1 demolition of PSV made headlines and a 3-0 home win against Real Madrid gave Arsenal fans one of their most memorable European nights but the Spanish side are a shell of what they were even last season.

Coming up against PSG, a young and hungry side willing to attack and managed excellently by serial winner Luis Enrique resulted in one of the most one-sided 1-0s you are ever likely to see. The goal difference may be minimal but it is hard to see anything other than a comfortable PSG win when the two meet again this week.

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Arsenal’s likely Champions League exit will shine a brighter spotlight on Arteta who may find his team fourth in the league, knocked out of Europe, out of the FA Cup in the third round and out of the League Cup after a thumping by Newcastle.

Arteta can be credited for removing the toxicity that came in the late Wenger era and continued into the reign of Unai Emery but it is looking increasingly like he is flawed, unable to take that final step into the true elite.

The squad is a reflection of the manager and too often it has seemed as if Arteta is overly emotional, transmitting this nervous energy onto his players. Pickpocketing them during dinner or playing You’ll Never Walk Alone during a training session can just as easily be seen as the work of David Brent as it can the work of a genius if results do not go your way.

This season is Arteta’s sixth at the club, a tenure that puts him third in the longest-serving current Premier League managers list, but he is now relying on an unlikely Champions League win to mask what has been an awful season.

£680 million spent and just one FA Cup to show for it. There are questions to be answered by all associated with Arsenal this season but if the club do want to take that next level, it is looking increasingly likely that the Spaniard is not the man to guide them there.