It’s crunch time as Arteta urges Arsenal to prove their mettle
ALL of a sudden there’s a familiar, rather apprehensive, feeling gripping the red half of north London. A sinking feeling, the sort that has you bracing yourself for the worst.
Arsenal’s nerve is being questioned again ahead of a week that could define their season following Sunday’s 2-0 home loss to Aston Villa.
There is genuine grounds for those emerging doubts. We’ve seen this film before.
The capitulation at the end of last season that cost Mikel Arteta’s side the Premier League title will haunt the club until they finally win the competition again after a 20-year drought.
Similarly, during the 2021-22 season, they were pipped to a Champions League spot that for so long looked to be in their grasp. The fact it was Tottenham who dipped ahead of them didn’t help matters. The devastation of those failures linger. They are hard to shake off.
So here we are again, it’s crunch time and those nagging fears are resurfacing. Will lightning strike thrice? Can Arsenal handle the heat? Are they bottlers? We’re about to find out.
The stakes couldn’t be higher — a place in the Champions League semi-finals beckons if they can triumph here in Munich tonight.
On Saturday, they travel to Wolves where anything other than victory would strike a potentially fatal blow to their title ambitions. But, first things first, here in Bavaria, the Gunners have an opportunity to silence those that have already written them off as perennial chokers.
Arteta, stoically, urged his side to grasp that chance last night.
‘A performance puts us in the Champions League semi-final,’ said the Spaniard.
‘All the preparation has been to achieve that. We have earned it. We have earned it for ten months and everything we did last season, to start our journey in the Champions League after so many years. Tomorrow we have an unbelievable opportunity to make it happen.
‘Regardless of that result against Villa, it is going to have no impact on what’s going to happen here. Refocus and start to build the confidence, the trust and understanding for the performance that we are going to have to put in to beat them and go through in the tie.’
Of course, exorcising the April curse that has characterised their previous two campaigns will be a tall order.
Bayern Munich. Harry Kane. The Allianz Arena. It gets your heart pumping.
With the tie finely poised at 2-2, Arsenal will enter the red cauldron tonight with belief.
And so they should. Prior to Sunday’s loss, Arteta’s men had earned 31 from a possible 33 Premier League points.
Bayern are missing key players Kingsley Coman and Serge Gnabry through injury, while Alphonse Davies is suspended. Yet Arteta won’t need reminding that this is the month his team have spectacularly unravelled in two consecutive seasons.
In 2022, they lost five of their final 10 to relinquish the final
Champions League qualification position to Tottenham.
Last year, a sequence of three victories in the final nine matches gifted the title to City.
Asked whether the pain of the previous two years will eat away at his players ahead of tonight’s clash, Arteta (below) responded: ‘I cannot control that. I cannot take their phones and TVs away or the people around them.
‘We didn’t lose anything last year because we didn’t win anything. What we had was an unbelievable journey against the best team in the world here and in Europe in the last seven years and this is where we want to be.
‘We are not satisfied and we want to be better and that’s the level we are competing with. We will try again our best until the last day to win those cups and be successful.
‘We have to change it and the opportunity comes now. There are lots of things we can do to write our story very differently tomorrow, we know that, and it is going to be about putting in a very, very strong performance collectively and individually to earn the right to be in the semi-final.’
The margins between success and failure on nights like these are often barely visible, although Bayern will point to their 10-2 aggregate victory over the Gunners in this competition back in 2017.
But, on nights like this, those margins — however big or small — are largely meaningless. Winning is all that matters. No one remembers Champions League quarter-finalists. ‘Absolutely (victory would put Arsenal to the next level). It would be unbelievable,’ added Arteta. ‘If we make it happen tomorrow and we’re in the semi-final, we’ll be in a really high emotional state with something that we haven’t achieved in 15 years and that’s the opportunity.
‘Most of our players haven’t experienced a night like this, this is going to be the first one. But they are prepared, they feel confident and they are super-motivated.’
Meanwhile, Kane says his 2019 Champions League final heartache with Spurs has given him the ‘burning fire’ to help Bayern Munich knock out Arsenal tonight.
The England captain has 39 goals in as many matches this season but no trophy, and is looking to make up for Spurs’ 2-0 defeat by Liverpool in the 2019 showpiece.
Kane said: ‘Yeah, for sure (it is unfinished business). When you reach the final of a competition and don’t get over the line there’s that burning fire inside you to get back there and go one step further. We have an opportunity this year with a big moment tonight.’
Having relinquished the Bundesliga title to Bayer Leverkusen last weekend, six-time European Cup winners Bayern only have this competition to save their season.
‘It is no secret the club set out to win the Champions League every season, so there is an expectation,’ said Kane. ‘From the club’s point of view it will be a failed season if we don’t win anything this year.
‘It is a time to raise our game, time for me and the players who have been in big pressure situations to step up and be counted.’