Forget the idea that Arsenal made club history on Wednesday night by reaching the Champions League semi-finals for the second year in succession. That is not the kind of history to boast about.
It is an admirable achievement, certainly, but Arsenal are not some upstart team who shocked the world by reaching the last four. Unless Arsenal win the competition, it is the kind of history that will be forgotten. Boast about history when you win the thing.
So I understand Mikel Arteta and his captain Declan Rice talking it up after the match and trying to shift the narrative away from the impression that Arsenal are crawling on bloodied knees towards the finish line of what promised to be a wonderful season. But the kernel of Arsenal’s season was not a 0-0 draw with Sporting on a dour, tense evening at the Emirates. If everything goes as Arteta and his team hope it will, that will be just a footnote to what lies ahead.
Everything is building towards Sunday’s Premier League clash with Manchester City at the Etihad and it is coming at a time when the league leaders are looking like a side desperately trying to rediscover the imperious form with which they once carried all before them.
They are still in the driving seat and they are entitled to be prickly about being disrespected when they still lead the league and are the only English team left in the Champions League but unless they improve on recent performances, City will beat them on Sunday.
There was little in their display against Sporting to suggest that they will be able to upset Pep Guardiola’s surging team, who are seeking to win the Premier League for the fifth time in six years. Their creativity has disappeared along with the absences of the injured Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard. Eberechi Eze and Kai Havertz are struggling to shoulder that burden without them.
After the Champions League quarter-final win over Sporting Lisbon, Mikel Arteta tried to shift the narrative away from the impression that Arsenal are crawling on bloodied knees towards the season’s finish line
Declan Rice bristled when he was asked on camera about how much frustration he was feeling and pointed out Arsenal had just made it into the semi-finals of the Champions League
Their central defensive partnership of Gabriel and William Saliba is still rock solid but the back four is missing Jurrien Timber badly. David Raya, who many believe has been their best player this season, is showing signs of uncertainty with the ball at his feet.
One of his passes to a Sporting attacker would have been ruthlessly punished had it happened against City or the Atletico Madrid team Arsenal will face in the Champions League semi-finals. Against Sporting, they got away with it.
Their squad depth is outstanding but however strong a squad is, that does not mean you don’t miss your best players when they are out, however impressive the replacements, and they are missing Timber, Saka and Odegaard.
But if there was little to encourage Arsenal fans on the pitch on Wednesday night, there were some signs of hope off it. I’m not talking about players returning from injury but about the attitude of Arteta and his players.
Anger infused some of their responses after the match. Both Arteta and Rice burned with defiance. Rice bristled when he was asked on camera about how much frustration he was feeling and pointed out Arsenal had just made it into the semi-finals of the Champions League. ‘Declan is taking ownership in difficult moments,’ Arteta said later, and he was right.
The captain was Arsenal’s best player in the Sporting game, just as he has often been this season, and he is growing and growing as a leader. As Arsenal stutter, Rice is the one standing tall. He defied illness to play on Wednesday night. He is leaving it all out there in the pursuit of glory.
Arteta was the same in his post-match press conference. Sometimes, he said, the way people talked made it sound as if Arsenal were in the bottom three, not six points clear at the top of the Premier League.
He is right about that, too. Many football fans seem to have developed a blood-lust for Arsenal to blow the title. A lot of it is good old-fashioned schadenfreude. Some of it is resentment against a club that some perceive as over-entitled.
‘What are we talking about guys, please?’ Arteta asked after the game. ‘Enjoy where we are as a club. If someone doesn’t want to do it, so be it. But we have done something that has never been done in the history of our club. This league takes the hell out of you.’
Arsenal are missing the trickery and creativity of their injured winger Bukayo Saka
Captain Martin Odegaard’s absence is also being felt but Arsenal were meant to have strength in depth this season
It was in the defiance of manager and captain that optimism lies for Arsenal as Sunday’s showdown approaches. Arsenal need to take that anger on to the pitch with them at the Etihad and they need to pour every ounce of that defiance into their performance.
Because this is it. Everything is about this. Everything has been building towards this. This is the moment that will define Arsenal’s season and that will define this manager and that will define these players.
Arsenal are a fine side. They deserve to be at the top of the table. They deserve to be six points clear but they are tying up in the final furlong and now they need to go out and prove their dominance all over again.
If they harness their defiance, if they rediscover their form, if they hit the heights they are capable of, if they beat City, even if they just avoid defeat, then they will be entitled to start talking more about history. Because, then, history will be within their grasp, the kind of history that will not be forgotten.
