It’s crunch time for Arsenal and nagging fears are resurfacing… Mikel Arteta is urging them to prove mettle and bag a place in Champions League semi-finals – so can they handle the heat?
Suddenly there is a familiar, rather apprehensive feeling in the Emirates Stadium.
A sinking feeling, the kind that makes you brace for the worst.
Arsenal’s mettle is being tested again ahead of a week that could define their season following Sunday’s 2-0 home defeat to Aston Villa.
There is a real basis for these emerging doubts. We’ve seen this movie before.
The capitulation at the end of last season, which cost Mikel Arteta’s side the Premier League title, will haunt the club until they eventually win the league for the first time since 2004.
Similarly, during the 2021/22 season they were pipped to a Champions League spot that had seemed within their reach for so long. The fact that it was Tottenham who preceded them did not help.
Mikel Arteta knows how important this week is for Arsenal in defining their season
The Gunners suffered a shock defeat to Aston Villa which dented their chances in the Premier League
The devastation of those failures lingers. They are hard to shake.
So here we are again, it’s crisis time and those nagging fears are surfacing again.
Will lightning strike three times? Does history repeat itself? 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 final beckons if they can triumph here in Munich on Wednesday.
On Saturday they travel to Wolves, where anything short of victory would deal a potentially fatal blow to their title ambitions.
But first and foremost, here in Bavaria the Gunners have a chance to silence those who have already written them off as perpetual chokers.
Arteta stoically urged his side to seize the opportunity on Wednesday night.
“A performance will get us into the semi-finals of the Champions League,” said the Spaniard.
‘All preparations are aimed at achieving that. We earned it. We deserved it for ten months and did everything we did last season to start our journey in the Champions League after so many years.
Harry Kane and Co want to reach the last four of the Champions League at the expense of Arsenal
Declan Rice looks distraught after the late 2-0 defeat to Villa and old fears resurface
“Tomorrow we have an incredible opportunity to make this happen.
‘Regardless of the result against Villa, it will have no influence on what happens here.
“Refocus and start building the confidence, trust and understanding of the performance we will have to put in to beat them and go through in the draw.”
Of course, eradicating the April curse that characterized their previous two campaigns will be a tall order.
Bayern Munich. Harry Kane. The Allianz Arena. It makes your heart beat faster.
With the tie now at 2-2, Arsenal will go into the red cauldron on Wednesday evening with confidence.
So they should. Before Sunday’s defeat, Arsenal had earned 31 points out of a possible 33 in the Premier League.
“We have to use the defeat against Villa as a response on the biggest stage to show everyone what we are capable of,” said Leandro Trossard.
In addition, Bayern are missing key players Kinglsey Coman and Serge Gnabry through injury, while Alphonse Davies is suspended.
Arteta admits he has no control over whether players remember the failures of recent years
Arsenal would face Man City or Real Madrid if they beat Bayern Munich
Yet Arteta needs no reminding that this is the month that has seen his team unravel in spectacular fashion in two successive seasons.
In 2022, they lost five of their last ten, ceding the final Champions League qualifying position to Tottenham.
Last year a run of three wins in the last nine games earned City the title.
And when asked whether the pain of the past two years will eat away at his players ahead of Tuesday’s match, Arteta said: ‘I have no control over that.
“I can’t take away their phones and TVs, or the people around them.
“Last year we didn’t lose anything because we didn’t win anything. What we had over the last seven years was an incredible journey against the best team in the world, here and in Europe, and this is where we want to be.
“We are not satisfied and we want to get better and that is the level we compete at. we will do our best again until the last day to win those cups and be successful.
‘We have to change it and that’s where the opportunities come. There are many things we can do to write our story very differently tomorrow, we know that and it is about putting in a very, very strong performance collectively and individually to earn the right to be in the semi-finals.”
The margins between success and failure are often barely visible on nights like this, although Bayern will point to their 10-1 aggregate victory over the Gunners in this competition in 2017.
Arsenal had their team run onto the pitch at the Allianz Arena ahead of the match on Tuesday
But on nights like these, those margins – no matter how big or small – are largely meaningless.
Winning is all that matters. Nobody remembers the Champions League quarter-finalists.
‘Absolutely (a win would take Arsenal to the next level). It would be incredible,” Arteta added.
‘If we make it happen tomorrow and we are in the semi-finals, we will be in a very emotional state with something that we have not achieved in fifteen years and that is the opportunity.
‘Most of our players have never experienced an evening like this before, this will be the first, they are super motivated.
“They are prepared, they are confident and it is something that we will have to show tomorrow against an opponent who has this experience, but we want to make it happen.”