Arsenal and the Champions League round of 16: A story in need of a different ending

When you just write it down, 2017 actually doesn’t feel that long ago.

But if you measure it simply by what has happened to Arsenal in that time, suddenly it starts to look like a yawning chasm of time. They are basically unrecognisable from the Arsenal that existed seven years ago, but this week they will do something they have not done since 2017.

And that is to play a knockout game in the Champions League. Their first leg against Porto on Wednesday will be the first time they have graced this stage of the competition since Arsene Wenger’s time and boy have things changed in the interim.

The manager is different, all the players are different, the coaching staff are different, the administrative staff are different, technically the owner is different (Stan Kroenke only took complete control of the club in 2018) and even Gunnersaurus is different, after the man who used to don the costume, Jerry Quy, was made redundant in 2020. About the only person who remains is Stuart MacFarlane, the club photographer who sent people into paroxysms of fury for helping Martin Odegaard celebrate them winning a game a few weeks back.

But will their chances at this stage of the Champions League be different, too? The round of 16 has not been a happy place for Arsenal: 2017 was the seventh year in a row they had been knocked out at that stage, each defeat adding another layer to the existential crisis that built and built during the latter years of Wenger’s tenure. In those years, Arsenal seemed to make the same mistakes over and over, while simultaneously finding new ones to make, piling despair upon despair and displaying how those at the top level of the game were leaving them behind.

And yet it all started so promisingly. Arsenal finished second in their group in 2010-11, somehow contriving to trail Shakhtar Donetsk and thus find themselves staring down the barrel of a very tough draw in the knockouts. As it transpired, they got the toughest draw they could, paired with Barcelona in the middle of what many regard as their best season under Pep Guardiola.

Despite this, Arsenal won the first leg in what, to that point, was probably their most glorious victory at the Emirates, Andrey Arshavin sweeping home a late winner as they took a 2-1 lead and a whole lot of hope to the Camp Nou. That dissipated slightly in the intervening weeks when they lost the League Cup final to Birmingham City in slapstick fashion, but it was initially going relatively well in that return leg after a Sergio Busquets own goal drew them level at half-time.

Then, after 56 minutes, Robin van Persie was sent through on goal, but the whistle blew for an offside about a second before the Dutchman got his shot away. Referee Massimo Busacca would hear none of Van Persie’s excuses, that 90,000 people hooting and hollering means sometimes you can’t hear the whistle, and gave him a second yellow card. Keeping Barca at bay with 11 players was tricky enough, but with 10 they had no chance. “We feel betrayed a bit,” said Van Persie later.

Xavi put Barca in front and Lionel Messi scored his second of the game, but Arsenal still could have gone through had Nicklas Bendtner not taken a heavy touch and spurned a late chance. Still, Arsenal blamed the red card (though Van Persie could easily have been sent off earlier in the game for pushing Dani Alves in the face), with Wenger opining afterwards: “It killed a promising, fantastic match. If it’s a bad tackle, OK, but frankly it is embarrassing.”

The following season started promisingly, too: they topped their group this time but were rewarded with a tie against AC Milan. Arsenal were in good form, having beaten Blackburn Rovers 7-1 a few weeks earlier, and would go on to defeat Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool shortly after the first leg, but that first match was a disaster as Milan took them apart on a truly horrendous pitch. The Italians won 4-0 in a game that, slightly implausibly, was dominated by Kevin-Prince Boateng, despite the midfielder having muscular problems for much of the season, something his girlfriend blamed on them having sex “seven to 10 times a week”.

A miracle was required in the return, but in what would become a theme, Arsenal provided a cruel dollop of hope by going 3-0 up by half-time, goals from Laurent Koscielny, Tomas Rosicky and a Van Persie penalty making a great escape look plausible. But there were no more goals, Milan closed the game off and Arsenal were out.

It was probably 2012-13 when the decline became stark. They finished second in a group that also featured Olympiacos, Schalke and Montpellier, setting up the first of what would become a series of harrowing encounters with Bayern Munich. The first leg was at home and Arsenal were convincingly beaten 3-1, goals from Toni Kroos, Thomas Muller and Mario Mandzukic prompting Wenger to say afterwards they had to “try to make the impossible possible” in the return.

If you could construct a game to utterly infuriate your supporters, it would be how the second leg played out for Arsenal. Olivier Giroud scored in the third minute, getting hopes up that something unlikely was about to happen, but then nothing until the 86th minute, when they scored a second, again teasing their fans with some ‘too little, too late’ hope, ultimately failing to get another. “Bayern have a history in the last six months where everything is positive,” said Wenger afterwards. “That’s not the same for us at the moment.”

It was deja vu all over again the following year: another second-place finish in the group (largely down to somehow throwing away a three-goal lead against Anderlecht) and another knockout tie against Bayern. Guardiola’s team passed them to death in both ties, but Bayern’s 2-0 win had a heavy assist from Arsenal’s self-destruct button, with Mesut Ozil missing a penalty and Wojciech Szczesny getting himself sent off.

Arsenal never recovered after Wojciech Szczesny’s first-half sending-off in the first leg of their tie with Bayern Munich in 2014 (Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images)

A pattern was becoming clear, of Arsenal being simultaneously demonstrably inferior to their opponents (Yaya Sanogo started up front) but also committing a selection of basic, self-sabotaging errors that left a thick ‘if only…’ cloud hanging over the defeat. They couldn’t even really blame getting a tough draw every year because that was their fault, too: finish top of the group and suddenly life becomes much easier.

The return ended in a 1-1 draw, in which Muller missed a penalty for the Bavarians, but in truth, Bayern held Arsenal at bay with relative ease for most of the game. Another pattern continued here: a brave performance in the second leg that was of absolutely no use because the tie was 90 per cent over after the first.

In 2014-15, they once more finished the group stage as runners-up, but this time UEFA’s balls were slightly kinder, giving them a knockout tie against Monaco. This was not yet the Monaco that would topple Paris Saint-Germain in Ligue 1 and reach the Champions League semi-final a couple of years later, even if Bernardo Silva and Fabinho were part of their side. They had never previously won an away knockout game in the competition, so for the first time in quite a while, Arsenal were actually favourites.

Not that it did them any good: they lost the first leg 3-1, former Tottenham hero Dimitar Berbatov delivering an extra kick in the swingers by scoring one of them, and despite winning the second 2-0, it was once more a vain effort with the damage having been done. Monaco went through on away goals and Wenger despaired. “It looks like we have lost our nerves and our rationality on the pitch,” he said after the first leg. “Mentally we were not ready, not sharp enough to get into this game. We paid for it.”

And they would keep on paying, often as a result of their inability to learn: the following season they once again finished second in the first round and once again were paired with Barcelona. This time they played pretty well in the first leg, keeping Barca at bay until Messi scored twice in the second half, but Wenger’s pre-game declaration that 0-0 would be a “satisfying result” demonstrated that even they no longer thought they could compete with these teams. The second leg was the footballing equivalent of Barcelona completing some admin as they strolled to a routine 3-1 win and Arsenal were out again.

They saved the worst for last. While many of the previous failures had been irritating, frustrating and symptomatic of a general decline (but with some brief snatches of optimism), this was an operatic failure. It was Bayern again and the Germans destroyed Arsenal 10-2 on aggregate, both games following essentially the same pattern: in both, it was 1-1 at half-time, but in both Arsenal fell to pieces after the break, conceding four more goals and displaying that they were further than ever from actually competing with teams at this level.

“The real problems were after the third goal,” Wenger said following the first leg. “We lost our organisation and we looked vulnerable from that moment onwards. The last 25 minutes were a nightmare for us. We looked like we had no response. We collapsed.”

Arsenal’s defeat against Bayern Munich in 2017 was the last time Wenger would take charge of a Champions League game (Ian Kington/AFP via Getty Images)

And that was it. That same season they finished fifth in the Premier League, thus relinquishing the one thing Wenger loyalists could grab onto: consistent qualification for the Champions League. A year later, Wenger was gone, pushed while everyone desperately tried to pretend he had jumped. A season and a half under Unai Emery didn’t make things much better before Mikel Arteta arrived and gradually improved things, the process was trusted and now they are back.

There are plenty of reasons to think things will be very different from the seven previous attempts at this stage, too. For a start, their opponents are not one of the behemoths of Europe but Porto, who are going through something of an existential crisis of their own: they are third in the Primeira Liga, trailing miles behind both Sporting Lisbon and Benfica, while their president Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa, who has been in place since 1982, is in the process of being unseated by none other than Andre Villas-Boas.

But more than that, this is an Arsenal on the up. They are playing good football and winning most of the time, with a young and vibrant squad featuring a bunch of very likeable central characters. But they have also shaken the bleak sense of inevitability that clouded those last days of Wenger, the glass jaw that would have enabled the manager of any European opponent of standing to simply say: “Lads, it’s Arsenal,” before facing them.

They might not quite have what it takes to finish ahead of Manchester City in the Premier League but, then again, who does? Arsenal are back in the Champions League knockouts for the first time in seven years, but this time a limp exit does not feel quite so inevitable.

(Top photo: Lluis Gene/AFP via Getty Images)