How the Champions League provides the opportunity to stop Arsenal’s season from unravelling

To see the Arsenal squad at training this week, you wouldn’t necessarily think they were about to play for just a second Champions League final in their history. So many people at the club say they’ve just been more relaxed, and that’s actually been the case for every European game this season. It has been a quirk of this otherwise arduously laboured campaign .

There’s been so much focus on the Premier League and everything that great quest represents , that the greatest trophy in club football has almost been… overlooked. And yet here they are, the squad newly abuzz. “That’s the way we are all feeling,” Mikel Arteta said, “and that’s the energy that I feel amongst the team and the club.

This is the stage that we want to be, that we have earned. ” The wonder is whether that feeling of freedom changes depending on how this week goes. If Arsenal fail to beat Fulham at home, or if they get past Atletico Madrid as a title looks to pass them by, the Champions League will carry an even greater weight than it already does.

Victory would not just save a season, after all. It would transform it. A season that has been cast as potentially descending into the worst “bottle job” of all time could still become the most magical in the club’s history.