PSG v Arsenal: Reasons to be cheerful (part 1)

 

 

• PGMOL is about to go bust. And whose fault is that?
• At last the proof: it is Arsenal that is constantly hit by bad VAR decisions

By Tony Attwood

Of course there is negativity around: William Saliba is said to be off, Mikel Arteta is fighting for his job, and the season will end tonight if Arenal don’t go through…    Except that the remaining games at Arsenal have just about sold out, and the fans that go still know these recent years have been, and continue to be quite exceptional.    For a team that has only had the most modest success in Europe getting this far should be seen as progress in itself not evidence of a slump.

But this is only the second time since 2009, Arsenal have made it to a semi-final; one can’t help thinking that some supporters think that by now Arsenal should be winning everything.  Which is nonsense when the club is neither backed by the finance of an oil-rich nation, nor has a long history of domination in Europe.  Progress happens and is happening – but you don’t get everything at once.

Although of course that is not how the media see it with statements telling us that Arteta’s future is uncertain and he is “fighting to keep his Arsenal project alive.”  So a team that recently came 8th two seasons running, and is now likely to be runners’ up three seasons running, and is in the semi-final of the top competition in the world, is “fighting to keep his Arsenal project alive”.   That is gibberish if ever I saw it.

But failure in this one game, we are told, will “cast doubt over the future of this team’s construction.”   So says Goal.com, but really.  Some sort of perspective is needed somewhere.   We are in a season where is certainly a chance that Arsenal will come second and obviously that will mean second for three years running.  Not a trophy, not something to result in a celebration, but a darn sight better than most of our rivals, and definitely a platform for the future.  And just compare Arsenal’s achievements with the projections being made for Tottenham (now 16th) and ManU (now 15th) are year.

All that has happened is we had an injury-plagued season.  Wenger used to have these too – in those days the media blamed his training methods.  Now they just ignore the fact..

PSG do get into this competition year on year of course but that is primarily because of the weakness of the French league.   In fact, since 2001/2 they have been in European competition regularly but in the first decade of the century they only got into a competition every other season, and even then only once made it to the quarter finals.   In terms of years taken to get this far, Arsenal are donig far better than PSG – but if Arsenal don’t go to the final, apparently, the whole Arteta project is a failure!!!

It took PSG eight seasons from the start of their new found dominance in France to get beyond the quarter finals (which they only made twice in those eight years).   Since then, in the last five seasons they have been knocked out in the round of 16 twice, have twice made the semi-finals and once been runners-up.   Just because we saw off Real Mad it doesn’t mean we have the right to win everything.

On the other hand the reality of last week’s match is still with us, and Arsenal are hardly going to saunter through this game as they did in beating PSG back in October.   So, as we have noted before, the defeat at the Arsenal stadium by a single goal on 29 April was an aberration – PSG’s first win over Arsenal ever – and they had to wait until we were in our year of mega injuries.

But of course there are reminders that this is the city in which Arsenal lost in the final in 2006.   And of course all the irrelevant historical snippets come out like the notion that “Arsenal have not scored in any of their past seven semi-final matches in all competitions (losing five and drawing two).”  

Which of course you can read as a positive – all runs like that have to end sometime and do indeed end sometime – or you can take it that this will be number eight in the sequence.   But it does look like Thomas Partey is ok which will be beneficial.   Oh but Saliba is about to leave, so its all over….   

But there will be lots of nerves and lots of quoting history as a determining factor rather than an interesting bit of background.     But we’ll continue to be cheerful, if for no other reason than it’s a better feeling and makes life more acceptable..