What if? All clubs wonder what might have been if only a chance hadn’t been missed, a penalty hadn’t been given or an opponent hadn’t suddenly belted the ball in from 30 yards.
To that extent, what-ifs are pointless. Margins in football are fine. Luck happens. Players do things they would not normally do.
And yet an accumulation of what-ifs can make a pattern. What if Arsenal hadn’t drawn against Leicester and Hull and lost at Swansea and Stoke in the first four months of the season?
Imagine Arsenal were to beat Chelsea at home in three weeks — which, given the form of both clubs is quite possible. Imagine Chelsea draw at home against Manchester United the week before. Then Arsenal would be looking at a five-point gap and the ache of those 10 squandered points early in the season would be keenly felt.
All sides drop points against teams they would expect to beat and Arsenal are actually rather better at dispatching the middle and lower ranks (Stoke excepted) than most. But they were desperately flat against Leicester and sloppy against Hull.
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The Stoke game, when they shipped three goals in the first half, was so shambolic that at half time it felt era-defining. This, it seemed, was it, the moment at which Arsene Wenger’s reign finally unravelled. Given the way a group of fans abused Wenger on the platform at Stoke railway station that evening, there was certainly anger.
Yet, since that game, Arsenal have lost only twice in the league and they have reached the semi-final of the FA Cup. Other clubs have false dawns; Arsenal specialise in false twilights. They are masters at reaching what seems an intolerable low and then bouncing back.
In that sense the Stoke game was a microcosm of the wider pattern: by scoring twice in the second half, Arsenal took at least some of the sting out of that defeat. It was the same as they went out of the Uefa Champions League to Monaco: a 2-0 away win after a 3-1 home defeat meant talk of heroic failure glossed over the failures of the first leg. That’s why the Emirates is a stadium that grumbles rather than erupt into outright fury.
Wenger defines the quality as “mental strength” and in a sense it is. They would convince more if they didn’t wait until almost all hope was lost before performing. To a certain mindset, it is easier to perform once nobody expects achievement, and that seems to be the habit into which Arsenal have slipped.
The trend of Arsenal’s seasons are well-defined. In Wenger’s first full season in English football, in 1997/98, Arsenal won the title because of a run of 10 consecutive victories from mid-March. The Wenger spring surge has become a feature, the result of his training regimen. Once it carried Arsenal to titles; now it takes them to the respectability of a top-four finish and inspires optimism for the season ahead. Add in a big summer signing and it is the perfect business model for a cub more intent in generating revenue than success.
But this season, perhaps, something a little more glorious offers itself. It’s extremely unlikely that Chelsea will collapse and yet, given how weary they have seemed of late, the thought must lurk at the back of Wenger’s mind that they might. Arsenal need to beat Liverpool on Saturday and Burnley the following weekend and, while it might not be realistic to expect Chelsea to drop points against Stoke at home or QPR away, United could inflict damage.
And that means for the first time in a long time for Arsenal, there is pressure and expectation on Saturday’s match — and how they deal with that will offer some indication of whether the new, tougher Arsenal that has occasionally been threatening to emerge really is developing.
That said, there is more pressure on Liverpool, who need to bridge a five-point gap to secure Champions League football next season — which may have wider ramifications in terms of the future of Brendan Rodgers and certain key players.
Realistically, whatever happens on Saturday, Arsenal will end the season cursing those points they let slip in the autumn. Qualification for the Champions League should be achieved and they may even pip Manchester City for second, but if the had managed to win even one of those loose games, this might have turned into a real title challenge.
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