Pain. Just unbelievable pain. It’s taken me over a week to write this post as I was trying so hard not to write something that would be reactive or overly negative. I really thought that with time, I’d not feel quite this crappy, but yet here I am, 8 or 9 days later, feeling exactly that!!
The way we lost that game, and consequently ended the season was very cruel and not at all deserving of what has been a stellar campaign for the boys in red and white. They deserved so much better, they really did.
Going into the game, I kept telling myself that I was happy with just the league and I truly believed that. I really did!! However, after going so close to the best season in Arsenal’s history, only to fall at the final of final hurdles is almost too excruciating for words. That’s the problem for me, I think. It’s just how close they came. If we’d lost 2-0, goal in each half and PSG had just looked a class above, I’d be sad, but I don’t think I’d be looking back on the game with the same ruefulness over a week later.
Despite what fans of rival clubs and some aspects of the football media will have you believe, we actually matched PSG (in our own way!) for large parts of this match. Let’s face facts, in the attacking areas of the pitch, the gulf in the players on show was stark, we were hopelessly outgunned from the get-go, yet we found a way to compete in the match and on another day, the unlucky Cristhian Mosquera let’s Kvaratskhelia go, and we go on to grind out the most amazing win. We really weren’t that far off. Despite all of their undoubted quality, the best attack in Europe did not manage to score a single open play goal in over 2 hours of football and I’d go one step further and say they barely threatened David Raya’s goal at all, aside from their penalty. That is an unbelievable achievement in itself and is a true testament to the grit, focus and commitment of this team. People will wax lyrical about PSG’s second Champions League in a row (and to some extent with good reason as that is an impressive achievement) but a couple of decent penalties more and the stories would be all so different.
I’ve read some truly horrendous comments online about how ‘football won’ and what a relief that was, with the team owned by a country someone being the saviours in this scenario. We played a very pragmatic game, that’s undeniable, but if you look at the wider context and how much these Arsenal players have played this season, compared to the French counterparts, with favours being given out by the Ligue 1 officials to allow extra rest time and so on, what else could we do?! Of course, they were going to be the fresher. They also had a fully fit squad to choose from – again!! I feel I’m getting a bit of course here, this isn’t supposed to be a ‘ranting’ sort of a post. At the end of the day, we lost, that’s football. It’s just all of the narrative that comes with it, can be unbearable at times.
I think an important factor to bear in mind in some of our games this season where we’ve been billed as ‘boring’ or ‘parking the bus’ is the early goal. I can think of at least two other really key games this season, where we didn’t play at our best but we managed to grind out a truly massive victory, that had something in common with the Champions League Final – we scored early!! The games I’m thinking of are Brighton away and Newcastle at home. Neither classics. Both decided by a solitary goal and both absolutely huge wins in the context of our season. In those two games, I think our performances weren’t quite at the level and we made things really, really difficult for ourselves and as a result had to ride our luck a little bit (I’m thinking mainly of the Yoanne Wissa chance for Newcastle), but I believe the performances were massively impacted by the early goal.
This Arsenal team has played a record number of games this year (63 I think) and we’ve seen for weeks that the players don’t look fresh at all. They look like a team that has got serious mileage on the clock, particularly in midfield. So when we score early, I think it’s natural to try and conserve a bit of energy, step back a few yards and lean into what we do best – defend.
This is exactly what happened against PSG and I don’t think anyone can criticise us for it. If we’d gone toe to toe with PSG, we’d have been murdered. They would have absolutely slapped us about. They’re attackers are some of the best in the world and some of them have barely played this season and are therefore fit and raring to go coming into this game. Achraf Hakimi had a month off to prepare for this game!! Our players have not been afforded such luxury and therefore had to try and win the game anyway they could.
Onto the game itself
Anyways, onto the game itself. I think people forget that Arsenal really gave it a good go when PSG came back to 1-1. They really stepped up a gear and nearly got caught out on the break twice with Bradley Barcola passing up two really good chances to win the game in normal time, at a point where I think Arsenal had taken it a bit too far the other way and had really gone gung-ho in a game that was only level!! It’s not like we were chasing the game, so leaving that much space in behind was daft really, but no one remembers that kind of bravery (if you want to call it that!). They just remember us having to dig in at times, as PSG passed the ball around to very little effect in there attempt to ‘save football’.
Onto the penalties
Ahhhh! This is where it gets really painful. Losing both coin tosses was a really bad start. I don’t understand why one team gets to go first and also take the penalties in front of their own fans. Surely the fairest way would be to have one or the other?! I honestly remember thinking that when we beat Manchester City in the Community Shield, when we won both coin tosses!! It was unfair then and it’s unfair now. Difference is, I didn’t get back then as it was unfair in our favour! 🙂
The fans thing isn’t massive, it’s the going first that is really key. Every penalty is that much more nerve racking when you are constantly chasing. Good start from Viktor Gyokeres, as expected and then came the bit that I don’t think I’ll ever get over. That stupid, stupid, stupid staggered run up from Eberechi Eze. Where the keeper – who didn’t save a single penalty – just stood up. That’s all he did. He just stood still.
I’m underplaying that, but he actually did really well and I was quite impressed. Reminding me a bit of Cech v Ronaldo in 2008. I enjoyed that one – I really didn’t care for this…
I was expecting to lose the game for nearly all of the weeks leading up to the final. Then I thought I would win a few days leading up to it, as my confidence increased the closer we came to the big game. After we went up 1-0, I really started to believe. Then at 1-1, I thought we were done for, but as the game progressed, I thought, if we get it to penalties, we’ll beat this lot as their keeper is a their weak link and we’ve got David Raya – player of the year candidate – in goal for us. I really fancied us on penalties. That did waver somewhat when I heard about their keeper’s record in shoout outs, but even still, I thought we’d get it over the line.
I’m still new to this whole blogging thing and I’m nowhere near at a stage where people read and take note of what I’m writing, so it’s a completely different level, but I’ve seen a few instances in some of my favourite Arsenal podcasts where they’re speak with a degree of balance when it comes to this penalty. Not in Eze’s defence as such, but in a way that shows they can see both sides. Saying that there are many instances where this sort of run up really works and so on. One of the reasons for this balanced view of things is that they have a decent following behind them now and don’t want to come out to harsh against one of our own, which is a standpoint I completely understand. So I get where they are coming from and although I was a little disappointed that the reactions were not a bit more fitting (in my opinion) to the atrocity that we all saw with our second penalty, I understand. I don’t have said following so I can just say what I saw and that was just utterly disgraceful in a game of that magnitude. Especially given that I remember this clearly happening to Eze when playing for Palace against Newcastle last season and I’ve since read that he did the same thing against Liverpool as well!!! Why would you do it?!? Why?? I just don’t understand. Eze’s goal against Leverkusen was probably in the top 10 of the hardest shots I’ve ever seen an Arsenal player take. It was breathtaking. So why try and be clever?! Why try and outfox the goalkeeper?!
***WARNING*** Old man opinion incoming…
Why didn’t he just put the ball down and hit it as hard as he could?! I know that’s not a guaranteed solution to the problem (as we saw with penalty number 5) but I’m nowhere near as angry with Gabriel as I am with Eze. If the keeper saves it, you say well done. If you put it just over, you say he got it wrong, it hurts, but mistakes happen in football, we’re in this together. If he tries to be clever in the biggest club game in world football and it backfires…that’s getting towards unforgiveable for me.
So Gabriel put his over as well and the rest if history. I left the pub in Waterloo where I was watching the game and headed back to my hotel as quickly as I could and was berated several times in my 10 minute walk with renditions of ‘Champions of Europe, you’ll never sing that’ appearing from the smiling faces of every opposition fan that we passed. All fans of the teams that we wiped the floor with in the Premier League this season, I might add.
After all that, after everything, we’re still the banter club. Not gonna lie, that was a really tough pill to swallow and a truly painful realisation.
What could have been?
Personally, one of the hardest notions relating to football that I struggle to deal with are the ‘what if’ moments. It’s like, when you come back from 2-0 down, to claim a draw and you’re absolutely elated and then you miss a sitter in the last minute to win the game and you’ve got out of jail to feeling like you’ve actually lost the game.
I’ve tried to tell myself a few times over this past week or so, that I wouldn’t be anywhere near as gutted if we’d just lose this game. If we’d been fairly between 2-0 and never looked like winning, I would have been down, but would have got over the feeling much, much quicker.
I obviously have no way of testing this and it might just be a bit out absolute h*tsp*r that comes out of my mouth when Arsenal have lost and I’m trying to make sense of it all, but I do think there’s some degree of truth in there.
Getting to penalties, with the Champions League so close, is agonising. It really is. The bit I’m having real trouble with is that it’s not even the game as such, it’s the wider context and what sticking away a couple of penalties would have meant for this club.
Despite what I feel after the fact, even the most downcast Arsenal fan can recognise that this team has put in a colossal effort this season – winning the Premier League for the first time and losing in two Cup Finals. It’s stuff of dreams, especially when you compare it to the back drop of the past few seasons or even look a bit further back at the Unai Emery period or the late Arsene Wenger years. This season has been ‘pinch yourself’ good in so many ways and the chance to seal that sentiment and etch this team even further into history was right there, up in lights and we just couldn’t quite grasp it. Like I said agonising.
After the season we’ve had, we shouldn’t care less what any other fan base thinks of us. Let’s face it, none of them are in a particularly strong place to criticise what this team has achieved. Manchester City have now gone two years without winning the league, their saviour Pep Guardiola has left and the 115 charges are really looming large right now. Manchester United finished the season well, but played the least amount of games in a ridiculously long time due to not being in Europe and then exiting both cup competitions at the first hurdle – including a really tough night in Grimsby!! Liverpool spent nearly half a billion pounds and then got A LOT worse to surrender their title with a whimper. Chelsea = just an absolute joke of a club in every possible way. T*ttenham…do I even need to go there?!?!
Yet despite all of that, I still remember the Bournemouth fans singing at the top of their lungs after our defeat to the Cherries at The Emirates ‘Second again, second again’ with so much relish. They were really enjoying laughing in our faces at the prospect of us slipping up again. We managed to shut them up, along with the rest of the detractors, but we can’t completely silence them as the regular chant at The Emirates regarding our lack of a single European title will still be heard throughout the next season and potentially beyond. It was painful before, it’s going to really hurt now and you know that’s going to make them sing it louder and louder.
That’s the ‘what if’ for me. What if we had got both monkeys off our backs in one foul swoop? What would they have said then? Silence. We were close as well. Unfortunately this one will have to stay as a what if.
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