When the final whistle blew at a pulsating Emirates Stadium on Tuesday night, I punched the air, reached over to Jo to give her a high five and then promptly sank back in my sofa and felt the tears come.
It is Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal, not Diego Simeone’s Atletico Madrid, who will be going to Budapest to contest the Champions League Final against PSG on the 30th May.
As the camera panned around the crowd in the last few minutes of the match, it went past a woman already in tears. I laughed at her at the time, only to find myself in the same state just minutes later.
“Why?” I guess is the question.
Well, to start with the obvious, it’s been 20 years since our previous and, till now, only journey to the Champions League final. In that time, we have suffered so many humiliations, so many rakes in the face that it feels like we became the butt of all jokes not just here in the UK, but across Europe. I could detail them, but if you’re reading this you know, “Champions of Europe, you’ll never sing that”.
When Willian signed for Arsenal, if I can briefly take you back to that accursed day, he said that he’d joined as Arteta had outlined a 3-year plan to win the Premier League and a 5-year one for the Champions League. I think any Arsenal fan who heard that in the summer of 2020 was like,
“Yeah, good one, Mikel”.
I know I was.
The idea that we could get anywhere near the level of the likes of Barcelona, Bayern Munich and closer to home, Liverpool and Manchester City seemed – well, it seemed like wishful thinking is what it seemed like.
And yet, here we are. A bit later than planned, obvs, but here nonetheless.
Even this season, we’ve endured the jibes, anti-football, Fraudiola, Spanish Pulis… Some of us have let it affect our thinking, cloud the judgement on the most serious Arsenal side we’ve had in a generation or two.
I’ll admit, the football hasn’t always been pretty and that game at Wolves was as close to unforgiveable as I think a football team can get. But it was just one game. And when you look at this season as a totality, no Odegaard, no Havertz, Saka in and out – these are players who we completely lost last season and it cost us even the chance of a title challenge.
And here we are, a year on, 90 minutes away from a maiden Champions League title.
We are also now three wins away from winning the Premier League title outright, no worries about goal difference, thanks to Everton’s 3-3 draw with Manchester City on Monday night. This, of course, came on the heels of Arsenal’s most impressive first-half display of the season, blowing Fulham away 3-0 on Saturday evening.
Last week, when I sat down to write something after Newcastle but before Madrid, I realised I didn’t have anything to say. Now there’s almost too much, I was gonna say it’s been quite the 24 hours for those of us of an Arsenal persuasion, but it’s actually 76 of them which have completely changed our outlook.
Well, that and the return to the team of Bukayo Saka. If there were slight concerns about his cameo in Madrid, he answered them in the most emphatic style on Saturday night. In an attacking display which turned our light back on, he teed up Gyokeres for a tap in, before scoring his first home Premier League goal since December in a gleefully destructive 45 minutes.
It was always going to be Bukayo. The last survivor of Mikel Arteta’s first Premier League line up in December 2019, making the difference and giving us the most famous scoreline in our history to take us to Budapest.
Here’s a song we will sing and sing forever, “1-0 to the Arsenal…”
Mikel Arteta has put up with a lot this season, some of it may even have been deserved. However, his call to bring Myles Lewis Skelly into midfield on Saturday evening may have been the masterstroke which helped turn the title race definitively in our favour. I was so pleased to see this selection. Especially given that, the evening we battled past Sporting Lisbon, I had voiced a Bluesky opinion that MLS would exponentially increase the technical quality of our midfield.
By the time the Fulham game finished, Myles was first in duels won, passes attempted and completed. And this was not a sideways backwards game.
I don’t need to tell you how good he was. You saw it and his manager saw it, because he then trusted him to the same job in the biggest game played at the Emirates Stadium since it opened. And you know what? Myles repaid that trust and then some, fierce in the challenge and brave in possession.
He was the living manifestation of Mikel Arteta’s “No Fear” mantra, in performance and in the selection.
I am a bit loathe to single out specific players on a night like last night as everyone played their part. That being said, I think it would be wrong of me not to mention the magnificent, no blade of grass left uncovered, performance of Declan Rice. Nights like these are why we spent so much money to bring him over from West Ham.
I remember my first time seeing Declan play live, his first season with us and he seemed like a one man security blanket. He’s got so much more to him than that, but the way he strode about the pitch, “No… You’re not having that… You’re not having that either”. Atletico were not getting anything out of him. Not for the first time this season, he looked a little Vieiraesque.
The two at the back? Monumental. Trossard – where did that performance come from? It feels like we hadn’t seen him for ages. Not any more, he was a whirling dervish in possession, impossible to tie down and worked back relentlessly. Eze may not have had his best game in possession, but always tried to take us forward, a key part of the aggression with which we faced down Simeone’s men.
At right back, Benny Blanco rolled back the years with a tenacious, front footed performance, high on quality and constantly pushed the team forward with interceptions and one touch passes. I’d wager there were a few in the crowd who’d forgotten he could play like that.
Lest you think I’ve forgotten Viktor Gyokeres, I haven’t. I was saving him for last. Theo Walcott referenced after the game Mikel Arteta’s comments when we signed him that he “destroys” defences. Boy, did we see that last night! It’s such a shame he didn’t quite catch that half volley because a goal would have been just reward for last night’s performance, where he never gave the Atletico defence a moment’s rest.
I’m not sure what’s happened over the last week, because he has put three barnstorming performances in back to back. Obviously, having players with the technical quality of Saka, Trossard and Eze around him will have helped, but last week in Madrid he had Madueke and Martinelli for company. Is it confidence, or has something clicked for him?
On Saturday, we saw the flickerings of a burgeoning partnership with Bukayo Saka as they assisted each other. It felt significant then, that Tuesday’s winning goal came from the same channel run we saw on Saturday down the right. Even if Gyokeres didn’t provide the actual assist, the fact that the team are now looking to release him early can only bode well for his, and our future.
Finally, the atmosphere on Tuesday night. Holy cow. It will be forever one of the regrets of my life that I missed the Silver ballot for this game. I didn’t forget or anything, I just missed it. In doing so, I think it’s pretty clear I missed the greatest night at the Emirates since it opened. What a noise. Well done to everyone involved, you absolute legends.
In his very first press conference as Arsenal manager, Mikel said this about building a connection with the fans,
“I think that’s the only way, where we give them a little bit, they give us a little bit, and suddenly we feel that connection, because when plug plug these two things together, it is so powerful”.
Tuesday night was a night six-and-a-half years in the making. And on this, as with so many other things, Mikel Arteta – well, he knows exactly what we need…
- No fear as Arsenal reach BudapestWhen the final whistle blew at a pulsating Emirates Stadium on Tuesday night, I punched the air, reached over to Jo to give her a high five and then promptly sank back in my sofa and felt the tears come.
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- How Wenger reacted to Arsenal reaching Champions League finalArsene Wenger reacted to Arsenal reaching the Champions League final by claiming the trophy belongs at the Emirates Stadium, but he admitted PSG are strong opponents.