Why Arsenal’s Champions League consistency is its own kind of curse

We live in worrying times.

Brexit looms over everything with the leaders on the Leave side insisting all is well, but looking to many of us like a man on a night out who declares he’s really having fun as the sun comes up and he wanders home alone with a bag of wine in his hand and vomit stains on his shirt. Meanwhile, Donald Trump might be president of the US in a week, forcing the planet to deal with a new and deranged existential threat.

The world might be in peril, but there will always be an Arsenal. On Tuesday night, they qualified from the first group stage of the Champions League for the 17th consecutive season, an achievement which is extraordinary, even if also accompanied by the caveat that usually accompanies any accomplishment by Arsene Wenger’s side.

Arsenal’s consistency is its own kind of curse. They entered the week with warnings that November was the month when it usually all went wrong for them, a prophesy which seemed to have some merit when they were 2-0 down after 15 minutes against Ludogorets. This may well be a more robust Arsenal, however, because they recovered to win 2-3, with Mesut Ozil scoring a goal which reminded the world of the kind of genius Wenger has always cherished.

The comeback may be a sign of a new resolve at Arsenal, even if their scoreless draw against Middlesbrough was a reminder that they can always provide anxieties for their supporters.

But they have become expert in emerging from their Champions League group, an expertise which can be too easily taken for granted because it has become part of everyday life at Arsenal.

The last time they failed to emerge from the group stage was in 1999, when they played their Champions League matches at Wembley and the world was a different place.

If they can top the group by beating PSG, then Arsenal will be able to approach the knockout stages with some confidence, even if it will always be undercut by the experiences that have brought them down time and again.

Since 1999 - when Manchester United were the holders - three English teams have won the Champions League and there have been five losing English finalists, including Arsenal in 2006.

Yet there has also been great turbulence, especially in recent years when Manchester United and Chelsea are among those who have failed to qualify for the competition, let alone make the knockout stages.

For ten years, there was a stability provided by Arsenal, United and Chelsea's presence in the competition, but Wenger’s side are the only club capable of that kind of consistency at the moment.

Arsenal are always there, teasing their supporters with their permanence, making this achievement seem a mundane accomplishment when it is, in fact, something that marks them out as a club of astonishing consistency, even if it is maddening consistency as well.

Because the failures which inevitably seem to follow colour everything. The ability to make it through the group stage might be the result of an admirable consistency, but Arsenal’s repeated failures in the knockout stages suggest a club which has rarely been able to rise beyond the level it has established for itself.

Of course, they can complain about the quality of their opponent, but they have always found a way to undermine themselves too, whether it is against Monaco in 2015 or Chelsea in 2004.

In throwing away a lead against Chelsea at Highbury in 2004, the Invincibles provided a template for their inferior successors. A 1-1 draw in the first leg at Stamford Bridge was followed by a Jose Antonio Reyes goal in the second which put Arsenal in a strong position before they allowed Chelsea to score twice.

In 2006, they knocked out Juventus on the way to the final against Barcelona where Jens Lehmann’s early dismissal brought an inevitability to all that followed.

But these were the golden years for Arsenal, years when they could knock out the holders (Milan, 2008) or reach the semi-final (2009).

In more recent years, they have become accustomed to emerging from the group stages and then exiting the competition in the last sixteen. The last time Arsenal made it beyond that point was in 2010 when they demolished Porto before losing again to Barcelona.

Since then, they have found different ways to fail, usually by failing to top the group and as a consequence meeting a seeded team, but even when they do top the group, as in 2011-12, they find a way of messing it up. That season, Milan beat them 4-0 in the San Siro and Arsenal fought back heroically at the Emirates but went out anyway.

In 2015, they finished second but somehow lost to Monaco at the Emirates, while last season was another familiar story of inevitable failure when Barcelona came to London and won.

Their game against PSG later this month should determine who finishes top, but Arsenal will have to travel to Basel after that which might provide them with another opportunity for self-sabotage.

But if that is another story, a story of relative failure, their qualification for the knockout stages, is a successful tale, albeit one which never falls for the cliche of providing a happy ending.

Yet it is a story of remarkable consistency, an example of Wenger’s astonishing stamina, his sustained brilliance in never allowing standards to drop, while never pushing them towards unexpected heights either. 

History may be kinder to Wenger in acknowledging this accomplishment, but history can sometimes feel a long way away.

During those years, Wenger has been present for and effected great change in English football. In 1999, Arsenal played at Highbury and Alex Ferguson was a couple of years away from announcing his first retirement. Wenger has sustained Arsenal through the financially draining construction of a new stadium and he has watched the great empire built by Ferguson fall.

In 1999, Tony Blair was a youthful and optimistic prime minister, Bill Clinton was staggering to the end of his term in the White House and the world worried about the millennium bug.

In October, 1999, Fiorentina knocked Arsenal out of the group stages of the Champions League and Donald Trump announced that he had formed an exploratory committee to consider if he should run for president. He ended his bid in February the following year when he failed to gain public support for a campaign which was seen as gimmicky and insubstantial.

Seventeen years later and Wenger’s Arsenal continue to achieve their basic goals, even if their supporters will always want more. Yet, in a world gone mad, there is some consolation to be taken in Arsenal's permanence.

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