Arsenal are undoubtedly part of the top six. The question that this season’s league table is posing, however, is if the cartel of big clubs at the top of the table should be more accurately described as a top five instead.
The Gunners have been through a traumatic few months. From last summer’s deadline day depression to Alexis Sanchez’s eventual departure via some terrible away form, Arsenal have taken some time to get used to their new position as a side who are competing in the Europa League for only the second time this century.
The Premier League table bears it out quite strikingly: Arsenal are in no-man’s land, seven points adrift of fifth place and nine ahead of the bunched-up pack below.
But modern football is a results business. Arsene Wenger had four trophies available to him at the start of the season and whilst he’s already out of two, winning the other two would have been seen as a very successful season. On the basis that the Premier League title was always going to be beyond the Gunners this season, and that winning three of the last four FA Cups hasn’t purged the sense of decline, the only two trophies it was really possible to win are the two in which Arsenal are still alive.
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With Ostersund dispatched easily, Arsenal look forward to a League Cup final which – after Manchester City’s unlikely exit from the FA Cup at the hands of League One’s Wigan Athletic on Monday night – now looks more winnable than it did immediately after the semi-finals. Whereas City looked irresistible in their quest for four trophies this season, they now have a veneer of mortality and a touch of the Typical City about them, too.
The Gunners won’t be favourites, but they’ll take heart from their FA Cup semi-final victory against the Blues last season and a decent record at Wembley despite losing the north London derby at the national stadium just a few weeks ago.
A combination of an optimism-inducing transfer window and progression to a final has seen the mood shift. Although January’s transfer dealings failed to address any of the systemic failings in the squad (the lack of a defensive midfielder or another reliable centre back), Arsenal now feel as though they are on the up.
But defeats away to Swansea City and Tottenham have left the Gunners adrift of the top five and they now have to ask themselves an interesting question: are they now what we used to call a ‘good cup team’?
A side unable to keep the pace in the marathon that is the league, but who are better at the short sprints of the cup competitions are ‘cup teams’, flaky sides more reminiscent of Spurs back in the day than Arsenal.
And that’s the interesting point – the Gunners, under Wenger, have always been about the long term. Building something from the ground up was always the underlying principle even if it hasn’t always worked in the last decade.
In recent years though, they’ve taken some scalps in the cups – City and Chelsea last season and Antonio Conte’s side again this season. The Arsenal manager wouldn’t be your first choice if you had to pick one man to lead your team into a one-off game, but here he is, a cup specialist.
Sunday isn’t the important one. If Arsenal win the Europa League, their season will be deemed a qualified success whether they win the League Cup or not. But beating Manchester City on Sunday, finishing sixth, and failing to make the final of their European competition would be a very ‘new Arsenal’ way to end the season in glorious failure.
That is to say, a very Spursy way of cementing their place as a modern day cup team.
