Arsenal have been here before. In fact, sometimes it feels as if they have never been anywhere else. The later Arsene Wenger years might one day be remembered as a time when the autumn always appeared to be full of promise, before hope melted away in the spring.
There are variations on this theme. In fact there is no pattern except that when the end comes it always involves anger, despair and, increasingly, a meltdown on Arsenal Fan TV. In the final analysis, no matter the means, it is always the same old Arsenal.
Arsenal are never too far away from crisis in the modern era, a consequence of their consistency, some would say, which makes what happens to them utterly predictable. Arsenal, it seems, will always find a way of letting their supporters down.
It can come heroically with a fightback against Barcelona, or it can come when expectations are raised.
After years of impossible draws in the Champions League, they will go into the knockout stages with a winnable tie against Monaco, only to go and lose at home to Monaco. Arsenal supporters are ruined again and again by hope. The problem is that they are ruined again and again by despair as well.
This season began in familiar fashion with an explosion of anger after the home defeat to Liverpool on the opening day of the season. Liverpool came from behind to win 4-3 and Arsene Wenger announced that his side were physically not ready for the Premier League.
With Laurent Koscielny given time off to recover from the European Championships and with Per Mertesacker and Gabriel injured, Wenger had started with Callum Chambers and Rob Holding in central defence.
This was not what anyone wanted to hear or see and Arsenal were booed off the field at full-time, in itself a signal that the new season was upon us.
For some, the anger might have been diluted by the feeling that this defeat proved them right all along, as it had so many times before. Eleven games and seven successive wins later and Arsenal look a very different side. Dismissing Ludogorets in the Champions League on Wednesday night was the easy bit, no matter how much it served as a showcase for the talents of Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez.
Those talents are another area of concern for Arsenal. The two players are now in the final two years of their contracts at the club which lends a sense of urgency to their contract negotiations.
As with so many things, Arsenal have been here before. They sold Samir Nasri as he entered the final year of his contract and the following summer – after a season of speculation – they lost their captain Robin Van Persie to Manchester United after he announced that he would not be signing a new deal when his expired the following summer.
The wage demands of Ozil and Sanchez are said to have increased post Brexit, but Wenger said last week that the players would decide what to do based on what was happening on the field.
“I think these kind of players can raise a little bit above the financial aspect of the game because they are not poor and they have to look really on the football side,” he said before the Ludogorets match.
If Arsenal want to keep them they may have to demonstrate an ability to do more than what is expected in the Champions League and make a sustained challenge for the title.
Their second-place finish last season should come with an asterisk, given that they finished ten points behind Leicester City, having failed to make a convincing challenge in the spring. In the end, they capitalised on Tottenham being the same old Tottenham even if in finishing second in that fashion, they were also the same old Arsenal.
Arsenal had beaten Leicester in February in a result which was seen as significant. Of course, it was typical Arsenal that the players posted pictures from the dressing room too and typical that some saw it as significant, as they did again on Wednesday, even if these pictures probably have no bearing on anything.
The idea that they are damaging was given credence when Robert Huth recently said they had provided Leicester with extra motivation.
“For me the key point was when we lost to Arsenal,” Huth told Jonathan Northcroft for his book, Fearless. “Everyone was celebrating, they were doing selfies. Even though we were still top. A few of the lads stuck a few those pictures up and it got the blood boiling. It gave us an extra yard in the next few games.”
best. team. 💪🏼😎#yagunnersya #BeTheDifference #AFCvLCFC #Arsenal #bigpoints pic.twitter.com/UiLGpJj6AC
— Mesut Özil (@M10) February 14, 2016
If the tweets of Ozil and others truly provided motivation then football would be a very simple business, but it is the image that has stuck to the players as demonstrated by the criticism from Rio Ferdinand and Richard Dunne on Wednesday.
So far, so familiar. In fact, everything that is happening could be seen as the typical prelude to a typical Arsenal failure. All the ingredients – the hope, the expectation, the selfies – are present, but maybe this Arsenal side is different.
The arrival of Granit Xhaka and Shkodran Mustafi has changed the complexion of the Arsenal team. Xhaka’s sending off on Saturday was seen as harsh, but if it increases the sense that Arsenal are a team that will now stand up and fight, it may be worth the suspension.
Mustafi has brought an authority too, a sense that Arsenal are now being guided by players with street smarts, something which allows players like Ozil the freedom to play.
The promise of Alex Iwobi is another familiar ingredient but with a squad subtly altered, there is the possibility that these players won’t become familiar with the old failures and will instead have new objectives.
There may be new disappointments on the horizon, but with a convincing victory over Chelsea and a last-minute, controversial away win at Burnley, there may also be signs of real change. Arsenal will expect to win their next two games against Middlesbrough and Sunderland, before Spurs travel to the Emirates ahead of another international break.
That could be a moment to announce a new Arsenal. Wenger may be on the brink of real achievements, something which would bring joy to their supporters, except those who are waiting to say, ‘I told you so.’ This time that faction might be disappointed. Strangely, this would mean Arsenal had found another way of letting them down.
