Nobody enjoys losing but, like victories, defeats come in different forms and some are more palatable than others.
Arsenal’s defeat in Paris on Wednesday night was painful and disappointing but it was a defeat worthy of the club and the fans. It was a defeat that showed character, that showed resilience and that showed a desire to keep fighting until the end.
It amounted to nothing, like anything other defeat, but it is in the manner of defeat that the character of a side reveals itself. In that much, we can take comfort because the squad, shorn of so much talent and suffering from fatigue across the board, ran their opponents close. The scoreboard might not necessarily reflect it but anyone watching the two legs will know.
That the PSG goalkeeper Gianliugi Donnarumma was arguably man of the match in both legs reveals a great deal about how things played out. But while it shows that Arsenal can count themselves unlucky not to have come away with more than a goal to show for their efforts, it also lays bare the failure of recruitment that has, I believe, cost us the biggest trophies in this campaign.
Had we the luxury of an Isak, a Gyokeres, a Harry Kane even, we might well be talking about a league and cup double rather than pouring over the ruins of a failed campaign.
The reality is, though, that we don’t have strikers of that calibre available to us and we have had to make do with a defensive midfielder leading the line for half of our season. And that reality was all too evident again last night.
Chances for Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Martinelli in the first leg, chances for Martin Odegaard, Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka in the second – how many of those would a top quality striker have scored? Just one could have made an enormous, season-defining difference.
Stopping PSG from scoring, stopping any top side in the Champions League from scoring, is fiendishly difficult so you have to make sure, when chances come your way, you grab them with both hands. Again last night, we simply failed to do that. Too many chances you would expect a good side to score slipped through our fingers while, at the other end, PSG buried theirs.
It ‘s very much the story of the season. Opponents have often been ruthless against us while we have been profligate or simply careless.
But I don’t want to get too down on the team today. They can be proud of what they have achieved and how far they’ve come. They can be proud of the performance they put in and the spirit showed right until the end. I had feared PSG might walk away with it against a dispirited, lacklustre Arsenal side but they showed there is still fight in them yet.
A shame they won’t get to test themselves on the biggest stage of all.
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