No fire, pure fear as Arsenal scrape into Champions League semi-final with fraught 0-0 draw | OneFootball

What a curious specimen Arsenal have become. This is a team that still boasts a six-point lead atop the Premier League and now a place in the semi-final of the Champions League, where they will start as favourites against Atletico Madrid.

Yet they have rarely looked less convincing or certain of themselves. There was absolutely nothing about this impossibly tense and nervy evening against a game but limited Sporting that could be seen as sending any kind of message to Manchester City ahead of this weekend’s monumental dare-not-lose title clash.

Again, though, here hits another absurdity. How does a Champions League quarter-final second leg become more about the following weekend’s game?

It always was, though. This game was always pitted as a mere staging post for Arsenal. A formality to be ticked off before getting back to the real business. It always felt trappy.

And Arsenal just could never, ever truly gain control. Never, ever relax. Never breathe. Everything with Arsenal at the moment just looks exhausting, from Mikel Arteta press conferences to defending needlessly conceded throw-ins in the last added minute of a quarter-final. The nervous energy is off the scale at all times. Nothing now is coming easy.

Look, clearly credit is due. You can’t spell ‘unconvincingly reach the semi-finals of the Champions League’ without ‘reach the semi-finals of the Champions League’. And at no time did it ever feel like Sporting were about to smash down the doors.

But with one goal, one bit of great play, one mistake, one slice of sheer dumb luck, all that ever separated Arsenal from the generational headloss that could have followed it was all just immensely stressful.

This was disaster avoidance and nothing more. Arsenal’s sparkling form in the less anxious and fraught times of autumn and winter had earned them this right. It had provided them an easier passage through these rounds than others. Boy did they need it.

But can Arsenal actually take anything from this beyond the obvious? Are they actually better equipped to get anything at City having emerged just about unscathed from this examination? We just don’t know any more. The relief at the final whistle was palpable, and Arsenal have done what they needed to do on the night and in this tie.

Yet surely not one nagging, gnawing doubt has been silenced. Not one intrusive thought dispatched. Nothing about this performance suggests Arsenal have resolved what ails them. There was no real authority to this performance; Sporting were just not quite able to expose or open any of Arsenal’s wounds.

In terms of the City game, the biggest moment may have been the injury suffered by Noni Madueke in the second half. He was replaced by Max Dowman, who had one of the less eye-catching of his many cameos this season. With Bukayo Saka still missing, would Arteta dare go with Dowman from the start at the Etihad. It would be the ‘No fear, pure fire’ approach, but there was precious little fire here and a superabundance of fear.

Arteta was a bundle of kinetic energy on the touchline. For all his qualities, and not for the first time, it is hard to escape the thought that he is just not what you want or need as crunch time approaches. It all just seems like effort. It all just seems so very tiring. We’re really not sure it needs to be.

His fire-based call to arms this week just feels like the exact opposite of what Arsenal need right now, but also the only way he knows. This is not a team or club in need of firing up, but one in need of chilling the f*ck out.

Of making calm, rational choices. Of a goalkeeper not, with three-and-a-half minutes of four added minutes elapsed, trying to launch wild counter-attacks in a tie you already lead. Of not sending centre-backs forward through sheer muscle memory at the award of an injury-time corner.

Odd as it is to say after a team that needed only a 0-0 draw tonight and duly got a 0-0 draw tonight in a game low on clear chances in which the closest both sides came was striking the post from unlikely angles near the end of each half, it now feels if anything less likely that Arsenal could do that against City.

Not given the way they went about it here, still frantically chasing a win on the night deep into stoppage time.

Logically, it is what Arsenal should do. Arteta should be at his most Arteta. Arsenal’s excellent defence and elite defenders should go to the Etihad and unapologetically anti-football their way to a point that would represent a huge stride towards that elusive Premier League title.

They’ve done it before, of course, only to watch City simply go and win all their remaining games, as Pep’s side are wont to do, and still win the title. This time, though, it’s later in the season and it wouldn’t on its own be enough for City.

Repeat tonight’s result at the weekend and Arsenal will have made the statement that was so starkly absent tonight even in success.

But this just all looked like so much effort, so much anguish, so much more agonising than it ever needed to be that we’re really not sure they can put themselves through it all again in even tougher conditions so soon. Battle-hardened has become battle-scarred.

Arsenal have managed to qualify for the Champions League semi-finals and leave us and themselves less convinced than ever before. These really are strange times in North London.