Champions League: Is everything really on the line in Munich for Arsenal?

ARSENAL landed in a gusty Munich aiming to show they have not been blown off course. A week is a long time in football and it was only last Tuesday, when Mikel Arteta’s players emerged for their first leg to a rapturous reception at the Emirates, that they were being favoured to dethrone a wobbly Bayern Munich. The picture has clouded since then and there is a sense of being caught between absolutes when the rematch kicks off on Wednesday night.

If Arsenal overcome their depleted hosts, they will have achieved an outcome for the ages and can savour a first Champions League semi-final since 2009. Should Bayern make home advantage and elite-level lineage count, those hovering to sound the death knell on their season will form an orderly queue. At this point of a campaign the lightest breeze can resemble a hurricane, as was amply shown by the reaction to Aston Villa’s victory in north London on Sunday.

Is everything really on the line for Arsenal in Bavaria, where Bayern tend to step out with a strut whatever the prevailing conditions? Dwelling on that notion would mean raking back over the possible consequences of the painful defeat by Aston Villa and Arteta had no interest in that. 

“Throw the game away, the one we played a few days ago,” he said. “Because regardless of that result, it is going to have no impact on what’s going to happen tomorrow.” 

Lumbering any negative baggage into the Allianz Arena would surely be fatal for Arsenal. Arteta was asked whether the looming spectre of last April, when their title chase collapsed shortly after defeat by Sporting Lisbon in the Europa League, may play on minds given the damage sustained on Sunday. It seems slightly unfair to draw direct parallels: for one thing, Arsenal are