Gavin Cooney

FOR ARSENAL, THE good news is they lost the first leg but they have not yet lost the tie. 

Tonight it looked like they could be quickly swept away amid the now-familiar PSG whirlwind but eventually managed to nail themselves to the floor. From there, however, there was no late surge to level the game, and late PSG profligacy instead means they are lucky not to be out of the tie entirely.

Arsenal will also be better for the return of Thomas Partey next week as it will release Declan Rice and Mikel Merino further forward, while PSG may be without Ousmane Dembele, who was forced off with injury tonight.

But as a prelude to Paris, tonight was a game to kindle hope rather than sow belief. 

There’s truly no football aesthetic more enticing than the Champions League knock-out tie that kicks off in late-evening sunshine, and the upper tiers of the Emirates were still splashed with sunset gold when Dembele was careening off to the corner, celebrating another early goal in England. 

The goal was extremely similar to the one he scored against Liverpool in the last-16: Dembele, picked at centre-forward, dropped deep into midfield to collect the ball and found himself in acres of green grass as his team-mates scarpered in all directions to take their man-markers with him. From there Dembele accelerated, and was then left alone again by a panicked Rice to scuff the ball in off the post once Kvaratskhelia had competed the business of skipping by Jurrien Timber. 

Kvaratskhelia quickly moved into the Timber harvesting business, with the Arsenal defender lucky not to concede a penalty for hooking his arm around the Georgian and somehow not booked for a flurry of fouls. 

Arsenal rode out the storm, however, with Martin Odegaard dropping deeper to clog up passing channels and stem those scything passes to Dembele’s feet.

But once Arsenal did their characteristically admirable work of blunting the opposition, their familiar creative failings took hold.

Arsenal had two reliable routes to goal.

One was set pieces, which are proving much less effective in Europe where referees are more attuned to the illegality of Nicolas Joever’s choreographed blocking and pushing in the penalty area. In stoppage time, Joever had to be pushed back to the bench while seething at the fourth official after Ben White was correctly pinged for bumping into Gianluigi Donnarumma. Nicolas Joever is a man struggling to adapt to Europe. 

The second route to goal was far more adrenal to watch. First a midfield player would stride forward and then slip the ball left into the space vacated by the buccaneering Achraf Hakimi. In the first-half the remarkable Myles Lewis-Skelly drew pressure from Hakimi before wriggling away, striding forward and feeding Martinelli, whose shot was blocked by Donnarumma.

Declan Rice got In On The Act after the break, surging forward and this time finding Leaondro Trossard, who forced a fabulous low save from Donnarumma. 

But Arsenal offered little more and they faded placidly away in the closing half-hour. 

Mikel Arteta spent the days before this game in rally mode, calling on the Arsenal fans to “bring their boots” and create an atmosphere the stadium had not hitherto seen. He should have told his players this was their job, too. Supporters need fuel from their players to sustain any atmosphere, and Arsenal’s players are much too stop-start to keep anything burning for long. 

Hence why we see Arteta and the Arsenal players continually flap their arms and exhort supporters to make some noise. But too often these are false starts, as Arsenal themselves stall their own momentum: no white-hot atmosphere can survive contact with Arsenal’s 90-second corner routines. 

Their other failure was to sustain attacking pressure from open play in that final half-hour, which draws more scrutiny on the gaunt and diminished figure of Martin Odegaard. 

Arsenal’s strength across the previous two seasons was the ferocity of their jab: while Manchester City and Liverpool had more firepower to land knockout blows, Arsenal were the nimble boxer who would always wear their opponents down. Odegaard led the jab, pinning teams into their penalty area with Bukayo Saka lurking ominously nearby. 

But despite Saka’s return to the team, Odegaard has been unable to reprise this form, and this was another game in which he drifted forlornly about the edges, doing all manner of admirable pressing and gesticulating and looking about without the ball while contributing next to nothing with it. 

Odegaard didn’t complete the game, hooked for Ethan Nwaneiri for the five minutes of stoppage time. 

In these high-stakes, high-wire ties, Arsenal need more from their captain. 

He has one last chance in Paris to put it right.