Mikel Arteta must solve Arsenal’s goalscoring problems against PSV if a season of opportunity is not to be lost in a muddle of regret
Arsenal have arrived in the Netherlands to find that spring is here. Whether Mikel Arteta and his players are capable of moving forward into the light remains to be seen. It was not long ago that the Champions League represented merely a single strand of a multi-dimensional season for Arsenal.
Less than two months ago, Arteta’s team were alive in four competitions. Now, arguably, just one remains. Find a way past PSV Eindhoven — second in the Dutch league — over two legs in the coming nine days and Arsenal can still save this season. That would take them into a quarter-final tie next month against Real Madrid or Atletico Madrid.
With not an awful lot else to distract them given Liverpool’s 13-point lead at the top of the Premier League, Arsenal may once again sense opportunity and that would be a shift from where they are right now. Because the Arsenal of recent days has been an Arsenal on the back foot.
Long since gone from the FA Cup, Arsenal’s Carabao Cup hopes were wrenched from them by Newcastle last month before dismal back-to-back performances in the league against West Ham and Nottingham Forest turned a title race in to a procession that looks as though it will begin and end on Merseyside.
