Once the dust settles on Arsenal's exit from this season's Europa League, then many may begin to see a possible silver lining with regard to the Premier League title race.
The Gunners crashed out of the aforementioned competition at the round of 16 stage on Thursday night, losing to Sporting CP on penalties after a 1-1 draw (3-3 on aggregate) at the Emirates Stadium with Gabriel Martinelli's spot-kick miss ultimately proving to be the decisive moment.
As a result, Arsenal's long wait to lift European silverware goes on and manager Mikel Arteta was understandably downbeat after the penalty shoot-out. "Yeah, a huge blow. We really wanted to go through in the competition and fight and go for it. Today we tried for 120 minutes and penalties and it wasn’t enough," he said in the post-match press conference.
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"Congrats to Sporting Lisbon firstly. Looking at ourselves it started difficult losing Tomi and Saliba and that made it hard to manage the game because we only had a window to make the subs and a few players couldn’t play 90 minutes. Still, we didn’t find our rhythm and flow, allowed too many spaces, were late, didn’t dominate there and gave the ball away many times, sometimes time after time.
"Then in the last 20 minutes we got our flow, we got the momentum, we deserved much more. We created three big chances and didn’t core. When we went to extra time we showed incredible energy again and top mentality when it wasn’t our best day to keep going. We had another big two chances and didn’t win. At the end, it came to the penalties and it’s a lottery and it didn’t go our way today."
How Thursday night's exit affects Arsenal is two-fold. The first, of course, was being absent from today's Europa League quarter-final/semi-final draws as their conquerors in Sporting CP will face Juventus over two legs for the right to face either Manchester United or Sevilla in the last four.
The other is a date for the Premier League clash against Southampton being confirmed. Prior to facing Sporting CP, a statement via the club's website read: "Should we qualify for the UEFA Europa League quarter finals following tonight's second leg v Sporting CP, our Premier League fixture against Southampton, currently scheduled for Friday, April 21, will move to Sunday, April 23."
So with no quarter-final tie on the calendar for Arsenal, it means the home game against the Saints will not be rescheduled and it's worth pointing this particular fixture falls before a meeting with Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium in what will have huge implications for the Premier League title race.
Had the Gunners beaten Sporting CP they would have faced Southampton on the Sunday, thus giving them three days rest before the trip to Manchester. But now, as things stand, Arteta will get an extra day of preparation and that could prove to be the difference come April 26.
With that said, there could be a scenario where Man City don't play on Sunday 23rd either as that weekend will stage the FA Cup semi-finals at Wembley. So should Pep Guardiola's side overcome Burnley this weekend, then they might be drawn to play on April 22, which would give them a nice boost too.
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