Arsenal kicked off their UEFA Europa League campaign with a 2-1 victory over FC Zurich last week as their impressive start to the season continued, although their hiatus from the Champions League for another season continues to cause concern.
Mikel Arteta is building something exciting at the Emirates Stadium, with the Gunners currently sat top of the Premier League after six games, but the Spaniard has failed to return the Gunners to football’s most prestigious club competition during his three-year reign.
But Unai Emery was also unable to achieve that goal before him during his 18-month stint as manager, meaning that club legend Arsene Wenger was the last to guide the Gunners to Champions League football before his 2018 departure.
Arsenal ’s last appearance in the Champions League was during the 2016/17 season, in what was their 17th consecutive campaign in the tournament and seventh in a row that they had exited at the round of 16 stage.
The Gunners had qualified after finishing as runners-up in the Premier League the previous season and topped their group ahead of Paris Saint-Germain, Ludogorets Razgrad and Basel, winning four and drawing two of their six fixtures to advance to the knockout stage.
However, what came next was one of the worst embarrassments in the clubs history, as they were thrashed 5-1, home and away, by Bayern Munich, to exit the competition on the back of a 10-2 aggregate defeat to the German champions.
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During that same season, Wenger was unable to achieve a top four finish as his Arsenal days began to number and it subsequently ended a run of 17 consecutive years that he had qualified the north London outfit for the Champions League, which began in the 2000/01 campaign.
Throughout that near two decade run, Wenger reached the final with Arsenal on just one occasion. In the 2005/06 campaign, the Gunners made it all the way to the last game of the competition, only to lose 2-1 to Barcelona at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, Paris.
Eight of the next 11 years saw the Gunners knocked out in the round of 16 stage, in what became a predictable end to their Champions League campaigns, with a semi-final appearance in the 2008/09 season being as good as it got during that time.
There was never any doubt in Arsenal qualifying for the Champions League, with Wenger consistently achieving a top four finish in the Premier League and boasting a number of top quality players, yet it never seemed to work out at the highest level in Europe.
In Wenger’s penultimate season, a fifth-placed finish saw Arsenal qualify for the Europa League and that has been the same ever since, until last season, as the Gunners failed to compete in European competition for the first time since 1996 after finishing eighth in the top flight in 2020/21.
However, in three of their four Europa League campaigns, Arsenal have reached two semi-finals and one final. Had they beaten Chelsea in 2019, in which they lost 4-1 to the Blues, it would have seen them return to the Champions League within three seasons of their last appearance in the competition.
Fast forward to the present day and Arsenal now find themselves just simply trying to get themselves back into the top four, and there is full support in Arteta that he can achieve that. But having to compete with Tottenham, Chelsea and Manchester United for that spot is not easy, while they must also navigate around clashes with Manchester City and Liverpool.
