Arsenal will not play in Europe in the upcoming campaign, a first in over 20 years.
They reached this new low following their poor performance in the Premier League last season.
They have added a few new players to their squad in this transfer window, most notably, Ben White.
The next campaign is important to the future of Mikel Arteta as he now has the chance to prove critics of his appointment wrong, once and for all.
The Spaniard showed promise when he won the FA Cup and Community Shield for the Gunners within his first six months at the helm.
But his team has regressed since then and they have to make significant progress in the 2021/2022 campaign.
The Daily Mail points out that Arsenal’s finances are a mess and they need the money from European football to remain competitive like their rivals.
They write: “Was last season’s eighth-placed finish just a blip or are Arsenal facing long-term decline to mid-table mediocrity and more mockery of their ‘big six’ status?
“We’re about to find out with the burden now heavily on Mikel Arteta to show he is making tangible progress after several years of drift at the Emirates Stadium.
“Arteta has been striking an optimistic tone, underpinned by surprisingly efficient transfer business, and he will hope the absence of European competition in midweek will allow more breathing space in the fixture schedule to properly impart his philosophy.
“Pressure to deliver a return to the top six comes not only from the point of prestige for Arsenal but financial necessity.
“The club’s net debt more than doubled to £108.2million as a result of Covid, they took out and repaid a £120m loan from the Bank of England, and their figures revealed £154m owed to other clubs in transfer fees. They can’t be without European cash for too long.
“Little wonder fans raged at the club’s owners, the Kroenke family, amid the European Super League fiasco but all that hasn’t stopped them spending this summer.
“£50m was spent on Brighton’s Ben White to fix a notoriously leaky and error-prone defence, while the signings of defender Nuno Tavares and midfielder Albert Sambi Lokonga, both 21, confirmed Arteta wants a squad with a youthful complexion.
“Arguably their best summer business, however, has been securing Kieran Tierney and Emile Smith Rowe to new long-term contracts.”