Arsenal are building a team worthy of challenging for the title in the coming years, but with the focus on the future, that means we would need some major luck to return to the Champions League in the near future.
The likes of Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City all appear nailed on to challenge for this season’s Premier League title, and all have impressive young players coming through the ranks also.
While nobody can know what the future holds for those four sides, at present they all appear to be strengthening well, and will be difficult to displace inside those four CL spots in the coming years, which may mean we will have to focus on that backdoor entry.
This means that we will have to focus on a two-year plan which will include winning the Europa League instead, something we are yet to achieve since it was renamed as such.
While we cannot be found listed within Europa League Odds list for the current season, you have to believe that we will be giving ourselves every chance to win that competition next time around.
It’s a shame there doesn’t appear to be an early market for next year’s entry, although you would imagine that our team would already rank as one of the favourites at this stage, with the majority of the bigger sides expected to be playing in the elite European competition.
Our last attempt at winning the trophy saw us miss out at the semi-final stage, when we failed to overturn a 2-1 deficit from our trip to Villarreal, while we came closest to clinching that title in 2019 when we reached the final of the competition, only to be beaten by London rivals Chelsea after Eden Hazard put in unstoppable display to say goodbye to his team-mates before departing for Real Madrid.
It may be a little early in the season to be considering ourselves as guaranteed to play in Europe next term, or even the EL specifically would be even harder to be sure of, but I believe that our team is now easily one of the top five best teams in England at present.
People will take negatives from our trip to Brighton, but the reality is that they have become one of the most organised teams in the division under the tutelage of Graham Potter, a manager who will surely go onto one of the big teams in the near future.
Am I alone in believing we are shoo-ins for the Europa next season?
Patrick