Former Arsenal star, Ray Parlour insists the Gunners need to take this chance and become a top club again.
Mikel Arteta’s side is set to end their exile from the Champions League that has lasted since 2017.
They lost to Liverpool in the Premier League yesterday, but remain in pole position to finish this season inside the top four.
All they have to do is pick themselves up and go on another winning spree. It will not be easy, but this Arsenal team seems to be built differently from the others we have seen for some time now.
Parlour believes they need to return to competing in the Champions League and they have a unique opportunity to achieve that in this campaign.
He said via The Daily Mail: ‘It would be a successful season for Arsenal if they were able to finish in the top 4 and qualify for next season’s Champions League.
‘The fans, the players and the manager all expect Arsenal to be competing with the best clubs in Europe. It’s been a while since Arsenal last competed in the Champions League and the longer that goes on for, the harder it is for the club to return to what it was under Arsene Wenger.
‘We now need to take this opportunity with both hands and we need to get back to being in the elite competition every year again.’
Just Arsenal Opinion
It has been a long time since we have come this close to making the top four and our players need to get it over the line.
Even in the defeat against Liverpool, we showed we are a hard team to overcome.
In other days, we could have been luckier and scored from the chances we got.
Hopefully, that would be the case in our next matches.
Hands in the air,we’re bringing it home.COYG
it’s imperative that we clarify that some of us want to return to what we were under Wenger pre-Emirates, whereas it appears that many on here would be happy as a pig in sh** with a return to the Wenger Cup era
Not quite there yet but not too far away either
I didn’t watch the City V United match the other week but caught the “studio experts” (inc Neville, Keane and Ferdinand I think) afterwards, it was like a wake
At one point Keane was asked by the presenter if United should follow the Arsenal path, get in a young hungry Manager, get rid of the stars and effectively start again
His response?, “This is Manchester United we are talking about”!
Now Keane, Neville and Rio had a right to be arrogant in their day, no problem, the team & Club of that era earnt it, but today’s United team?, the Club now?
We don’t know yet whether what Arsenal have done will be ultimately successful but so far it has been done without that arrogance, let’s be arrogant if & when we get there
United can carry on with their current strategy of top name Manager, buying expensive name players, relying on stars to win games rather than building a strong team bond first and then adding those final ingredients and be more successful than us
They could still nick 4th spot from us, West Ham & Spurs this season
But it occurred to me then that it’s a bit like being an alcoholic, you have to admit you have a problem before you start trying to fix it, United don’t seem to think they have a problem
But a lot of their ex players do
Just a idle thought in the context of not many posts today
Hopefully getting back into the top4 will not be short lived – assuming we make it this season.
The landscape of the premier league is getting more fluid as more and more clubs are being bought by the unbelievably rich, with each owner expecting glory at the highest level. It is no longer the 4 horse race that ensured CL football for so long at the Arsenal.
I readily admit to believing that top4 was the proverbial trophy as more clubs competed for top spot.
However, I was wrong to think that was all that we needed. Winning the league is a distant memory, sadly and as yet I’m struggling to see a way of toppling the top 2 /3 for the big prize but hope that the cyclical nature of sport will get us over the line sooner rather than later. Staying there will be tough but with the travails of Chelsea and ManU, it shows that even the most successful clubs can’t bank on being winners all the time.