Bernd Leno is clearly a glass-half-full kind of guy. The goalkeeper believes the gap that currently separates Arsenal from top European football isn’t insurmountable.
‘We’re not ruling out the Champions League places because we might get it with just fifth place, given Manchester City’s possible ban,’ he said over the weekend.
True enough but you’d be hard pressed to find too many neutrals backing Arsenal to embark on a late-season rampage and qualify for Europe’s elite competition.
It’s been a season of frustration at Arsenal with the team currently ninth in the Premier League
Mikel Arteta’s side have a chance of qualifying for Europe but will face stiff competition
Gunners goalkeeper Bernd Leno is remaining optimistic they’ll reach the Champions League
They’ll certainly need Leno’s can-do attitude and plenty more besides to transform a season of strife and disappointment into one with palpable achievement.
Arsenal resume their Premier League season at Manchester City on Wednesday night as many points away from the relegation zone as from third place.
And the reality is it has never been more imperative that the Gunners return to the wealth and riches of the Champions League as soon as possible.
At the start of the year, Arsenal’s published accounts, covering the 2018-19 season, recorded a loss of £27.1million. This was down from a profit of £56.5m the previous year.
The club made no secret of the reason. In a statement reflecting on the figures, chairman Sir Chips Keswick, who has now retired, said: ‘Another season outside the Champions League will continue to apply pressure to our financial results.’
So the last thing they needed was a turbulent campaign that saw a club-record £72m outlay on Nicolas Pepe followed by inconsistent results in the league and a mid-season managerial change with Unai Emery sacked and replaced by Mikel Arteta.
Arsenal, owned by Stan Kroenke, cannot afford to keep missing out on the Champions League
Arsenal have eight points to make up if they are to finish the season in the top four
During Arsene Wenger’s glory years, Arsenal came to see playing in the Champions League as their right and not a privilege.
Of late, they have been comfortable in making it into the Europa League at the very least. But now even that is far from guaranteed. Yes, Arsenal could make Europe but they could just as easily finish in mid-table mediocrity.
And their present situation couldn’t have come at a worse time. In so many aspects, we will come to view our lives as pre-Covid and post-Covid. Football finances are no different.
According to analysis by the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust (AST), what was expected to be a slim profit of £4m for the year ending May 2020 is now likely to be a loss of £19m due to their remaining home games being behind closed doors.
Their eye-watering prediction of a £144m deficit if all of next season is played out without crowds is just too horrendous to contemplate.
We are only just beginning to understand how ghastly the impact of coronavirus will be on our football clubs at all levels.
Mesut Ozil is the club’s top earner in a huge wage bill, bringing home £350,000 per week
Failure to qualify for Europe could see assets like Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang leave the club
But the impact is already being felt behind the scenes at Arsenal, where players and coaching staff agreed to take a 12.5 per cent wage cut for a year when football stopped in March.
However, one caveat of that was that each player will get a £100,000 bonus if they are in the Champions League next season.
The club also released as many as 10 part-time scouts at the end of last month in the latest of what could be many enforced financial cutbacks.
Now matchday income – which accounts for 24 per cent of the club’s revenue – has dried up for the foreseeable future.
So suddenly a club that posted only its first operating loss in 18 years back in February could find itself in serious financial trouble.
Yes, everyone else is in the same situation but it really would be a huge boost right now if Arsenal can somehow drag themselves into the Champions League places by late July.
Arsenal broke their club record to sign Nicolas Pepe for £72m during last summer’s window
Midfielder Matteo Guendouzi looks dejected as Arsenal are beaten by Chelsea in December
It was the annual injection of Champions League cash that kept Arsenal’s books balanced for so long and helped pay for the Emirates Stadium.
Having that regular Champions League income increasingly divides the haves and have-nots of European football. Outside of that elite group for three seasons now, Arsenal are fast becoming one of the have-nots.
Consider this. Arsenal reached the Europa League final during the 2018-19 season, losing to Chelsea, and earned prize money of £34m.
But Manchester United and Manchester City, who only made the quarter-finals of the Champions League that season, pocketed £82m each.
North London rivals Tottenham, the runners-up, made £92m and Liverpool, the winners, £98m.
These are clubs Arsenal would consider their contemporaries at the richer end of the Premier League and yet a wealth gap is opening up.
There have already been concerted efforts by owner Stan Kroenke and his son Josh, a non-executive director, to drive down a flabby wage bill of £230m.
Unai Emery took Arsenal to the Europa League final last season but the financial rewards were less than even modest achievements for their rivals in the Champions League
It could be a stormy financial outlook at the club if Covid-19 is combined with failure on pitch
It’s one of the largest in European football and, combined with their absence from the Champions League, consumes 60 per cent of their revenue.
Europa League or not being in Europe entirely means cuts need to be made but Arsenal are no closer to getting rid of Mesut Ozil and his £350,000-a-week pay packet.
Even the financial positives for this season, including new commercial deals with Adidas and Emirates, will be swamped by Covid-19’s impact.
Then there is the considerable matter of prestige. Arsenal’s Champions League last-16 exits at the hands of Barcelona and Bayern Munich became a running theme, but at least they were rubbing shoulders with the best.
This season saw them eliminated from the Europa League by Olympiacos.
Being in the Champions League means a list of transfer targets can be enticed and your best players held on to.
Arsenal wish to sign Atletico Madrid’s Thomas Partey this summer but need to be in Europe
Why would leading scorer Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang stay if Arsenal aren’t in Europe next season? Even in these difficult times, he won’t be short of offers.
Arsenal want to sign Thomas Partey from Atletico Madrid. He would cost £44m but it will be an awful lot easier to tempt him to London with top-level European football on offer.
As football-starved fans relish the return of the Premier League, Arsenal do at least have their European hopes in their own hands.
After their visit to Manchester City on Wednesday, they have winnable games against Brighton, Southampton and Norwich. They also have fixtures against Spurs and Wolves to come, two of the other European contenders.
So perhaps we’d be wrong to write off their chances just yet. The last time Arsenal didn’t play in Europe was the 1995-96 season, after all.
But as football faces a financial meltdown, the consequences of missing out won’t be easily absorbed.