Arsenal Are Performing Like Football’s Version of the Jonah Complex

A Paris Saint-Germain side struggling to come to terms with their new manager; Edinson Cavani struggling to recapture form and to come to terms with filling the enormous hole that Zlatan Ibrahimovic left. It was a perfect opportunity for Arsenal, in what was their hardest game of the group phase, on paper, to get their Champions League campaign off to a positive start.

And within 44 seconds, Cavani had given PSG the lead.

Of course he did. This is Arsenal: finding familiar ways to underachieve for around a decade.

But this being Arsenal, they also came back. Especially in Europe, it’s as though they feel they have to make the mountain a bit bigger before they start climbing it.

Cavani, who played well apart from his finishing, should have killed the game off. He had three golden chances to increase PSG’s lead and missed them all. That seemed to embolden Arsenal, who were much better (if far from dominant) in the second half, and by the time Alexis Sanchez smashed in the equaliser, it had begun to feel, if not inevitable, then at least plausible.

But why do Arsenal keep on doing this? Why did they underperform so badly in the first two group games last season, to make finishing first in the group all but impossible, inviting the draw against Barcelona that inevitably undid them?

Why, did they play so abjectly the previous year to lose the home leg of the last-16 tie 3-1 against Monaco, setting up the 2-0 win in France that saw them go out on the away-goals rule?

Why, the season before that, did they lose tamely at home to Bayern Munich, missing a penalty, before a valiant draw in Germany?

Why, the season before that, did they lose 3-1 to Bayern at home before winning 2-0 at the Allianz to go out only on away goals?

Why, the season before that, did they lose 4-0 away to AC Milan before winning the home leg 3-0? Why are they so addicted to the trope of glorious but futile fightback against the odds—odds they’ve usually lengthened by their own ineptness?

Watch the first goal in Paris. There is a slackness about Arsenal from the off, a lethargy, a lack of intensity.

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