Arsenal season still a success despite Champions League heartache with club moving in right direction

It is a good job the celebration police were otherwise engaged on a hectic final day of the Premier League season, because the killjoys that have popped up unwanted at regular intervals throughout Arsenal’s campaign would surely have had a field day with the scenes at the Emirates.

A 5-1 victory over Everton was not enough to steal the top-four finish that had been theirs to lose less than a fortnight ago, as Tottenham took that honour with their own thumping win over doomed Norwich. The damage from an Arsenal perspective was done at St James’ Park last Monday and at Spurs the Thursday before that.

Few of a home persuasion arrived at the Emirates yesterday with much hope, justifiably so as it turned out, and few left early or even on the final whistle, when their inevitable fate was finally sealed, as the majority stuck around to defiantly salute the unexpected progress of this likeable young team during a lap of honour that had Freed From Desire and Sweet Caroline as part of its soundtrack.

‘Good times never seemed so good’ might’ve been pushing it but this did not feel like a club crushed by the disappointment of blowing a golden opportunity, nor one that had, in absolute terms, achieved only the minimum aim for the season in securing a return to the Europa League.

Unlike at the end of previous seasons, they can see a club undoubtedly heading in the right direction on the pitch (having any sense of direction at all has not been a given in the recent past) and even more so off it.

That the latter emerges as perhaps the greatest achievement of this campaign is a touch damming in itself, given the position the Gunners had fought themselves into in the table only weeks ago before coming up short, but that does not make it any less significant.

Through the latter years of Arsene Wenger and then the reign of Unai Emery, the Emirates was often an unenjoyable place to view football - occasionally as bad as a breeding ground for toxicity within a divided fan base - before the pandemic came along and barred anyone from watching it there at all.

Arsenal are not alone in reporting a post-Covid uplift in atmosphere in line with the return of fans but we’re dealing in night and day stuff when it comes to the before and after at this particular ground, where an anecdotally younger, more vibrant crowd seems to have emerged, typified by the Ashburton Army, a band of vocal supporters grouped in the Clock End who have led the way.

New songs - the first that have stuck in a big way in years - have been penned for new heroes, most notably Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith Rowe, and in the final weeks of the season, a new anthem has emerged, too, in the form of Louis Dunford’s The Angel.

Home wins over Tottenham and Manchester United, in particular, have been some of the most celebrated since the move from Highbury, but the match days themselves have been merely representative of a wider, orchestrated cultural shift.

There’ve been clever partnerships with local businesses (“Large chips…. aghhhhh!”) that have re-positioned the club as an asset to its community after the failed European Super League money-grab. There’s also been an attempt to bridge the gap to glories fast-fading into a previous era (see Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp meeting Saka and Smith Rowe) and a synergy between the men’s and women’s teams that is more prominent than at any other club in the country, contributing to the united front.

Some of these these things are small and trivial, insignificant in isolation, but together they have made a tangible difference to the mood around the club. Look at Vivianne Miedema’s comments after signing her contract extension last week, the Dutch striker having turned down the likes of Barcelona because it would “mean more” to win trophies at Arsenal.

That’s the kind of sentiment that can only be born of a certain environment and one which the Gunners will hope resonates with the likes of Saka, who needs only look to Manchester City and Jack Grealish, a Premier League champion 12 months after leaving his boyhood club, to see the alternative route on offer.

Celebrating any of this in the wake of such a damaging end to the campaign for Arteta’s side may seem cause for ridicule to rival fans and that is fine.

If anyone was putting a dampener on yesterday’s scenes it was the Spaniard himself, who said he was still “in pain” after the Newcastle debacle and could take no satisfaction in qualifying for the Europa League, while Arsenal supporters have themselves been acknowledging for years that if they were half as good at football as they are at social media campaigns and designing warm-up tops they’d be champions of Europe.

But to those who spend their coin following their team, whatever their team, around the country or continent, these things - experience, connection, community - matter. It is why many of Arsenal’s loyal fans, for all the heartache of the last two weeks, are already itching to do it all again next year.