Very Specific Football Question No.12: Would it be a ‘blessing in disguise’ for Arsenal to get knocked out of the Champions League?

With a daunting double-header against Bayern Munich set to decide Arsenal’s Champions League fate, you’d gather from some of the more rosy-spectacled wearing Gunners fans that crashing out of Europe could be the best thing that has ever happened to them.

According to some pundits it could be a “blessing in disguise” if the club fails to make it past the first group stage for the first time since the 1999/2000 season.
The humiliation of failing to survive a pool containing European superpowers of the calibre of Olympiakos and Dinamo Zagreb would be outweighed, in the optimist’s view, by Arsenal’s freedom to dedicate their energies solely to the pursuit of a first league title since 2004.

No draining trips to face Lionel Messi at the Nou Camp to disrupt preparations for the visit of Watford. No last-minute Alexis Sanchez away goals at the San Siro that might keep the players up past their bedtime and distract them from a match against Stoke four days later.

It’s that familiar refrain, “We’ll concentrate on the league,” which is also trotted out every time a relegation-threatened team is eliminated from the cup, as if getting beaten by someone like Rochdale was part of a great masterplan for success.

It all begs the question, if teams are so happy to get knocked out of the cups, why do they bother competing in them? And why has a manager not yet come along who intentionally loses all his cup matches and wins the Premier League year after year?

Arsene Wenger’s saving grace in the barren years at the Emirates has been his unerring ability to qualify for the Champions League year after year, although the satisfaction of making the top four has rarely lasted long because the Gunners haven’t made it beyond the last 16 for six years.

But then, nor has early elimination helped them win a league title

It’s possible the Gunners are trying to go out even earlier this time to improve their chances in the Premier League, but it would be an odd strategy. Every Arsenal fan would happily lose all their remaining cup matches in exchange for winning the league, but is there evidence to suggest the former would actually help them with the latter?

To work out if Arsenal would be better served by European failure, the obvious method is to study precedent. For instance, last season’s league champions, Chelsea, were also the English team that went joint furthest in the Champions League, so Europe didn’t seem to hinder them.

But “joint furthest” in that case meant the last 16, reflecting the harsh truth that English clubs have been so abysmal in Europe in recent times - with only one team reaching the quarter-finals in the last three seasons - that Champions League runs have had little bearing on the Premier League.

Alternatively, we can study the opposite end of the league table to see if teams benefit from a lighter fixture schedule.

For example, last season’s relegated trio - QPR, Hull and Burnley - were all knocked out of both the league and FA Cups in the early rounds, so gained no benefit whatsoever from concentrating on the league.

The previous season, Cardiff’s not-very-rousing run to the fifth round of the FA Cup was the furthest any of the Premier League’s three relegated teams reached in the knockout competitions.

All of which provides scant evidence that getting knocked out of a cup competition improves league performance.

Therefore, being eliminated from the Champions League would not be a blessing in disguise for Arsenal; it would be an undisguised calamity.

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