After Arsenal’s defeat in the North London derby and Manchester City’s successful appeal to remain in the Champions League, a worst case scenario could soon become a reality for the Gunners.
Until Monday’s announcement from the CAS, Arsenal had genuine aspirations of making the Champions League, albeit via league placing had the Citizens been thrown out of the competition.
That they didn’t, means that it’s now impossible to amass the amount of points required to finish high enough to guarantee qualification to European football’s premier competition.
“I’m planning two or three different scenarios that we can face,” Arteta noted back in April, and cited by football.london.
“Depending on one of those three, we will be able to do more, less or nothing.”
In order to qualify for the Europa League, they will either have to win the FA Cup – no easy task when you consider they’ll have to beat Man City in the semi-finals and then either Chelsea or Man United in the final – or finish in seventh place.
To do the latter, they have to make up four points on Sheffield United in the remaining three games of the 2019/20 campaign.
If they’re unable to do even that, then it would surely follow that funds to bring in new players will be extremely limited, thus having the knock-on effect that Arteta will be unable to strengthen in the manner perhaps he had hoped.